突发！特朗普宣布美国进入紧急状态，发布会上还说了什么？（附视频&演讲稿）

Thank you very much, everyone.  Thank you.  Thank you.

A beautiful day in the Rose Garden.  Appreciate everybody being here.  Today, I’d like to provide an update to the American people on several decisive new actions we’re taking in our very vigilant effort to combat and ultimately defeat the coronavirus.

We’ve been working very hard on this.  We’ve made tremendous progress.  When you compare what we’ve done to other areas of the world, it’s pretty incredible.  A lot of that had to do with the early designation and the closing of the borders.

And, as you know, Europe was just designated as the hotspot right now, and we closed that border a while ago.  So that was lucky or through talent or through luck.  Call it whatever you want.  But through a very collective action and shared sacrifice and national determination, we will overcome the threat of the virus.

I also announced Wednesday night, following the advice of our medical professionals who are doing a tremendous job — and we appreciate it very much — that we’re suspending the entry of foreign nationals who have been to Europe in the last 14 days from entering the United States.  Citizens, permanent residents, and our families — and even the families returning from Europe, will be subject to extra screening as well self-isolation for a period of 14 days.

As the World Health Organization confirmed today, many of the things that — what we said were 100 percent correct, including our designation, before them, of Europe.  Like our earlier, very aggressive actions with China, this measure will save countless lives.  I appreciate a number of the folks behind me.  A number of the people behind me said that that saved a lot of lives, that early designation.

But it is only the beginning of what we’re really doing, and now we’re in a different phase.  We had some very old and obsolete rules that we had to live with.  It worked under certain circumstances but not under mass circumstances.  They were there for a long time; they were in place for a long time.  And we’re breaking them down now.  And they’re very usable for certain instances, but not for this.

To unleash the full power of the federal government in this effort, today I am officially declaring a national emergency.  Two very big words.  The action I am taking will open up access to up to $50 billion of very importantly — very important and a large amount of money for states and territories and localities in our shared fight against this disease.

In furtherance of the order, I’m urging every state to set up emergency operation centers effective immediately.  You’re going to be hearing from some of the largest companies and greatest retailers and medical companies in the world.  They’re standing right behind me and to the side of me.

I’m also asking every hospital in this country to activate its emergency preparedness plan so that they can meet the needs of Americans everywhere.  The hospitals are very engaged.  New York and various other places are also various engaged.  I just spoke with Governor Cuomo; we had a very good conversation.  And we’re working very strongly with many states, including New York.

The emergency orders I am issuing today will also confer broad new authority to the Secretary of Health and Human Services.  The Secretary of HHS will be able to immediately waive provisions of applicable laws and regulations to give doctors, hospital — all hospitals — and healthcare providers maximum flexibility to respond to the virus and care for patients.

This includes the following critical authorities:

 The ability to waive laws to enable telehealth, a fairly new and incredible thing that’s happened in the — in the not-so-distant past.  I tell you, what they’ve done with telehealth is incredible.  It gives remote doctors’ visits and hospital check-ins.

The power to waive certain federal license requirements so that doctors from other states can provide services and states with the greatest need.  Number two.

The ability to waive requirements that critical-access hospitals limit the number of beds to 25 and the length of stay to 96 hours.

The ability to waive the requirements of a three-day hospital stay prior to admission to a nursing home.  Big thing.

The authority to waive rules that hinder hospitals’ ability to bring additional physicians on board or obtain needed office space.  They can do as they want.  They can do what they have to do.  They know what they have to do.  Now they don’t have any problem getting it done.

The authority to waive rules that severely restrict where hospitals can care for patients within the hospital itself, ensuring that the emergency capacity can be quickly established.

We’ll remove or eliminate every obstacle necessary to deliver our people the care that they need and that they’re entitled to.  No resource will be spared.  Nothing whatsoever.

Ten days ago, I brought together the CEOs of commercial labs at the White House and directed them to immediately begin working on a solution to dramatically increase the availability of tests.  Other countries have called us and worked with us, and they’re doing similar things or will be doing similar things.

