Trump administration announces deal to distribute millions of rapid tests for coronavirus

you gotta says we announce a massive and groundbreaking expansion

in our testing capability of the for the China virus

And as you know it's already setting records records like

nobody's ever seen before

Last week we crossed a historic milestone when the United

States conducted our 100 millionth test far more than any

other country and not even close

Actually second seems to be India with 1.5 billion people

and the numbers would be probably at least 50 million

more tests by us

We've conducted more tests than the entire European Union and

more than all of Latin America combined

We're thrilled to be joined by Vice President Mike Pence

Secretary of Health and Human Services

Alex Hamza Secretary of Education Betsy Divorce

Hi Betsy Administrator for the Centers for Medicine and Medicaid

Services

Seema Verma Seema and Admiral

You are who has done such an incredible job

Thank you Admiral

We're also joined by Mississippi Governor Tate

Reeves had a tremendous victory was so proud of you

and as well by Abbott CEO Robert Ford

Robert thank you very much

Great job today

I'm pleased to report that we're announcing our plan to

distribute 150 million Abbott Rapid Point of care tests in

the coming weeks

Very very soon this will be more than double the

number of tests already performed

And here's our plan

50 million tests will go to protect the most vulnerable

communities which we've always promised to dio including 18 million

for nursing homes 15 million for assisted living facilities 10

million for home health and hospice care hospice care agencies

and nearly one million for historically black colleges and universities

and also tribal nation colleges

100 million rapid point of care tests will be given

to states and territories to support efforts to reopen their

economies and schools immediately and fast assed they can

For example the support my administration is providing would allow

every state to on a very regular basis test every

teacher who needs it

This continues are critical effort to use testing to protect

high risk communities

Thes new Abbott Rapid point of care tests are easy

to use and return results within just minutes

You'll have AH result at a maximum 15 minutes machine

No machine is required to process them

So in the old days when we just started this

you remember would go out and would have to find

these massive laboratories with tremendously expensive equipment

Now we're down to something that you'll see that is

really from a different planet

I would like to ask Admiral Gerard to come up

and demonstrate how thes tests to perform

He'll do this very nicely I think

Good luck

Hope you don't test positive

Mhm me

So thank you Mr President

Uh as of today the nation has performed over 111

million tests for the virus causing cove it on 13

separate days

We have achieved test over one million per day and

our average test numbers air now approximately 920,000 per day

We're now at an inflection point in testing

We now have available on average three million tests per

day not counting pool testing which could multiply that number

several fold

Nearly half of our current test

A rapid point of care all of the actions of

your administration including aggressive use of multiple titles of the

Deepa hundreds of millions of dollars and HHS and D

o d

Investments and regulatory flexibility including over 200 FDA emergency use

authorizations clear enforcement discretion and application of the prep pack

have led us to this inflection point

Which brings us why we're here today

On August 27th after months of planning and only after

one day after the FDA authorization the Trump Administration awarded

a contract for $760 million toe Abbott for the delivery

of 150 million of these Abbott Finance

Now rapid test the Buinaksk now detects the presence of

the Covidien

Again

It uses a specific nasal swab and that looks

That swab comes with test and it's made by purity

And the reason why Puritan swabs were here is because

the administration used the Deepa in $120 million in investment

to make these swabs able for use by Abbott

It does not require an instrument to determine the result

It's 15

It's in 15 minutes

The result

Testing may be performed by laboratories where the clear certificate

of waiver this is not a home test

But during the health emergency

Seema Verma and CMS permits laboratories to extend their certificate

toe operate in temporary sites like schools or churches are

parking lots

So though we anticipate that the test will generally be

performed by a trained individual on a patient

I will demonstrate a self swab for you to show

you just exactly how easy the test is performed

So um literally it almost could not be easier

It starts with six drops of liquid onto this piece

of paper

One 2345 six

And then there's a nasal swab

And again this is

This is not the deep brain biopsy that we talk

about

This will generally done by a health care provider but

it can be done

Supervised

It's this easy

12345 12345 into the test twisted

Three times The adhesive has pulled off and you wait

15 minutes and that is the test

It really could not be easier than this

This is a very sophisticated little piece of cardboard with

lots of antibodies an incredible technology into that

We've already shipped 65,000 of these two disaster operations in

California Oregon Texas and Louisiana and we have already shipped

2.1 million tests to 7600 nursing homes

Over 900,000 tests to assisted living 300,000 tested the Indian

Health Service and 339 0 tests to historically black colleges

in university

Today we start the shipment of 100 million tests to

governors beginning with a total of 6.5 million tests this

week to be shipped this week

This is in addition to the continuing support to other

priorities like nursing homes

Allocation to states and territories is based strictly on their

relative population

Governors have the flexibility to use thes test as they

deem fit

But we strongly encourage governors to utilize them in settings

that are uniquely in need of rapid low tech point

of care

Test like opening and keeping open our K through 12

schools supporting critical infrastructure and first responders responding toe outbreak

