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Don Lemon Tonight

Doctor in New York Tested Positive with Ebola

Aired October 23, 2014 - 23:59   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, it is midnight in New York City. This is CNN TONIGHT, I'm Don Lemon, and we are live with our breaking news.

Craig Spencer, a doctor who recently returned from treating Ebola patient in West Africa, has been diagnosed with the disease. He's in isolation in New York's Bellevue Hospital. Health officials say three people who had been in contact with Spencer, his fiancee and two friends, are healthy and will be quarantined and monitored. A fourth, an Uber cab driver, had no physical contact with the patient and was not considered at risk.

Let's get straight to Bellevue Hospital where that doctor is now in quarantined and where there was a press conference this evening.

CNN's Poppy Harlow is there. She was there for the press conference.

And, Poppy, officials there from the governor to the mayor to the health commissioner saying they are, in an overabundance of caution, but New Yorkers should definitely not panic.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. They do not want New Yorkers to panic because of how hard it is to contract this disease. They understand the fear, but they said the more you know the less you need to panic.

They say that when the 33-year-old doctor who was working in Guinea for Doctors Without Borders, when he realized sometime this morning between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m., that he was getting a higher fever, that he may be symptomatic of Ebola, he immediately called the authorities, they sent an ambulance to his apartment in Upper Manhattan, brought him here to the hospital, following every single protocol.

Don, they even locked his apartment behind him. They have cordoned off his apartment where he was. He has been in isolation here at Bellevue ever since. So they say this could not have gone more smoothly and they say New York could not be more prepared. This is the preeminent hospital to deal with something like this.

Very important fact that we learned tonight. First of all, as you mentioned the four people he was in direct contact with, three of them are quarantined, one along with him at the hospital, two at home. Another important thing we know is that he was not in isolation. He tried these days to stay in his apartment most of the time when he returned on October 17th from Guinea, but that he did venture out. We know that as recently as yesterday, he took the subway and also an

Uber cab and he went bowling in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We know that he visited a restaurant in New York City. We don't know which one. We also know that he visited the High Line Park, a very -- an area that's full of people and tourists in New York City. So he was not quarantined.

A lot of people on Twitter, as you know, are asking why was he out and about. Well, he did follow every protocol, we're told, of Medecins Sans Frontieres or Doctors Without Borders, the group he was working with. He regularly set -- took his temperature two times a day. And then immediately when he found these symptoms he did what he was supposed to do.

LEMON: And Poppy, I think I misspoke and said overabundance to be -- it should be caution here in the city.

He is doing what he's supposed to do. But as I spoke now to the head of the Office of Emergency Management, they're saying that they still are interested in tracking his movements and finding out exactly where he went.

HARLOW: Yes.

LEMON: And they're using the subway to do that.

HARLOW: They are. I mean, they say that he's cooperating fully, telling him everywhere he went as far as he can remember. But Don, this is also a patient that -- that is fighting for his life, right? He's a patient that needs to focus on getting better right now so they are using his Metro card, for example, to track -- you can track everywhere he went on his Metro card for the last, you know, eight days since he's been back in the United States because at this hour, what they are doing and what they immediately began to do here in New York is track everyone who may have been in contact with him.

Who was bowling with him last night at the bowling alley? You can bet they're going to be talking to those people. They've closed it down. They're going to be inspecting it, sanitizing the bowling alley tomorrow. You can bet they'll be talking to his neighbors, people in his building. This is really about two critical things, saving the life of this doctor and making sure that this does not spread to anyone else in New York City, the governor, the mayor, saying New York could not be better prepared to do that but they have to follow all the steps to do that and that means cracking down everyone they can.

LEMON: Poppy Harlow, thank you very much.

I want to turn now to Dr. Devi Nampiaparampil and also Gavin McGregor- Skinner, Juliette Kayyem and Dr. Alexander Van Tulleken.