As a result of that action, today we’re announcing a new partnership with private sector to vastly increase and accelerate our capacity to test for the coronavirus.  We want to make sure that those who need a test can get a test very safely, quickly, and conveniently.  But we don’t want people to take a test if — if we feel that they shouldn’t be doing it.  And we don’t want everyone running out and taking.  Only if you have certain symptoms.

Using federal emergency authorities, the FDA approved a new test for the virus.  We did this within hours after receiving the application from Roche — a process that would normally take weeks.  We therefore expect up to a half a million additional tests will be available early next week.  We’ll be announcing locations probably on Sunday night.

I want to thank Roche, a great company, for their incredible work.  I’d also like to thank Thermo Fisher.  The FDA’s goal is to hopefully authorize their application within 24 hours — it’ll go very quickly; it’s going very quickly — which will bring, additionally, 1.4 million tests on board next week and 5 million within a month.  I doubt we’ll need anywhere near that.

At the same time, we’ve been in discussions with pharmacies and retailers to make drive-thru tests available in the critical locations identified by public health professionals.  The goal is for individuals to be able to drive up and be swabbed without having to leave your car.

I want to thank Google.  Google is helping to develop a website.  It’s going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location.

We have many, many locations behind us, by the way.  We cover the — this country in large part.  So the world, by the way — we’re not going to be talking about the world right now.  But we cover very, very strongly our country.  Stores in virtually every location.

Google has 1,700 engineers working on this right now.  They’ve made tremendous progress.  Our overriding goal is to stop the spread of the virus and to help all Americans who have been impacted by this.

Again, we don’t want everybody taking this test; it’s totally unnecessary.  And this will pass.  This will pass through, and we’re going to be even stronger for it.  We’ve learned a lot.  A tremendous amount has been learned.

I want to thank Deborah Birx, and I want to ask her maybe to come up and say a few words as to what’s happening.  Dr. Birx is a highly respected person.  I’ve gotten to know her very well over the last six days.  And what we’ve done is rebuild something that was very old, very old-fashioned, somewhat obsolete.  Certainly obsolete when it comes to the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.

Dr. Birx, please.  Thank you, Deborah.

DR. BIRX:  Thank you, Mr. President.  It’s a pleasure to be here with all of you.

I think you know — at the beginning of this epidemic, HHS, through CDC, proactively developed an assay built on the existing flu surveillance system.  That surveillance system was then converted to diagnostic system.

But last Tuesday, seeing the spread of the virus around the globe, the President realized that our current approach to testing was inadequate to need — to meet the needs of the American public.  He asked for an entire overhaul of the testing approach.  He immediately called the private sector laboratories to the White House, as noted, and charged them with developing a high-throughput quality platform that can meet the needs of the American public.

We are grateful to LabCorp and Quest for taking up the charge immediately after the meeting and within 72 hours bringing additional testing access, particularly to the outbreak areas of Washington State and California, and now across the country.

We are also very grateful to the universities and large hospital systems that took up the charge to develop their own quality tests made available by new FDA guidance.  This has resulted in expanded testing across New York, California, Washington, Colorado, and you see sometimes those drive-thru options that have been made available through these high-throughput options.

Following the meeting last week, major commercial laboratory equipment and diagnostic companies took immediate action to adopt and develop new testing systems.  Last night, the initial company, Roche, received FDA approval, moving from request to development to approval in record time.

This innovative approach centered fully on unleashing the power of the private sector, focusing on providing convenient testing to hundreds of thousands of Americans within short turnaround times.  In less than two weeks together, we have developed a solution that we believe will meet the future needs — testing needs of Americans.

I understand how difficult this has been.  I was part of the HIV/AIDS response in the ‘80s.  We knew, from diag- — from first finding cases in 1981, it took us to almost 1985 to have a test.  It took us another 11 years to have effective therapy.  It is because of the lessons learned from that that we were able to mobilize and bring those individuals that were key to the HIV response to this response.

I understand that a lot of this behind-the-scenes action over the last couple of weeks was invisible to the press and the American people.  But this intense effort has not only resulted in innovative solutions, but an automated high-throughput system, bringing the availability of these quality coronaviral testing to the American people at unprecedented speed.

