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Good afternoon,
This weekend, President Donald Trump made individual calls to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, President Andrzej Duda of Poland, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico, and King Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa of the Kingdom of Bahrain. President Trump reaffirmed his commitment to work with these nations and others to battle the COVID-19 epidemic.
On Friday, President Trump and Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced the creation of the Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP). This $19 billion immediate relief program will provide critical support to farmers and ranchers, maintain the integrity of our food supply chain, and ensure every American continues to receive and have access to the food they need.
Last night, the Treasury Department and Customs and Border Protection issued a joint Temporary Interim Final Rule providing importers, who have faced a significant financial hardship due to the outbreak, with the option for a 90-day deferment period on the payment of duties, taxes, and fees.
Today, members of the Coronavirus Task Force hold a press briefing at 5:00pm ET.
Additional Guidance (as of 4.19, 6:00pm):
- WH - President Donald J. Trump Announces Guidelines for Opening Up America Again (Click here)
- WH - President Donald J. Trump Is Beginning the Next Phase In Our Fight Against Coronavirus: Guidelines for Opening Up America Again (Click here)
- HHS - Secretary Azar Statement on New Partnership to Develop National Strategy for COVID-19 Therapies and Vaccines (Click here)
- CDC - Serology Testing for COVID-19 (Click here)
- FDA - FDA Continues User-Fee Related Reviews Through COVID-19 (Click here)
- FDA - April 16 Daily Roundup (Click here)
- FDA - FDA, Gates Foundation, UnitedHealth Group, Quantigen, and U.S. Cotton Collaborate to Address Testing Supply Needs (Click here)
- FDA - Shopping for Food During the COVID-19 Pandemic - Information for Consumers (Click here)
- NIH - NIH to launch public-private partnership to speed COVID-19 vaccine and treatment options (Click here)
- Treasury/SBA - Statement from Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin and Administrator Jovita Carranza on the Success of the Paycheck Protection Program (Click here)
- Treasury/VA - VA Partners with Treasury Department to Deliver Economic Impact Payments to Veterans and Survivors (Click here)
- SBA - Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) Report (Click here)
- FCC - COVID-19 Telehealth Program (Click here)
- USDA - DC and North Carolina Added to Innovative SNAP Online Pilot Program (Click here)
- USDA - USDA Approves Program to Feed Kids in North Carolina and Massachusetts (Click here)
- DHS-FEMA - FEMA Provides $4 Million for Convention Center Lease (Click here)
- DHS-FEMA - Strategic and Operational Planning (Click here)
- DHS-CISA - Identifying Critical Infrastructure During COVID-19 Version 3.0 (Click here)
- DOL - U.S. Department of Labor Considers Employer’s Good Faith Efforts When Enforcing Compliance During Coronavirus Pandemic (Click here)
- EPA - EPA Announces Coronavirus (COVID-19) Resources for State, Local, and Tribal Governments (Click here)
- EPA - EPA Region 7 Transfers Personal Protective Equipment to FEMA (Click here)
- EPA - EPA’s Mountains and Plains Region transfers N-95 masks to Federal Emergency Management Agency (Click here)
- DOJ - Justice Department Seeks to End Illegal Online Sale of Industrial Bleach Marketed as “Miracle” Treatment for COVID-19 (Click here)
- DOD - DLA Disposition Services Makes Excess Military Items Available for COVID-19 Response (Click here)
- DOD - Corps of Engineers Takes On 28 COVID-19 Bed Facilities (Click here)
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HIGHLIGHTS | President Trump and the Coronavirus Task Force Update Americans on Response Efforts
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TESTING
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “America continues to make steady progress in our war against the virus. As of today, we have tested 4.18 million Americans, that’s a record anywhere in the world.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “The United States has now conducted more total tests than all of the following nations combined: France, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, India, Austria, Australia, Sweden, and Canada. And our testing is expanding very rapidly by millions and millions of people.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “[Tomorrow], the President and Vice President will lead a call with our nation’s governors from FEMA headquarters with the nation’s governors to review what more they can do and do together to develop locally tailored testing strategies, working very hard with governors now on testing.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “Many governors are still relying on their state laboratories rather than the full and much larger capacity that is available to them – as an example, commercial laboratories like Quest and LabCorp.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “You must remember, that the governors wanted to have total control over the opening of their states, but now they want to have us, the federal government, do the testing. And again, testing is, is local. You can’t have it both ways. Testing is a local thing.”
VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: “A month ago, we had done 80,000 coronavirus tests in America. This weekend we cleared more than 4 million and we’re currently testing more than one million Americans a week. We fully expect to actually have tested more than 5 million before the end of this month.”
