"Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing | The White House"
Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing | The White House
Here is a link to the transcript of yesterday's WH briefing.
This bit is interesting.
"The United States has now conducted nearly 3 million tests for the virus. Three million — the most of any nation. We are performing approximately 150,000 tests every single day and our rate of testing is especially high in areas hardest hit by the virus, if you look. And that’s really — and it has hit some areas — the virus — very, very hard. For example, per capita testing in New York is higher than the rest of the world.
The NIH, CDC, and FDA are also currently validating several antibody tests that will allow us to determine whether someone has already had the virus and potentially become immune to infection. We’re looking at that. The antibody tests are going to be very interesting, over the next short while. A lot of things are being developed, as we speak.
In the race to develop effective treatments, the drug company Gilead announced that its drug, remdesivir, has shown promising results — very promising — in compassionate use settings. In addition, the FDA has just granted emergency use authorization for a device that removes certain proteins from the bloodstream, possibly preventing a patient’s immune system from overreacting to the virus and damaging vital organs, which is a big problem.
Furthermore, over the last seven days, my administration has deployed roughly 28 million doses of hydroxychloroquine from our National Stockpile. We have millions of doses that we bought and many people are using it all over the country. And just recently, a friend of mine told me he got better because of the use of that — that drug. So, who knows? And you combine it with Z-Pak, you combine it with Zinc — depending on your doctor’s recommendation. And it’s having some very good results, I’ll tell you.
I think if anybody recommended it other than me, it would be used all over the place, to be honest with you. I think the fact that I recommended it, I probably set it back a lot. But it’s a lot of good things that are happening with it. A lot of good tests.
Scientists are also pursuing a blood therapy known as convalescent plasma. Convalescent plasma. This therapy uses antibodies from the blood of recovered patients to treat those who are sick. And this is something that actually is a very old procedure, but it’s done in a very modern way."
There is also info in there about the stimulus payments. I have C/P it below as posters have been asking.
"SECRETARY MNUCHIN: Thank you, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President. As you announced, we are very pleased that we are ahead of schedule on delivering the economic impact payments. These are what was known as the checks in the mail that we want to deliver in direct — direct deposit.
This is ahead of schedule. We started processing those last Friday. We expect that over 80 million hardworking Americans will get the direct deposit by this Wednesday. And we know how important that is to all of those hardworking Americans, many of which are at home, not working at the moment.
If you do not receive them by Wednesday — on Wednesday, we will be launching at IRS.gov. Click on IRS.gov, go to “Get Your Payment.” If you filed a tax return in 2018 and ’19 — or ’19 — have that information available. You’ll be able to ID yourself, you’ll be able to put in your direct deposit information, and within several days, we will automatically deposit the money into your account. We want to do as much of this electronically as we can. It’s very important in this day and age. It’s more secure, and you don’t have to go to the bank.
If you’re a Social Security beneficiary, you do not need to do anything. You will get a direct deposit. If you have not filed and did not need to file a 2018 and ‘19 return, you can go to IRS.gov now and enter your information and authenticate yourself. So again, we are very pleased that that is ahead of schedule.
I’d also like to announce the progress we’re making on the new SBA program, the PPP. Let me just remind everybody: This is a brand-new program that is now one week old.
We have distributed and confirmed $230 billion of loans to over 4,600 lenders participating. That is multiples and multiples of anything that the SBA has ever done in — in one year, before. And I especially want to thank the broad-based community banks that are participating. Again, over 4,600 banks.
If you haven’t had your loan processed, you will get it processed this week. As the President said, we’ve gone back to Congress and asked them for more money to make sure that every business has access to this.
Let me also comment for the states. We are distributing out half the money, this week, to the states. That’s a week ahead of time. And we’ll deliver the other half of the money to the states next week.
And then let me just finally comment, we’ve been very — working very closely with the Federal Reserve. Last week, we announced expanded facilities and new facilities that total $2.3 trillion of liquidity. And in particular, I’d just like to highlight a Main Street lending facility that will be for companies between one worker and 10,000 people — so mid-sized businesses — and also, a municipal facility for states and local governments to be able to access funds given the shortages that they have.
So with that, I’m happy to answer any questions."
)