Finally, I want you to know: In South Korea, they did have large number of tests available over the last several weeks.  Their positivity rate is between 3 and 4 percent.  With LabCorp and Quest expanded testing, their positivity rate is between 1 and 2 percent.

So we want to also announce this new approach to testing, which will start in the screening website up here, facilitated by Google, where clients and patients and people that have interest can go, fill out a screening questionnaire — move down for symptoms or risk factors, yes.  They would move down this and be told where the drive-thru options would be for them to receive this test.  The labs will then move to the high-throughput automated machines to be able to provide results in 24 to 36 hours.

That is the intent of this approach.  We have seen it work just in our own United States, and we want to bring this across the continent.

Thank you very much.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much, Deborah.  Great.

I’d like to maybe have Tony — do you want to come up?  You’ve become a — I think everybody out here knows you pretty well.  But Tony has been doing a tremendous job working long, long hours.  And you’ve seen a lot happen, but this has been — it’s been a great experience, and working with you has been terrific.

Tony, please.

DR. FAUCI:  Thank you very much, Mr. President.  This is an example of — another example of what I’ve been referring to in my discussions with many of you in the audience as a proactive, leaning-forward, aggressive, trying to stay ahead of the curve.

And what you’re seeing now with this order is that we’re going to be able to remove the constraints so that people at the state and the local level — the individual physician all the way up through the federal government — will have as many constraints as possible removed for them to do everything they possibly can so that we can implement the things that we’ve been talking about — the containment, the mitigation — so that, as I’ve said many times, that curve that I referred to that goes up, we don’t want to have that curve.  We want to suppress it down to that small mound.

And I think what we’ve done today is something that is going to be a very important element in having us be successful in doing that.

We still have a long way to go.  There will be many more cases, but we’ll take care of that.  And ultimately, as the President said, this will end.  But what’s going on here today is going to help it to end sooner than it would have.

Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much, Tony.

If I could, some of these folks we know; they’re celebrities in their own right.  They’re the biggest business people, the greatest retailers anywhere in the world.  And one of them is Doug McMillon from Walmart.  And I’d like to have Doug, if you would, say a few words, wherever you may be.

Doug, please.

MR. MCMILLON:  When we got the call yesterday from the White House, we were eager to do our part to help serve the country.  And given what we’re facing, that’s certainly important to do.  We should all be doing that.

So we’ve been asked to make portions of our parking lot available in select locations in the beginning, and scaling over time as supply increases, so that people can experience the drive-thru experience that the President described.

We’ll stay involved and do everything we can from a supply-chain point of view to be of assistance.

Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much, Doug.  Appreciate it very much.

I’ll just stay right over here.  And, Richard, if you could come up, please.  Richard, please.  Walgreens.  Thank you.

MR. ASHWORTH:  Thank you, Mr. President.  And similar to Doug and Walmart, we’re happy to stand in here and help in communities all across America.  Because a lot of times, when we have natural disasters, our stores are a beacon in the community, and this situation is no different.

So we look forward to partnering with the CDC, the administration, HHS, and the task force, and specifically to the Vice President, who’s doing such a fantastic job.  We’re ready to engage and help.

Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  Great job.  Thank you very much.

Brian Cornell, Target.  Thank you, Brian.  Thank you.  Please.

MR. CORNELL:  Well, Mr. President, thank you for inviting us here today, along with our colleagues from Walmart and Walgreens and our partners at CVS.  Normally, you’d view us as competitors, but today we’re focused on a common competitor, and that’s defeating the spread of the coronavirus.  And we look forward to working with the administration to do our fair share to alleviate this growing threat.

So, thank you for including us today.  In the near term, we’re all committed to making sure we’re keeping our stores open to serve the American consumer who is rapidly stocking up on household essentials, key food and beverage items that they need during this time; making sure we run safe stores; and creating an environment that’s safe for our team members, making sure that they feel supported during this very critical time.

So thank you for including us.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  Great job.

Is Tom here?  Tom Polen.  Tom?  Tom Polen.  Please.

