Virtual White House Town Hall Fox News: Question Why Were Nursing homes infected with Covid. Why wasn't the Javits Center Used to Address Sick Covid Patients Rather Than Spreading the Virus among a Vulnerable Nursing Homes.

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Bottom line: Ask the Governor... 

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-fox-news-virtual-town-hall/

....Q    Our next question is from Carol MacNeil, a retired teacher in Bluffton, South Carolina.

VIEWER:  A family member who lives in a very exclusive and expensive assisted living center in the Boston area was recently diagnosed with coronavirus.  What will be done, both in the short term and in the long term, to protect the vulnerable in nursing homes, senior housing, and assisted living centers?

THE PRESIDENT:  So the nursing home problem, that's your ground zero.  It really is ground zero.  We first heard about it — I did — in Washington, when so many people were — the State of Washington, where so many people died in a single nursing home.  And you realized immediately there's a vulnerability there.

What we're doing is legislation immediately as to how many people can be in.  Some people made some terrible mistakes.  They were putting other people into empty areas and nursing homes that were sick, and that affected the people in the nursing homes.  Because the one thing about this disease that everybody has learned very easily and very quickly is the way it's so contagious.  It is the most contagious thing people have seen.

So, in 1917, we had a horrible — in that case, it was the flu, right?  You remember, the Spanish flu.  I've — so much has been written about it.  Now, of course, it's the hottest — everybody that writes a book about the Spanish flu, 1917 — it killed between 100 and — I guess, 50 to 100 million people.  It probably ended the First World War because the soldiers were all getting sick.  It was the worst the world has ever seen, that we know of.

We have something that's different.  It's not as powerful, but it's far more contagious.

Q    But with regard to the nursing homes, one of the questions that came to my mind when I watched the Comfort leaving Manhattan and the Javits Center: Why were these people next to each other like this in nursing homes when we had all this excess capacity and beds?  Why weren't they sent there?

THE PRESIDENT:  So, on that one, you have to ask the governor and — in the case, the governors.  Because all I can do is provide the space.  They're running their state, as you understand.  And that's the way it should be.  They run their state through mayors and through this and that.  You know, bring it down local and bring it down to a point.

But we provided 2,900 beds in the convention center.  On top of that, we brought in the Comfort.  They did a phenomenal job.  And the Comfort wasn't meant for the COVID-19.  The Comfort was meant for people that had car accidents and everything else.  And we found out there were no accidents because nobody was driving.

Q    Because nobody was driving.

THE PRESIDENT:  We had very few accidents.

But it wasn't meant for that.  What we did is we converted it to that, but, still, they didn't use it much.  And I think the numbers now are getting better.  We just moved the Comfort.  We're going to move it someplace else, probably, perhaps for some other kind of problem.  But we had the Comfort there, and we built in the — in the Javits Center.  We built over 2,000 beds.  And, by the way, built in like five days by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The Army Corps of Engineers have done one of the greatest jobs anyone has ever seen, including the fact that we happen to be building a wall on the southern border that's now up to 172 miles.

Q    Quickly: How concerned are you about hospitals that are not dealing with COVID-19, or primarily not, and they're letting people go?  They're closing.

THE PRESIDENT:  Yeah.  We have to get elective surgery, it's called.  And we have to let them come back.  It's okay with us.  Again, that's up to the governors.  You have some hospitals where they have almost no COVID, and they have the hospital — essentially, you can't go and do elective surgery, meaning a surgery — well, in some cases, it's cancer, where they — they're waiting long.  That's not a good thing to be waiting long.

So it's such a — they have to get back.  They have to let these hospitals — because the hospitals are legitimately — you know, you'd think they're making a lot of money.  They're losing a fortune.

They have to let those hospitals reopen and get back to elective surgery.  And there are many hospitals right now that could be doing that.  The gov- — that's up to the governors; that's not up to me