Juliette, is New York City doing tonight -- is what they're doing tonight the model in what a city should be doing when faced with an Ebola patient?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Absolutely. I mean, so they -- and it didn't begin tonight. That's the important thing. That for months before they were doing the training. And it's not just the public health officials. It's the -- most importantly, the interdisciplinary training, it's the locals with the state, with the federal government, integrating what the protocols will be at the lowest level, the hospital, and then the information flow.

Now that we have the patient in New York City, now it's the post, you know, sort of the investigation about where he's been, who could have been exposed, however unlikely. And, you know, part of this is a sense of grit. I think that that is an important aspect of leadership. And you saw it in the mayor and the governor, an impressive press conference. They portrayed grit. They understood what the threat was. They put it in perspective and they also assured people that the first responders were doing everything possible. So, so far it's looking as good as you can imagine the first Ebola case in New York City looking.

LEMON: OK. And doctors who are here with me, Dr. Devi and Dr. Van Tulleken.

So you have to ask a question, right, in order to get an answer. We don't want to sensationalize this at all or scare people. But many people at home are asking the same questions. I have friends who lived with me in Harlem, up in Harlem. They're concerned about it. Right? I read you their text messages in the break. People have real concerns. So I'll ask you the questions that people at home will be asking.

Again, we don't want to sensationalize. We know that Dr. Spencer took the A-train, the L-train and the 1-train. And so earlier, we were asking why are they going to sanitize the bowling alley. We learned from the official here that the bowling alley did it themselves. New York City officials didn't ask them to do that.

Are people on the subway system safe? That's the question.

DR. ALEXANDER VAN TULLEKEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: I'd say they absolutely are. The thing, when we ask should we be worried, what is the risk, the importance about discussing risk is you're always talking about a cost benefit analysis. You're saying, what is the benefit we're going to get from sterilizing the subway system and what is the cost? Versus what is the cost of, for instance, we know they didn't close the bowling alley but the bowling alley can close itself and sterilize itself.

That's very good for their customers. I'm sure in a couple of days they'll be opening up and they'll be running just fine. But the subway, the benefit is absolutely minimal. I mean, the chance of there being a single viral particle anywhere on that subway system is so vanishingly small.

LEMON: And Dr. Devi, because of the initial response and many people said there were mixed messages coming from, you know, as high as the CDC and other organizations. Is that why people are saying, you know, there are so many unknowns with this, I just don't know? I'm not sure that they know. DR. DEVI NAMPIAPARAMPIL, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, NYU SCHOOL OF MEDICINE:

Yes, I think so. I think when you hear two different messages that those become confusing. I mean, there are some positives here, though. I just like to say those. I mean, first of all, this physician did not go through the ER, right? So he called first responders who came prepared to treat Ebola. So at least there was no spread there to other patients. And then in terms of other things, the hospital seemed to be more prepared to handle this. I mean, they knew he was coming. There is that.

They've been doing drills for months. They've had mock patients. They've had a lot of different things that have been done. And a lot of these hospitals actually have formed their own strike team, similar to the Pentagon strike team.

LEMON: Right.

NAMPIAPARAMPIL: So within the hospital, it's not that every single person in the hospital has to be prepared to treat Ebola, although, you know, they all know about Ebola or have to, but the strike teams, they are specifically trained to come in and take over when there's an Ebola patient.

LEMON: And the governor said that there are 200 hospitals in the state and all of them were equipped to deal with Ebola, but the ones who are equipped to deal with it most intensely, they designated eight hospitals in the state. But for a long time, Dr. Thomas Frieden from the CDC said that the hospitals can treat Ebola -- any hospital can treat an Ebola patient.

Is that you, Juliette, who's saying yes? Is that so?

KAYYEM: Yes -- no, I -- no, and I think -- I think this is a much smarter approach. This is part of the challenge that confronted the government the first month of this which was sort of promises that it wasn't going to hit, that we weren't going to get Ebola. Everyone knew that someone would come here and that every hospital was prepared. That is just unrealistic.

This is a very, very unique disease that has only, you know, less than a handful of people have gotten it in the United States. So you cannot prepare every hospital. And as we talked about cost benefit, the benefit of designating certain hospitals is, you know, just a good use of dollars and resources.