MR. POLEN:  Thank you, Mr. President.  As CEO of Becton Dickinson, we’re one of the leading providers of medical devices as well as collection products for testing of coronavirus.  We’re ramping up our manufacturing capacity to ensure that the right collection devices and testing equipment are ready to address this issue.  Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much, Tom.  Great job you’ve done.

Stephen Rusckowski, Quest Diagnostics.  Please.  Great job.  Thank you very much.

MR. RUSCKOWKI:  Thank you very much.  Thank you, Mr. President.

So, as mentioned, we were called, with the leadership of the Vice President, last week to come together as an industry.  And we took advantage of that opportunity to work with the FDA, to work with the Center for Disease Control.  And we are up and running with tests in a number of our facilities.

As the President mentioned, we now have capabilities from Roche diagnostics that we will bring into our facilities this weekend.  And I know myself and also my colleague at LabCorp will be doing the same, so the capacity available to the American public to support this action with consumers will be considerably increased in the next few weeks.

Thank you, Mr. President.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  I appreciate it.

And Matt Sause, please, of Roche.  Matt?  Thank you, Matt.

MR. SAUSE:  Thank you, Mr. President.  So, from Roche, we want to thank the FDA for their rapid approval of our coronavirus test.  We really appreciate the partnership with the CDC and the FDA to get that to market as fast as possible because it’s critical for us to make that available to help patients in need, and working with laboratories to get it up and going in the near future, which will bring hundreds of thousands of tests available to patients in need in the United States.  So, thank you.

THE PRESIDENT:  And you can do it.  You can do it.  A great company.

David Pierre of Signify — Signify Health.  Please.  Thanks, David.

MR. PIERRE:  Thank you, Mr. President.  We are the largest housecall provider in the U.S., and we go to the homes of the most vulnerable elderly.  And through our network and our logistics engine, we stand ready to help and provide our clinicians to be where they’re needed, whether they’re in retail clinics or in the home.  And we’re here to assist.

Thank you very much.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  And we’ll be changing a lot of the rules, regulations for future, should this happen in the future, which we hope it never does.  But it will, I guess — somewhere out there.  There are some bad ones over the years, and I guess that’ll continue to an extent, but we hope it never happens.  But we’re going to be changing a lot of the old rules and specifications and regulations.

Adam Schechter, who has really been of tremendous help.  LabCorp.  Please.   Adam?

MR. SCHECHTER:  Thank you, Mr. President.  At LabCorp, we’re working every second of every day to increase the number of tests that we can run.  We’re working with academic medical centers, with our colleagues at Quest, with other hospital and other laboratories to ensure that we do everything we can to increase the testing as we move forward.

And I can tell you we understand how important the testing is, and we are committed to doing everything possible.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  Great job.  Thank you.

Thomas Moriarty, CVS.  We all know CVS.  Thank you.

MR. MORIARTY:  Thank you, sir.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Thomas.

MR. MORIARTY:  Thank you, Mr. President.  We have been focused, since the start, of making sure our patients and the customers we serve have the information they need and the safety they need as well.  We are committed to working with the administration and local public health officials to make this work as well.  And thank you, sir, for the honor.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  Thank you, Thomas.  Thanks.  Great job.

And Bruce Greenstein, LHC Group.  Tremendously talented people.  Thank you very much.

MR. GREENSTEIN:  Mr. President, thank you for the honor of being here.  And the home health industry has been treating patients and seniors in the safety and comfort of their own home for decades.  We’re very proud to be part of the equation for testing in their own home.  For Americans that can’t get to a test site or live in rural areas far away from a retail establishment,  we’re here to help and to partner with our hospitals and physicians, as well as the people we have here today that will be doing testing around the country.  Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  Fantastic.

(Mr. Greenstein gives the President an elbow bump.)

MR. GREENSTEIN:  Oh, we’ll practice that.

THE PRESIDENT:  Okay, I like that.  That’s good.

We’re also announcing the following emergency executive actions today:

To help our students and their families, I’ve waived interest on all student loans held by federal government agencies, and that will be until further notice.  That’s a big thing for a lot of students that are left in the middle right now.  Many of those schools have been closed.