specifically in certain demographics or locations and screening of surveillance

and congregants settings

Mr

President we just completed a briefing to the governors and

their state health officials from the sit room and we

heard words like game changer for their states

Thank you Mr President for your leadership in support of

all our efforts to defeat this virus much Admiral

And let me ask you Governor Reeves do you do

you agree would you like to say something Thank you

President for your leadership through this pandemic and through this

crisis this is It was said by Republicans and Democrats

alike earlier

This is a game changer Uh in our state of

Mississippi R k through 12 schools have been opened for

nine weeks

Our institutions of higher learning have been open for about

the same

But while we have testing available now at least once

a week in every county of our state what this

allocation is going to allow for us is we will

have testing available for our K through 12 teachers every

single day going forward

And the thing that we know is that kids learned

and secretary divorce knows this so well

Kids learn so much better when they're in the classroom

than when they're doing distance learning or hybrid

And while we have 75 to 80% of our kids

back in the classroom we want to get 100% of

our kids back in the classroom

It is also in critically important Mr President Your decision

to allocate on the front end to the historically black

colleges and universities means the world to Mississippi are larger

institutions have

The financial resource is to provide testing

But in Mississippi with Jackson State University and All corn

universe Alcorn State University and Mississippi Valley State University three

of our eight institutions of higher learning we'll get an

allocation of these tests and it's gonna make a difference

And kids all across our state are gonna be better

served because of it

And I want to personally thank you on behalf of

the residents of Mississippi for doing this

Mr

President thank you very much

Thank you Ted

Great job

In a short period of time my administration has built

the most advanced testing system in the world

There's never been anything like this

When the pandemic struck there were zero tests for the

China virus

But we've marshaled all of America's resource is to achieve

these unparalleled capabilities

We slashed red tape and approved emergency use authorizations for

243 type of tests

That's how Maney tests we have

I invoke the Defense Production Act and related authorities more

than 100 times and distributed ah $171 million to expand

testing production

We've done nearly twice as much testing per capita as

France Italy and Germany and over six times more testing

per capita than South Korea

We've done far more than any other country usually times

2345 or six

We performed nearly 40 million more tests than India and

by the end of next month we will have over

100 million tests available in the market

More than half will be point of care

Test those air the quick ones and they're really the

ones that have the best impact with the results in

less than 15 minutes

We've also prioritized resource is for the votes most vulnerable

including nursing home residents

We delivered rapid testing devices to nearly 14,000 certified nursing

homes

We opened over 1000 community testing sites in low income

communities

Nobody could have done this

We invested an unprecedented $8 billion to help tribal communities

have the tests and resource is they need to combat

the virus and it's important to remember that is younger

and healthier

People return to work and as we massively increased testing

capacity we will identify more cases and asymptomatic individuals in

low risk populations

This should not cause undue alarm

The total number of cases is not the full metric

of success

Hospitalization capacity and mortality rates are far more instructive metrics

As we do more tests you're gonna have automatically more

cases

We are relentlessly focused on protecting the vulnerable while enabling

