Dr. Deborah Birx meets with leadership at URI

As part of her colleges and universities tour in 30 states, Dr. Deborah Birx visited the University of Rhode Island on Thursday.

While there, she met with Gov. Gina Raimondo and Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, the state's health director, where Birx applauded the Ocean State as a leader in coronavirus testing.

Birx, who's the coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, said her mission is to exchange ideas with schools on how to stop the spread of the virus on campuses.

This visit comes as URI is testing all students both on and off-campus over a period of 10 days.

The university has seen an uptick in cases and is hoping to take preemptive measures to stop the spread of the virus among students and teachers who have no symptoms.

Birx said her main concern is asymptomatic spread.

"This current phase of the epidemic will not look like March or April. This is not going to be viral spread specifically through work places and institutions that we saw before in March and April. Now, where see the spread across the country and what happens at friends and family gathering, and I think -- really we came to carry the message that across the south that occurred after Memorial Day was friends and family, asymptomatic individuals, that didn't know they were infected," said Birx.

When asked about a timetable on vaccines, she said that could be weeks or months.

'Vaccine products are coming off lines right now and being stockpiled right now. So the question in my mind still is, will we have that signal that these vaccines are safe and efficacious? When there is a vaccine that's shown to be efficacious, there is a whole group ready to mobilize syringes and alcohol wipes and the ability to move vaccine where it is needed state by state," said Birx.

In her meeting with Raimondo, they spoke in part about a vaccine delivery system when it's available.

Birx was asked if she spoke to President Donald Trump since his diagnosis, she said she has not. She did point to the importance of treating this virus early to lead a better outcome.