Based on the price of oil, I’ve also instructed the Secretary of Energy to purchase, at a very good price, large quantities of crude oil for storage in the U.S. Strategic Reserve.  We’re going to fill it right up to the top, saving the American taxpayer billions and billions of dollars, helping our oil industry and making us even further toward that wonderful goal — which we’ve achieved, which nobody thought was possible — of energy independence.  It puts us in a position that’s very strong, and we’re buying it at the right price.  And that’s something that would have not even been possible a week ago.  The price of oil went down quite a bit, so we’re going to fill it up.  This is a good time to fill it up.

I’d like to ask Mike Pence to say a few words, please.  VP.

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Mr. President.  It is — this day should be an inspiration to every American, because thanks to your leadership from early on, not only are we bringing a whole-of-government approach to confronting the coronavirus, we’re bringing an all-of-America approach.

Mr. President, from early on, you took decisive action.  You suspended all travel from China.  You created travel advisories — South Korea and Italy.  We screened all travelers from all airports in both of those countries.  And on the unanimous recommendation of your health experts, you, at midnight tonight, will effectively suspend all travel from Europe.  And Americans that are returning will be screened and asked to voluntarily participate in a 14-day quarantine.

Throughout this process, Mr. President, you’ve put the health of America first, but you brought the best of America to address it.  And it’s not just at the federal level.  As you said, Mr. President, we’ve been working with states across the country.  We issued broad guidelines from CDC for every American.  But this week, at your direction, we tailored specific recommendations from CDC for New York, Washington State, California, Massachusetts, and Florida.

And we’ve been in continuous contact, as you said, with governors around the country.  And, Mr. President, you have forged a seamless partnership with every state and every territory in this country to put the health of our nation first.

But today, I trust that people around the country that are looking on at this extraordinary public and private partnership to address the issue of testing with particular inspiration.  After you tapped me to lead the White House Corona Task Force, Mr. President, you said this is all hands on deck, and you directed us to immediately reach out to the American business sector commercial labs to meet what we knew then would be the need for testing across the spectrum.  And today, with this historic public-private partnership, we have laid the foundation to meet that need.

And for Americans looking on, by this Sunday evening, we’ll be able to give specific guidance on a — on when the website will be available.  You can go to the website, as the President said.  You’ll type in your symptoms and be given direction whether or not a test is indicated.

And then, at the same website, you’ll be directed to one of these incredible companies that are going to give a little bit of their parking lot so that people can come by and do a drive-by test.

Mr. President, I want to join you in thanking Walmart and CVS and Target and Walgreen.  These are companies that are synonymous with communities large and small, where people come together.  And now they’re going to come together to meet the needs of the American public.

These commercial laboratories — LabCorp and Quest and Roche — have just done an incredible job stepping forward and are going to literally make — literally make hundreds and thousands of tests available and being processed with results to patients in the very near future.  But it’s all a result of you tasking us with bringing together not just government resources — which all state labs can now test across the country; CDC is testing — but you said, Mr. President, that we wanted to bring all the resources of the country together, and that’s what this partnership really means.

You know, the truth is that we have coronavirus cases now in 46 American states.  And while the risk of serious illness of the coronavirus remains low, we want to encourage every American to practice common sense, practice good hygiene, go to the CDC’s website to see what the guidance is for your community or for the American people broadly.

And as the President has said, it’s especially important now that we look at senior citizens with chronic underlying health conditions.  Last week, the President directed the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services to raise the standards at our nursing homes, increase inspections at our nursing homes.  And today, we’re offering very specific guidance, which Seema Verma will articulate, about visitations at nursing homes.

It’s important to remember that they were there for us when we were growing up, Mr. President.  They helped us with our homework.  They tucked us in at night.  They cheered us on as we pursued educations, cheered us on in our careers.  And now it’s time for us to be there with them and to recognize that seniors with chronic health conditions are the most vulnerable, and Americans can make a difference.  So wash your hands, use common sense, look after the most vulnerable.

And, Mr. President, I know I join you in saying that every American should be proud of this incredible public-private partnership that’s going to speeding access of testing to millions of Americans in the weeks ahead.

And together, as you’ve said many times, together we’ll get through this.  Together, we’ll put the health of America first.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you, Mike.  Thank you very much.