healthy Americans to go back to work

We could do both as Florida and Arizona and other

states have recently shown

Over the last eight weeks hospitalizations have declined by 48%

and they've just reached the lowest point since March

It's a long time ago

Due to advances in treatment

The fatality rate has fallen 85% since April

Our excess mortality has been considerably lower than comparable countries

Excess mortality compares total deaths during a pandemic to what

we would be expected in a normal year

This is a critical measurement because it includes undetected China

Virus deaths along with deaths resulting from lockdowns and lockdowns

can be very harmful

And we have too many states that are locked down

Right now the governors are nobody so doing

Actually Europe has experienced a 50% greater excess mortality rate

during the virus than the U

S

And their economic contraction has been farm or severe under

operation warp speed

My administration is on track to deliver a safe and

effective vaccine in record time

We're doing very well with the vaccines

As most of you know four vaccines air now in

the final stage of trials the day the vaccine is

approved by the FDA will begin distributing it within 24

hours with hundreds of millions of doses to follow very

quickly

We're all set to go

We're already and logistically where we have the military lined

up and some incredible people are just waiting toe have

it Over 100 million doses will be available before the

end of the year

We will defeat the virus and we will end the

pandemic

And next year will be one of the greatest years

in our history

And we think it's going to be a very exciting

period of time

With that I'd like to ask Mike to say a

few words because you were just left a task force

meeting

Vice President Mike Pence

Thank you Mr President

This is a historic day and other than the day

that I believe will come soon that America produces the

first safe and effective vaccine what's announced today with the

distribution of 150 million rapid point of care tests all

across America

It's a testament to your leadership Mr President

Testament to this great team that you have assembled from

secretaries are Admiral Gerard and others

It's a testament to the partnership that we forge with

governors like Governor Reeves all across America

And it's a testament to great companies like Abbott Laboratories

and the thousands of employees who Mr President I know

have literally worked around the clock since those early days

in this pandemic when you brought in the greatest research

companies in America and said that we need medicines known

as therapeutics

We need a vaccine for America

But you also challenge them to develop a rapid point

of care tests that could be distributed all across America

and enable us MAWR effectively slow the spread flatten the

curve protect the vulnerable and save life

Mr

President today's announcement is really emblematic of the public private

partnership that you forged from the early days of this

pandemic

As you said we met today with the nation's governors

The White House Coronavirus Task Force completed our 38th conference

call with America's governors

But all along the way from our very first meeting

you made it clear that we'd spare no expense of

the federal government the full resource of the federal government

you made available to put the health of America first

But you also challenged us and you challenged American industry

to being the full power and innovation of the American

economy to bear on this moment whether it be PPE

where we forged a partnership to see to the delivery

and the manufacturer of hundreds of million's of personal protective

equipment whether it be how we started with 15,000 ventilators

in the Strategic National Stockpile and today in partnership with

G Healthcare Ford and General Motors we have over 150

0 ventilators in the strategic national stockpile whether it be

the extraordinary progress on therapeutics remedy severe convalescent plasma that

