Release Date: April 26, 2009
For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary Contact: 202-282-8010
Secretary Napolitano, Department of Homeland Security John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Dr. Richard Besser, Acting Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Robert Gibbs, Press Secretary
Mr. Gibbs: Good afternoon, guys. Thank you for taking some time out of your Sunday afternoon. We wanted to bring together many of the people that have the primary governmental responsibility in dealing with the situation and to discuss the government's capacity and capability to discuss the steps the government is taking to address this.
Three people we'll hear from today and then we'll take some questions: First, John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; Dr. Richard Besser, the Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security.
So with that I'll turn it over to Mr. Brennan.
Mr. Brennan: Thank you, Robert. And thank you, everyone, for coming here today.
Obviously, President Obama is very concerned about the recent cases of swine flu that have beenentified in the United States, as well as the outbreak in Mexico. The President's thoughts are with those who have been affected by this illness. He is monitoring the situation very closely and has supported a very active, progressive and coordinated response by his administration.
The President wants Americans to be fully informed of the situation, which is why we have convened this press briefing today. The vast majority of these cases have occurred in Mexico. Building on the close bilateral cooperation that President Obama advanced during his recent visit to Mexico, he has asked me to publicly convey his full support to President Calderón, the Mexican government and the Mexican people in their efforts to contain the outbreak.
Both the U.S. and Mexican governments are taking steps to reduce the potential for further transmission. Our goal is simple: to communicate information quickly and clearly for our citizens, to rapidly address any new cases that emerge, and to have the capacity to effectively limit the spread.
At this point a top priority is to ensure that communication is robust and that medical surveillance efforts are fully activated. This will enable both the rapidentification and broad notification of any new cases that may occur in the U.S., as well as in Mexico.
We believe that our increased surveillance efforts have resulted in theentification of new cases over the last 24 hours. Earlyentification is vitally important to the overall effort. In the event that additional cases or sites of infection occur within the United States we want to recognize them quickly and then respond rapidly with appropriate guidance for the public health community and the general public in the infected area. We also want to ensure medical surveillance and testing and the provision of medications and medical supplies are distributed where necessary.
I would like to share with you some of the steps the administration has taken to ensure that information about this evolving event is flowing swiftly among federal, state and local partners, between U.S., Mexican, Canadian and other governments and with the World Health Organization.
First, the President is receiving regular updates and briefings on the situation. I updated the President earlier today. The President has reviewed our national capabilities to mitigate the effects of a broader outbreak in the United States and the steps we are taking to support state and local governments and their public health experts.
I am consulting closely with Secretary Napolitano, who is the principal federal official for domestic incident management with responsibility for spearheading our efforts. The Homeland Security Council has convened an interagency body of senior federal experts to facilitate coordination among the federal departments and agencies that have a role in recognizing, responding to, and communicating with domestic and international partners regarding health incidents that have the potential for significant impact to our nation's well-being.
This group has been conferencing daily to share updates and toentify actions we can take now to respond to developments in an accelerated and effective manner. The information and decisions of the group are reported daily to senior leaders in the federal government and throughout the White House. Additional reports are provided as new information of significance becomes available.
While the President and his administration are actively coordinating the overall government response, individual departments and agencies with specific responsibilities as well as unique expertise and experience in dealing with public health risks are leading key elements of the effort.
For example, the Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for the overall effort to coordinate disease surveillance, medical preparedness, and guidance to public health professionals in the event that further cases are detected. The Departments — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has responsibility forentifying and tracking the spread of the disease and for communicating health-related information to the government, media, and public. To this end, the CDC has held regular public briefings since Friday.
In a moment, Dr. Richard Besser, the Acting Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will provide an update on the situation in the United States and Mexico, as well as where health professionals and the public can go for reliable information and guidance on swine influenza.
As I mentioned, Secretary Napolitano and the Department of Homeland Security have the overall lead for coordinating the federal response to an influence epidemic in the United States. The department is closely coordinating with Health and Human Services and CDC to monitor the situation.
After Dr. Besser speaks, you will hear from Secretary Napolitano, who will update you on the department's efforts to coordinate response preparations and actions to date. The Secretary also will describe actions that are underway to ensure communication of timely and accurate information at land borders and at ports of entry as well as to travelers who seek additional information.
Clearly we all have individual responsibility for dealing with this situation. We should all be practicing good hygienic practices, such as hand-washing on a regular basis; if you feel sick, it makes sense to stay home; and then also following the other practices that are common sense when we deal with an outbreak of flu every year.
I would ask that you hold your questions until after Dr. Besser and Secretary Napolitano have finished their remarks.
Dr. Besser: Thank you, Mr. Brennan. First, I want to say that our hearts go out to the people in Mexico and the people in the United States who've been impacted by this outbreak. People around the country and around the globe are concerned with this situation we're seeing, and we're concerned as well. As we look for cases of swine flu, we are seeing more cases of swine flu. We expect to see more cases of swine flu. We're responding and we're responding aggressively to try and learn about this outbreak and to implement measures to control this outbreak.
Let me provide for you an update in terms of where we are today and what kinds of public health actions are being taken here as well as abroad. Today we can confirm that there are 20 cases of swine flu in the United States. We have five affected states: There are eight cases confirmed in New York City, there's one case confirmed in Ohio, two in Kansas, two in Texas, and seven in California.
And again, as we continue to look for cases, I expect that we're going to find them. We've ramped up our surveillance around the country to try and understand better what is the scope, what is the magnitude of this outbreak.