Seema.  Where is Seema?  I’d like you to maybe take that a step further, please, on nursing homes.  Thanks.

ADMINISTRATOR VERMA:  Thank you.  Well, thank you to the President for the declaration.  It allows my agency, CMS — that runs Medicare and Medicaid and has oversight of all of the nation’s healthcare facilities — to suspend regulations that can get in the way of treating patients during this time.

These temporary national blanket waivers are reserved for the rarest of circumstances, and they represent a massive mobilization of our country’s resources to combat this terrible virus.  And the flexibilities we are offering will be a God-send to the providers, clinicians, and facilities on the frontlines of this fight.

And later, CMS is going to be issuing guidance directing nursing homes to temporarily restrict all visitors and non-essential personnel, with a few exceptions such as end-of-life situations.

We fully appreciate that this measure represents a severe trial for residents of nursing homes and those who love them.  But we are doing what we must to protect our vulnerable elderly.  Thank you.

THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much, Seema.

As I said in my address to the nation the other night, all Americans have a role to play in defeating this virus.  Our most effective weapon right now is to limit the damage to our people and our country, and slow the spread of the virus itself.

The choice we make, the precautions we put into place are critical to overcoming the virus, reducing its spread and shortening the duration of the pandemic — which is what it is.

The CDC has published guidelines on the Coronavirus.gov to enable — it’s Coronavirus.gov, and it’s very — very heavily used right now, I will say — to enable every American to respond to this epidemic and to protect themselves, their families, and their communities, while the risks to young and healthy Americans remains very low.  We’ve learned a lot about this over the last two weeks.  Anyone can be a carrier for the virus and risk transmission to older Americans and those with underlying health conditions and those who are most at risk.  They have not done very well.  Older Americans who are — especially, if they have a health problem, they have not done well.

We must take all precautions and be responsible for the actions that we take and that we see other people take.  We want to prevent the spread and transmission of the disease.

It’s incredible what’s — sports — what’s happening with the sporting world, where so many of the great sports that we’ve gotten so used to at this time of the year, they’re not going to be meeting.  And they’ve done a great service actually.  But that — would be another way that it could be — problems could be caused.

But this is why I outlined on Wednesday night my admiss- — administration’s — the fact that we’ve issued a requirement suspending all medically unnecessary visits to various places, but in particular, nursing homes.  We should all be working off the same playbook when it comes to protecting Americans.  We have to.

We need to be consistent in adopting measures to limit the spread of the virus.  The virus is the same, whether it’s spreading in cities, towns, or rural communities.  The tools and tactics for attacking it are similar no matter where you go.  No matter where you go.  You have some hotspots throughout the world right now that people would have never thought possible, and they’re being very seriously affected.

Key among these efforts are breaking chains of transmission between people.  These measures have been adopted by many companies, universities, and schools.  And we want to protect the safety and the health of their employees and their students.  I encourage everyone to follow the guidelines we’ve issued by CDC and these commonsense measures.  A lot of it is common sense.

For the areas where the virus is spreading, the CDC is advising communities to postpone large gatherings, postpone assemblies, social functions, and sporting events; stagger recess and lunch for schools that aren’t canceled; limit in-person meetings; increase scheduled cleanings; and cancel work-sponsored travel — among numerous other steps that can be taken.

Americans are the strongest and most resilient people on Earth, and in the coming weeks, we will all have to make changes and sacrifices, but these short-term sacrifices will produce long-term gain.

And again, I’ve said we’re learning a lot for the future and future problems like this, or worse.  Or worse.  It could get worse.  The next eight weeks are critical.  We can learn — and we will turn a corner on this virus.

Some of the doctors say it will wash through, it will flow through.  Interesting terms and very accurate.  I think you’re going to find in a number of weeks it’s going to be a very accurate term.

In times of hardship, the true character of America always shines through.  We live in the company of the greatest heroes and the most inspiring citizens anywhere in the world.  We want to take care of our people.  We want to draw on the strength of our history, draw on the strength of our people, and we will get through this all together.  We will just get through it.  So much progress has already been made.