SUPPLIES OF MEDICAL EQUIPMENT
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “We’re close to finalizing the second partnership through which a U.S. manufacturer would convert its existing plant to produce over 10 million additional swabs per month and we should be ready to announce this in a very short period of time.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “We also are going to be using and we’re preparing to use the Defense Production Act to increase swab production in one U.S. facility by over 20 million additional swabs per month.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “We’re working with the world-class team at Oak Ridge National laboratory to use its injection molding capacity to potentially produce over 10 million collection tubes per week.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “My Administration continues to execute our massive military operations to supply our hospitals with equipment they need, and beds if necessary but it looks like we’re totally covered on beds. We have plenty of beds.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “The federal government is currently procuring more than 100,000 ventilators through new production or purchases, with thousands already delivered.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “I want to thank the Dynamic Ventilator Reserve because what they’ve done is incredible, that’s a capital D.V.R., by the way, an innovative public-private partnership … We’re gaining access to up to 65,000 additional ventilators in hospitals across the nation that can be redeployed very quickly to areas with the greatest need when they’re not in use, and we right now have almost 10,000 in our reserve.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “Through the Project Airbridge, we’ve completed 64 flights carrying over 600 million pieces of personal protective equipment, such as gloves, gowns, and other medical gear, with 50 more flights scheduled in the very near future.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “FEMA is working to commit another $384 million to produce another 64 million gowns … I want to thank America’s textile manufacturers for their partnership in this remarkable undertaking. Two U.S. companies, Hanes and Standard Textile, are on track to produce 5 million gowns by the end of the month.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “Honeywell is hiring more than 1,000 American workers to produce 20 million masks per month -- 20 million masks a month. Thanks to the Defense Production Act, we’ll be receiving another 40 million masks over the next few weeks. … This production is, in addition to the 55 million N95 masks my administration has already distributed. Plus we ordered – and it’s coming in soon – 500 million masks.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “We have secured nearly four times as many N95 masks in recent weeks as we would in the entire healthcare industry during a typical year.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “This pandemic has underscored the vital importance of reshoring our supply chains and bringing them back into the United States, where they belong – where they should have never left.”
VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: “5,528 military personnel have been deployed across 24 hospitals and facilities and 28,700 National Guard are on duty.”
VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: “At the present moment, we have more than 9,055 ventilators on hand. We actually added 91 ventilators to that supply because of the production that the President and our task force at FEMA has activated. In the next seven days, we’ll be adding 576 ventilators to the strategic national stockpile.”
RESUMING ELECTIVE SURGERIES
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “CMS is finalizing new guidelines for doctors and patients to resume elective surgeries.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “As long as the rate of infections remains low in a community, we want patients to be able to go to their doctors, get clinically tested, and have worked on, surgeries.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “If your doctor believes you need a treatment in person, you can get a treatment now. You can and should get a treatment now. We are asking that healthcare facilities have plans in place to keep patients safe during their visit.”
CMS ADMINISTRATOR VERMA: “We are issuing guidelines today about how we can reopen the healthcare system. So, these are recommendations around phase one. … Healthcare officials across the country, and healthcare systems, need to decide what services should be made available. And ultimately, doctors and patients need to make decisions about their healthcare services. We want to make sure that systems are reopening so they can stay open and doing that in a very measured way.”
PRECAUTIONS IN NURSING HOMES
CMS ADMINISTRATOR VERMA: “Today, we are announcing that we are requiring nursing homes to report to patients and their families if there are cases of COVID virus inside the nursing home. We are also requiring nursing homes to report directly to the CDC when they have cases of COVID virus.”
CMS ADMINISTRATOR VERMA: “FEMA’s also working on a plan to make sure that nursing homes have the supplies that they need.”
CMS ADMINISTRATOR VERMA: “Just last week, we increased the reimbursement in the Medicare program for high-throughput tests and we are also paying for labs to go to out to nursing homes to collect samples. And that’s going to really support efforts on nursing homes in order to isolate patients.”
NEW TREATMENTS AND THERAPEUTICS
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “We’ve launched an unprecedented effort to develop new treatments and therapies to battle the plague.”
PRESIDENT TRUMP: “We have some things that are looking good. Really looking good. We call [it] COVID Treatment Acceleration Program. We’re accelerating all of these great companies that are looking and we have government agencies looking too, NIH. This extraordinary program is slashing red tape to speed and development and to – rival – and, and if you look, if you look at what we are doing in terms of the speed, it is unrivaled.”
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