LEMON: It's beneficial. It's smart.

KAYYEM: Yes.

LEMON: And the governor said that tonight. He said the cost to outfit every single hospital in the state would just be immense.

KAYYEM: Right.

LEMON: That it's just not practical. Do you work with Ebola patients? VAN TULLEKEN: I saw it with hemorrhagic fever patients before. But

Ebola patients are very -- until this epidemic, they've been very, very rare.

LEMON: Because as I understand, you were on your way to Uganda to do some sort of training like this evening, but you're not going because of this breaking news story. But my question is, have you worked with Ebola patients and you said you have hemorrhagic fever.

VAN TULLEKEN: Yes. There are other Ebola-type viruses which we treat very similarly. In fact in Uganda at the moment they are having a small outbreak of Marburg virus, a very similar virus.

LEMON: All right. Everyone, stand by. We're going to be right back with more of our breaking news tonight. Ebola in New York City. Don't go anywhere.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: I'm Don Lemon. We're back now with our breaking news.

A Doctors Without Borders physician who recently returned to New York from West Africa has tested positive for the Ebola virus. Becoming the first diagnosed case in New York City.

Want to go right now with Miguel Marquez. He's at Dr. Craig Spencer's home in Harlem.

What are you learning, Miguel?

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that his home has been sealed off and will remain sealed off until workers come there and they either sanitize the place or get in there to figure out if they need anything more to investigate inside his apartment. Health officials telling us that they will not be in his apartment tonight. But they probably will be in here tomorrow.

Police presence has been increased in this area a bit. Things seem to be calming down a bit for now. Earlier in the night when that -- when that positive result came back, the neighborhood did light up quite a bit. A lot of people coming to the apartment to see what was going on. Heightened police presence here. Increased amount of concern. Throughout the day we heard from a lot of people around the neighborhood who didn't seem very concerned. Didn't think it was possible.

We're waiting for that test result to come back. As soon as it did, there was greater concern for people coming into the building and in this area. One individual who came in here saying, you know, I've got to figure out how to take more precautions now.

One good thing that the doctor did was not go to work for the 10 days that he was back from Guinea. So that -- he works about 20 blocks away. One thing that will not set well with people here is that he did take the -- you know, the 1-train, the A-train, the L-train.

LEMON: Yes.

MARQUEZ: Major subway lines here in New York City. And even though they're saying there's almost no chance of them getting it from him taking that train, the fact that health officials are tracking all of that, causes one to wonder well, why track it if there's no reason --

LEMON: Right.

MARQUEZ: -- to worry about getting it. So I think people in the neighborhood are now taking this with a bit more seriousness -- Don.

LEMON: All right. I think -- Miguel, quickly, I've got to get on to something else, but I understand -- did you speak with Doctors Without Borders? Because he was in Guinea working with Doctors Without Borders. What did they say?

MARQUEZ: They have released their protocols finally so that we have a better sense of what doctors and all their health care workers who work in their zones come back and go through. It's a 21-day period, the same period as the disease takes to show. Check your temperature twice a day. It does not say anything about self-quarantining. They said that this doctor did everything that he was meant to do in order to quarantine himself or to take care of himself when he came back from that zone.

They do say, though, don't go back to work for 21 days. He had not been to work for the 10 days that he was back. He checked his temperature twice a day. Once he had his temperature, he was experiencing symptoms he did call health professionals. And they -- and Doctors Without Borders who's been through this a lot says it's exactly what he should have done -- Don.

MARQUEZ: Miguel Marquez, thank you very much.

Earlier in New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio held a news conference at Bellevue Hospital, along with top city officials. Here's part of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK: Today testing confirmed that a patient here in New York City had tested positive for Ebola. The patient is now here in the Bellevue hospital. We want to state at the outset, there was no reason for New Yorkers to be alarmed. Ebola is an extremely hard disease to contract. It's transmitted only through contact with an infected person's blood or other bodily fluids. Not through casual contact.