air literally saving lives or whether it be is you

reflected Mr President on our steady progress toward achieving a

safe and effective vaccine before the end of this year

it's been that public private partnership that you've led that's

made these advances a possible and on testing the American

people really deserve to know that when we began as

you said Mr President was literally a standing start

We didn't have information on the coding of the coronavirus

until mid February but America's CDC labs in public health

labs did their level best by the end of February

We've done less than 10,000 coronavirus tests that as as

you just announced a few moments ago last week we

cleared 100 million tests all across the country

It's extraordinary we have the capacity to do three million

tests today

It's a testament to American innovation and the leadership that

you have provided

Also Mr President we've delivered to nearly 14,000 nursing homes

in America

Point of care tests already that are making it possible

for us to really keep focus on the most vulnerable

As you know on Lee 8% of those who have

contract ID the coronavirus are in nursing homes

But 40% of those that have lost their lives have

been in nursing homes and so we've surged those resource

is and surged them to vulnerable populations

But with the announcement today this Abbott Laboratories by next

now test we began a process first announcing 50 million

tests to go toe are vulnerable communities to go to

minority communities toe Indian health services

But as we told all the nation's governors today we

begin the process this week of distributing 100 million tests

to each state and territory in the country free of

charge so they could begin to deploy those tests on

the priorities that the state has said

But Mr President given the extraordinary capacity that we have

in testing today we way expressed a hope toe all

the governors today that they would particularly use thes Abbott

by next test toe open up America schools and to

keep them open

And we heard about the enthusiasm of uh governors from

both sides of the aisle about what this test will

mean and helping to process helping to process

Uh the testing that we'll get our kids into school

can keep our kids in school

Mr

President let me just close by saying This is uh

we've passed through a challenging time in the life of

this nation in 2020 and our hearts I know your

heart is with all the families that have suffered loss

But as you said cases are declining hospitalizations have been

declining declining dramatically particularly in the Sun Belt in Louisiana

where not long ago 50 parishes had more than 10%

positivity

Right now only three parishes are testing positive over 10%

Arizona was testing 20% positivity

Right now now it's less than 4% consistently but with

cases and positivity rising in 10 states in the Midwest

and the near West and with this historic advance in

testing that's being distributed didn't 50 strong around the country

Mr

President the American people should anticipate that cases will rise

in the days ahead

Um but as we uh as we more readily identify

those who've contract ID the coronavirus the American people could

be confident because of this extraordinary and historic public and

private partnership that you forge because of this whole of

government approach

We're ready as we proved through the outbreak in the

Sun Belt this summer will make sure that any community

any state that's impacted with rising cases any school that's

impacted will have

The PP will have the supplies will have the medicines

And as you said Mr President we will continue at

your direction our relentless drive toward achieving the first safe

and effective vaccine so we can achieve the day that

we once and for all put this coronavirus in the

past

So Mr President with thanks to our industry partners thanks

to this team

But thanks to you for your strong leadership I hope

for that day and the American people can be confident

we will not rest

We will not relent until we put this coronavirus in

the past

Thank you very much

Mike Scott Atlas Would you say a few words please

as to how we're doing and where you see is

going please

Okay

Thank you Mr President

And I also want to echo the congratulations to the

team the task force admirals or OIR in particular who's

worked very hard on the testing

This is a remarkable day because we have state of

the art testing

This is not the typical point of care testing

And this is new

This is does not require any kind of machine

It's very rapid

And this is not one of those deep swab things

that people are reluctant to use

So I think we're we're really making an advance here

to do what testing is supposed to do and that's

to save lives a ZA vice president mentioned

We know that there are areas of the country that

have mawr cases

This is to be expected with MAWR social mingling and

the testing

But particularly protecting the vulnerable is the key here

We have not seen hospital overcrowding

We're doubling down now with testing to protect vulnerable people

not just inside nursing homes but in residential settings and

senior daycare centers

This'll is a remarkable advance and I anticipate that as

as this virus a zoo we get toward the end

of this pandemic on the vaccine is being developed as

quickly as it has been

Uh America will be in a different position and there

really should be

As I've said many times the fear is not the

issue here

We really have a handle on what's going on

We know what to anticipate and there's remarkable advances being

made as we see today Thank you very much

Well thank you very much

Tremendous progress is being made and I say it

I'll say it all the time

We're rounding the corner and very importantly vaccines air coming

But we're rounding the corner regardless

But vaccines are coming and they're coming fast

We have four great companies already and it's gonna be

added to very rapidly

They're in final stages of testing

And from what we're hearing the results are going to

be very extraordinary

So thank you very much

I appreciate it and thank you very much

Great job by Abbott right from the beginning

Great job by Abbott

Thank you

Thank you very much everybody

Thank you