And, frankly, the numbers — because of steps that have been taken — are at a level that a lot of people are surprised, especially when you compare them with other places with far smaller populations.

The spirit and the will of our nation is unbreakable.  We will defeat this threat.  When America is tested, America rises to the occasion.

And to those families and citizens who are worried and concerned for themselves and their loved ones, I want you to know that your federal government will unleash every authority, resource, and tool at its disposal to safeguard the lives and health of our people.

So we’re with you every step of the way.  No nation is more prepared or more equipped to face down this crisis.  As you know, we are rated number one in the world.

We’re also helping other nations — many other nations; we’re helping them a lot.  And they’re doing okay, in some cases.  In some cases, they’re not doing well at all.  But we’re working with a lot of groups of people and a lot of other nations.

With faith and heart and hope and love and determination, we will succeed.  We will prevail.  We will be very, very successful.  And we’ll learn for the future.

Thank you all very much.  If you have any questions, we can take some.

Go ahead, John.  Please.  And if you’d like to ask some of the folks up here, it would be fine.  Please.

Q    Sure.  Mr. President, where are you with the House bill?  Yesterday, we talked to you in the Oval Office; you were opposed to it.  What has happened since then?  And what’s the holdup on that?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, we just don’t think they’re giving enough.  We don’t think the Democrats are giving enough.  We’re negotiating.  We thought we had something, but all of a sudden they didn’t agree to certain things that they agreed to.  So we could have something, but we don’t think they’re giving enough.  They’re not — they’re not doing what’s right for the country.

Q    And if I could ask Dr. Fauci —

Q    (Inaudible.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Go ahead, please.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  You just mentioned waiving interest for student loans.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.

Q    You talked about buying oil from the — from the SPR, or adding to the SPR.  What other specific targeted measures is your administration thinking about taking?  The Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, said today that you’re just in the “second inning” of things that you might be undergoing.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah, well, that’s true.  And we are looking at many different things, as you know.  You know some of them — they’ve been written about very widely.  But we’re going to be releasing a paper in about two hours stating quite a few other steps.  Very important ones.

Q    Mr. President —

Please, go ahead.

Q    Like what, sir, if you wouldn’t mind?

THE PRESIDENT:  Please, go ahead.

Q    Thank you so much, Mr. President.  I want to — I want to know if you are in contact with the Brazilian President, Bolsonaro, after a member of his delegation who was with you Saturday was tested positive.

And also Senat- — I want to ask another question, if you’ll let me.  Senator Lindsey Graham and also Senator Scott — Rick Scott — are self-isolating.  Are you planning to take any kind of precautionary measure to protect you and also your staff who was there with him?

THE PRESIDENT:  No, we have no symptoms whatsoever.  And we have — we had a great meeting with the President of Brazil, Bolsonaro.  Great guy.  Very — a very tremendous — he’s done — he’s doing a fantastic job for Brazil.

And, as you know, he tested negative — meaning, nothing wrong — this morning.  And we got that word, too.  Because we did have dinner with him; we were sitting next to each other for a long period of time.

Q    But are you in contact with him over the coronavirus crisis?

THE PRESIDENT:  No, we — we have.  We’re talking about it, country to country, but we did discuss if he had a problem.  It was reported that he may have it, and he doesn’t, fortunately.

Q    Thank you so much, Mr. President.  Dr. Fauci said earlier this week that the lag in testing was, in fact, “a failing.”  Do you take responsibility for that?

And when can you guarantee that every single American who needs a test will be able to have a test?  What’s the date of that?

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah, no, I don’t take responsibility at all, because we were given a — a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time.  It wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.  And what we’ve done is redesigned it very quickly with the help of the people behind me.  And we’re now in very, very strong shape.

I think we’ll be announcing, as I said, Sunday night, and this will start very quickly.  And we — we’ll have — we’ll have the ability to do in the millions over a very, very quick period of time.  So, no.

And what we have done — and we are going to be leaving a very indelible print for the future, in case something like this happens again.  But it was a — and that’s not the fault of anybody.  And, frankly, the old system worked very well for smaller numbers — much smaller numbers — but not for these kind of numbers.