The good news — all of the individuals in this country who have beenentified as cases have recovered. Only one individual had to be hospitalized. But I expect as we continue to look for cases, we are going to see a broader spectrum of disease. What we know about this virus is it looks to be the same virus as is causing the situation in Mexico. And given the reports out of Mexico, I would expect that over time we're going to see more severe disease in this country.
There are some things that it's important people understand: Flu viruses are extremely unpredictable and variable; outbreaks of infectious disease are extremely unpredictable and variable. And so over time what we say about this and what we learn will change. Expect changes in terms of the number of cases. We're going to try and give you consistent information and have it on our web site once a day, so that we don't get into the situation where you're hearing different numbers of cases throughout the day — we're going to report that daily.
We expect that we're going to be changing our recommendations over time based on what we learn. And that's an important thing. You'll start to see different activities taking place in different parts of the country, depending on the local outbreak picture — and that's good. You want people to respond based on what the situation is in their community, based on what situations are in particular countries.
Because of this speed in which things are progressing, you will at find — at times find inconsistent information, and we're going to work really hard to make sure that that doesn't stay up for long. But as we're updating recommendations and they're going out through various sources, you may find some inconsistency and we will work to minimize that.
This is moving fast, but I want you to understand that we view this more as a marathon. We do think that this will continue to spread, but we are taking aggressive actions to minimize the impact on people's health.
It's important that people understand that there's a role for everyone to play when there's an outbreak going on. There are things that individuals do, there's things that families do, communities do to try and reduce the impact. At the individual level, it's important people understand how they can prevent respiratory infections. Very frequent hand-washing is something that we talk about time and time again and that is an effective way to reduce transmission of disease. If you're sick, it's very important that people stay at home. If your children are sick, have a fever and flu-like illness, they shouldn't go to school. And if you're ill, you shouldn't get on an airplane or another public transport to travel. Those things are part of personal responsibility in trying to reduce the impact.
It's important that people think about what they would do if this outbreak ramps up in their community. We understand that in New York City there's a cluster of disease in a school and New York City has announced that they're not having those children come back to school on Monday, so that they can understand better about transmission in that school. There's a similar situation in Texas. Those are very smart public health decisions. If there are other communities where we saw cases in a school, we would be recommending that they take those actions as well.
So it's time for people to be thinking — forward-thinking about, well, if it were my child's school, what would I do, how would I be prepared for that kind of an event. We view the public as partners in the efforts to try and control what's going on.
There are a number of sources of information. I want people to know that the CDC web site — www.cdc.gov — has our latest information on swine flu. There's a link from there to very current information and there's a link there to a Spanish language site as well.
So let me talk about some of the public health actions that are going on. We are working very closely with state and local public health on the investigations going on around the country. We're providing both technical support on the epidemiology as well as support on the laboratory in terms of confirming cases.
We're also doing a lot of work with the World Health Organization, the Pan American Health Organization, and the governments of Mexico and Canada on this outbreak. There's a tri-national team that is working in Mexico to try and understand better the spread — why are they seeing more severe disease in Mexico than we are here? That's a critical question. We're working to assist Mexico in establishing more laboratory capacity in-country. That, again, is very important because when you can define someone as a truly confirmed case, what you understand about how they acquire disease takes on much more meaning.
We issued two days ago an outbreak notice on our web site regarding travel to Mexico. It indicated that if you are traveling to Mexico, that you look at that to see what precautions could you take as an individual to reduce the likelihood that you became ill. We're going to continue to evaluate the situation in Mexico, and if need be we will increase the warnings based on what the situation warrants.
Later today we're going to be putting out some additional community guidance so that public health officials will know what our general recommendations are should they see cases in schools or additional cases in their community.
And I think that the last thing I want to mention is that whenever we see a novel strain of influenza, we begin our work in the event that a vaccine needs to be manufactured. So we've created that seed stock, we'veentified that virus, and discussions are underway so that should we decide to work on manufacturing a vaccine, we can work towards that goal very quickly.
Our support to the states and locals will continue. We provide epidemiologic support, laboratory support, and we provide them support in terms of their medications and other material that they need to work on this outbreak.
So thank you very much, and I'll turn it over to the Secretary.
Secretary Napolitano: Thanks, Dr. Besser. A number of things going on and the purpose of today, this briefing, is to give you the most current information about what is happening. And as has been mentioned before, this is a changing picture. And so we intend to conduct these types of briefings daily for a while so that, you know, it can help up communicate to the public what is happening and so that with knowledge people know what kind of issue we're dealing with.
The first thing I want to announce today is that the Department of Health and Human Services will declare today a public health emergency in the United States. That sounds more severe than really it is. This is standard operating procedure and allows us to free up federal, state, and local agencies and their resources for prevention and mitigation; it allows us to use medication and diagnostic tests that we might not otherwise be able to use, particularly on very young children; and it releases funds for the acquisition of additional antivirals.
So you'll see those declarations coming out today. And when I say "standard operating procedure," that's exactly what I mean. We issued similar declarations for the recent floods in Minnesota and North Dakota and for the inauguration.
Second, I want to give you some information about where we are with respect to antiviral drugs. These are the kinds of things you would take should you get sick with this strain of flu. We have 50 million treatment courses of antiviral drugs — Tamiflu and Relenza — in the strategic national stockpile. We are releasing 25 percent of those courses, making them available to all of the states, but particularly prioritizing the states where we already have confirmed incidents of the flu. In addition, the Department of Defense has procured and strategically prepositio