Pence: ” we have enough testing today for every state to be able to move into Phase One”
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Vice President Pence Updates Us on the Coronavirus Response.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, first, thanks for acknowledging what this president did with regard to testing in America. I mean, it is remarkable to think that one month ago our nation had tested 80,000 people for the coronavirus. And as we sit here today, we are rapidly approaching having tested five million people in our nation.
RUSH: Yeah, that’s incredible. That’s incredible.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: The only reason it happen is because President Trump early on in this process brought in all of the top commercial laboratories in the country and basically created an alliance between them to scale up testing at a level that had never been seen in the history of this country.
And one of the things that we’ve been working with governors on is to literally activate all of the testing resources that they have. But let me say, your point is so well taken, Rush, about testing is important. But there’s so much rhetoric about testing that — again — I would point people back to the guidelines for opening up America again.
We contemplate the role of testing would be in Phase One: We want to have enough testing to test everybody that has symptoms. Right? We want to test anybody they’ve been in contact with. And number three, we want to have tests deployed to our nursing homes, long-term health care facilities.
To our vulnerable populations, particularly inner-city minority populations so that we can watch for any emergence of the coronavirus and deal with it forcefully. What I want to tell your millions of listeners: We have enough testing today for every state in America to go to Phase One. Thanks to the president’s leadership.
RUSH: That is incredible.
THE VICE PRESIDENT: We have enough testing… It is…Well, it’s a testament to American ingenuity, to American free enterprise, to these extraordinary commercial labs and to the president’s leadership. But we have enough testing today for every state in America to be able to test sufficient to move into Phase One, and we’re continuing to scale testing.
We have new tests that are gonna be coming online in the next several weeks that will literally add enormous volume to our testing capability. But testing is not a barrier to any state in America beginning to reopen and all of your listeners around the country should know that.
And as they let their voice be heard either with an email to their governor’s office or a letter to the editor or participating in their First Amendment rights, we have enough testing today for every state in America to go to Phase One.
Now, they go to Phase One if they’ve got 14 days of consecutive declines in cases.
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