Tony, maybe you’d like to say something?

Q    By Sunday night, will you have —

THE PRESIDENT:  Tony, please.

Q    Yes, please.  By Sunday night, will every American be able to get a test?

DR. FAUCI:  So, just to reiterate what I said to many of you multiple times: It’s (inaudible) of a system.  This system was not designed — for what it was designed for, it worked very well.  The CDC designed a good system.

If you want to get the kind of blanket testing and availability that anybody can get it or you could even do surveillance to find out what the penetrance is, you have to embrace the private sector.  And this is exactly what you’re seeing, because you can’t do it without it.

So when I said that, I meant the system was not designed for what we need.  Now, looking forward, the system will take care of it.

Q    And, Mr. President, with respect, you’ve been —

THE PRESIDENT:  And, interestingly, if you go back — please — if you go back to the swine flu, it was nothing like this.  They didn’t do testing like this.  And actually, they lost approximately 14,000 people.  And they didn’t do the testing.  They started thinking about testing when it was far too late.

What we’ve done — and one of the reasons I think people are respecting what we’ve done: We’ve done it very early.  We’ve gotten it very early.  And we’ve also kept a lot of people out.

Q    Mr. President —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yes, please.  Go ahead.  Please.

Q    Mr. President, the last administration said that they had tested a million people at this point.  You’ve been —

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, ask them how they —

Q    — President for three years.

THE PRESIDENT:  — did with the swine flu.  It was a disaster.

Q    But with respect, you’ve been President for three years —

THE PRESIDENT:  Next, please.  Next, please.

Q    — and Wuhan was suffering —

THE PRESIDENT:  They had a very big failure with swine flu.  A very big failure.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  I want to ask you about the European travel ban that goes into effect at —

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.

Q    — midnight tonight and the exemption that you’ve offered to the UK.  There are 17 countries that are in the so-called “Schengen zone” that have fewer coronavirus cases than the UK.  And just in the past 24 hours, the UK has added 208 coronavirus cases to their total.  Why do they, Mr. President, deserve an exemption?  And would you consider adding them to this travel ban list?

THE PRESIDENT:  Well, that was recommended to me by a group of professionals, and we are looking at it based on the new numbers that are coming out.  And we may have to include them in the list of countries that we will, you could say, ban — or whatever — it is during this period of time.

But, yeah, their numbers have gone up fairly precipitously over the last 24 hours, so we may be adding that, and we may be adding a couple of others.  And we may, frankly, start thinking about taking some off.

Go ahead.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  I’m a correspondent with Hong Kong Phoenix TV.  You have been mentioned — you have mentioned that the number in China has been decreasing and China has made tremendous progress in the past two weeks.

THE PRESIDENT:  It’s true.

Q    I’m wondering how much confidence does this give you to control the virus in the United States.  And do you see the data China has been sharing with the United States has been helpful?

THE PRESIDENT:  I think it has been helpful.  We’ve been working very much with China.  I’ve spoken, as you know, with President Xi.  They went through hell, and their numbers are starting to look very good.  They’re really — they’re really looking very good.  We’re very happy about that.  We are sharing data, yes.  In fact, we’re sharing quite a bit of data, including the fact that some of our pharmaceutical companies are working over there right now with large groups of people.

Yeah, go ahead.  Please.

Q    Thank you, Mr. President.  You spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau yesterday.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yes, I did.

Q    Did you discuss the potential closing of the border between Canada and the U.S.?  And, by extension, are you considering ways to salvage the $2 billion daily trade between the two countries?

THE PRESIDENT:  So we didn’t discuss the border.  We’ve had a very good relationship.  Just about finished with the USMCA, as you know.  He called — actually, he called me to tell me that.  I think that was the primary reason for the call.

At the time, his wife had not been diagnosed.  And she’s a lovely lady — wonderful lady, great lady.  And since then, I’ve heard — read that the result was that she has it.  And I was a little surprised.  I think he was surprised also.  We did discuss it prior to.  She’s going to be fine, but he thought that she would not, most likely, have the virus.  Unfortunately, she does.

But we didn’t discuss the border yesterday, no.