GOV. CHRIS CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: We have had a full coordinated effort that has been working literally night and day, coordinating city, state and federal resources. Coordinating and drilling from airports to transportation to subway stations to ambulances, to hospitals. So we are as ready as one could be for this circumstance.

DR. MARY TRAVIS BASSETT, NYC HEALTH COMMISSIONER: The patient is presently hospitalized in isolation at this hospital. The patient is a 33-year-old doctor working with the famed human services organization, Doctors Without Borders, Medecins Sans Frontieres, in Guinea. He completed his work in Guinea on the 12th of October and left Guinea on the 14th of October via Europe where he arrived in the United States at JFK airport on the 17th of October.

During -- at the time that he departed Guinea throughout his journey home to the United States, he was well, with no symptoms. When he arrived in the United States, he was also well with no symptoms. And he, being a medical doctor, undertook to check his temperature twice a day, which he has done since he departed from Guinea. On the 21st, he began feeling somewhat tired, but the first actual symptoms that the patient displayed were today sometime between 10:00 and 11:00 this morning when he experienced a fever and contacted MSF, who rapidly contacted the health department, and the process of bringing this patient to Bellevue Hospital as a person considered at high risk for Ebola.

DR. HOWARD ZUCKER, ACTING COMMISSIONER, NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH: Bellevue has been preparing for this and we as a state and a city have been preparing for this for a while. All the processes involved in making sure that he's being monitored, taken care of here at the hospital, I'll mention that in a minute. But most importantly, him getting into the hospital.

EMS system brought him in with the proper protective gear. He was immediately brought to the isolation area that Bellevue Hospital has established for patients who could have Ebola. He's been taken care of by an excellent team and all of his medical problems are being addressed.

TOM FRIEDEN, DIRECTOR OF CDC: When it comes to his care, the federal government has and will continue to provide whatever assistance is required to make sure that he's treated safely and effectively. I think as has been said, it is very important that people understand how Ebola spreads and what the risk is.

When someone gets Ebola, they become -- they're not expected initially, but they become decreasingly infected the sicker they get. So right now, the concern is for the health care workers who are caring for him at Bellevue. Fortunately, Bellevue has been preparing for this and drilling for this. CDC has been in close communication with hospital authorities.

In fact, by coincidence, or because of good preparations, we already had a team on the ground that had spent several days reviewing all of Bellevue's preparations, even before this patient became ill. They had reviewed the preparations and observed the hospital working.

We are also sending an additional CDC Ebola response team, which is in transit now with individuals who have extensive experience treating Ebola so that we can work in partnership with Bellevue to make sure that the patient gets as safe and effective care as possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: The press conference earlier this evening. I need to tell you that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will be a guest

on CNN's "NEW DAY" tomorrow morning 6:00 a.m. Eastern. Make sure you tune in.

We're going to be right back with more on our breaking news coverage of Ebola in New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: We're back now, everyone, with our breaking news coverage.

A doctor who recently returned from West Africa has been diagnosed with Ebola here in New York City.

I want to bring in now Dr. Devi, Gavin McGregor-Skinner, and Dr. Alexander Van Tulleken.

So the question is, Dr. Gavin, how much have officials here, including the CDC and hospitals around the country -- how much have they learned from Dallas?

GAVIN MCGREGOR-SKINNER, ELIZABETH R. GRIFFIN FOUNDATION: Again, we haven't really been told what were the lessons learned. We've heard the CDC director say there were glitches in protocols but we haven't seen the protocols and we haven't really -- and it wasn't defined what those glitches were.

And so again, we haven't taken a lot of lessons learned away from Dallas. But we have stuck with our basic principles of public health preparedness for highly infectious diseases such as Ebola and as you've heard from New York, the preparedness of the hospitals and especially Bellevue had been going through for many weeks now.

And we're now hearing other hospitals around the country are also asking for other people to come in and assess, to drill, to table top to exercise, to see whether their plan and their process are put in place actually will be functional and effective to prevent the spread, contain the spread, and also to provide that patient care for an Ebola patient.

But also we got to remember that, again, Bellevue is going to wake up in the morning and go oh, my gosh, I've got an Ebola patient and they're going to realize how much waste is generated each day just by one patient. And now they have the processes in place to dispose of safely all that waste that's going to be generated --

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: I'm glad you mentioned that because a lot of people have been asking about that, especially from social media. There's some video that I just got, an e-mail, if you can hear me, regarding New York City police officers. Here's what it says. Someone sent me -- Bob says, the real Bob says, I just noticed that the NYPD cops in a clip was taking off gloves and putting them in public trash can.

And I sent a note to producers saying true, because while I'm sitting here looking at the camera, I don't always see the video because I'm concentrating on sometimes what's on the teleprompter or thinking about what the next question is going to be. And so here you go. Is there any concern with that?

VAN TULLEKEN: I guess -- I guess we don't know what they've been handling. We don't know what they've been doing, so maybe that they've been -- I mean, who knows. You know, they may have just had -- I actually can't think of a single reason why they would be putting those gloves in the trash cans.

LEMON: And those -- and those are questions viewers --

(CROSSTALK)

VAN TULLEKEN: But we don't know the full story. But for sure, it doesn't look good what they're doing there.

NAMPIAPARAMPIL: Well, there's a couple of things to consider. I mean, in the hospital, people wear gloves for a lot of different things. So if you come into contact with any kind of blood or bodily fluids, you would not put those gloves in a regular garbage can. You'd put them in something called biohazard trash. So that's just destroyed in a completely different ways. So with these police officer, we don't know exactly what they're doing. You know, they might just be wearing gloves to handle, you know, different people that they're arresting.

LEMON: Dr. Gavin?

MCGREGOR-SKINNER: Yes, and we don't know. Again, we don't know whether the police officers, and we don't believe they had any direct contact with Dr. Spencer. But the problem is the perception with the public, any children, anyone who comes up to that trash can now and looks in and sees these what looks like hospital gloves, they really don't know what's on them. And again, it causes fear, it causes mistrust.

And really we've got to ensure that again everyone within the team, and this is what's really great about what New York is doing. It has brought together our team and holistic approach to looking at all the systems that are required to contain and ensure that Ebola doesn't spread. But again you've got to get that message out to those first responders, don't dispose of your gloves in a public trash can. It's not the right thing to do. It doesn't give the right message to the public that we're looking after them.

LEMON: Interesting. OK, the politics of Ebola.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Back now with our breaking news. A New York doctor recently returning from West Africa has been diagnosed with Ebola.

I want to bring in now Dr. Gavin McGregor-Skinner and also Dr. Van -- Alexander Van Tulleken.

So a lot of names. So here's -- we talked about the optics of Ebola in our last segment. I want to ask you this, Dr. Gavin, because, you know, we're coming up on the midterm elections. You heard Juliette Kayyem said every health official, every, you know, leader around the country is going to talk to people to make sure that they're on par, they're doing things correctly now.

MCGREGOR-SKINNER: I think that's really important. We use a series of checklist with my team from Elizabeth R. Griffin Foundation. We visit many U.S. hospitals. And we use these checklists to help develop score cards to assess the level of preparedness for U.S. hospital and health care facilities for Ebola.

Again, we could work with a lot of those politicians on saying here's the gaps, here's the needs, here's the drills and exercises that need to be conducted. Here's the waste management plans that need to be put in place. The team that you need and the resources you need in hospitals to ensure they're prepared, and let's really bring it down to the grassroots level, instead of saying, you know, very -- sort of that 55,000 foot level that all hospitals are prepared.

We know they're not. But let's go out and identify the resources we have within the U.S. health care system to ensure that we get at least all those that aren't ready.

LEMON: We've got to go.

Dr. Gavin, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Dr. Van Tulleken. We appreciate you joining us this evening.

Right now we're going to continue our breaking news coverage tonight with Errol Barnett and Natalie Allen in Atlanta.