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CDC Releases Updated Guidelines To Handle Travelers Returning From West Africa; American Man Leaves Everything Behind To Fight ISIS

Aired October 27, 2014 - 15:30   ET

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


CHRIS KOFINIS, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well, clearly it's political. You've been seeing the Republicans, I think, using this multiple times, attacking Democrats about the Ebola response kind of crazy. Of all the things you are going to attack people on you would think this wouldn't be one of them, but nonetheless.

Now, is it Governor Christie do this for political reasons? I mean, yes and no. My guess is you give him the benefit of doubt to some extent. They clearly is worried about, you know, the people of New Jersey. But how he reacted was so over the top compared to what I think, you know both scientists and doctors who are familiar with disease and how to address it. And the fact that, you know, this woman, this nurse did not have any high temperature, she says. It just smacks a little bit, you know, too heavy handed, not probably the smartest thing for him to have done. But, you know, but also reflective, I think, of the reality that he's playing to, I think other governors are there's a lot of fear and concern about this, unfounded nonetheless, but you know that fear is there.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Chris, let me stay with you because brought it up. I've been listening to a lot of Republicans critical of the administration in the handling of what's been happening with Ebola especially in naming this Ebola czar. I guess the question really is why isn't this something where both parties can agree? I mean, in the end this is about all of our public health.

KOFINIS: You would think of all the things that you could at least bipartisan agreement on, it would be how to deal and address a pandemic. But you know, Republicans, again, this is political season. We are a week or so away from an election. They are going to pounce as they have been on this. Unfortunately I think it's kind of a little bit tone deaf to what the American people want.

Now, can the administration or should the administration have done a better job in terms of communicating this? Yes. But you know, in fairness, we're dealing with unchartered territories here in terms of this kind of disease. What you would hope in this circumstance is that everyone would try to understand both parties, from the president, governors, that, you know what? Let's figure out a way to address this so we're not stoking public fears. Unfortunately that's not happened as much as it should have.

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You know, I got to be honest. Democrats and liberals are not absolved of guilt in terms of politicizing this. You people like Joan Walsh and Joy Ann Reid on other networks and other publications blaming Republicans in red states for an Ebola outbreak that they had nothing to do with. So people are taking ill-advised shots on both sides. And we did seen bipartisan agreement. We just referenced it. Governor Cuomo and Governor Christie came together. They had a joint press conference where they talked about what they were going to do in their states to deal with Ebola.

BALDWIN: You are right. You are absolutely right.

KOFINIS: Except --

CUPP: So let's not ignore that. And finally, I think you're absolutely right, Chris, that the actions that some in leadership have taken are not calming the fears of the American people. But I think I would disagree on the reasons, this sort of chill out attitude that you've seen from the president and even leaders of the CDC and NIH I think is having an opposite effect. People have watched systematic failures, they watched misinformation, and mixed messages and they want government to seem as though they are as nervous about this and taking this as seriously as they are. Panic is unfound but I haven't seen panic. We're not walking around in hazmat suits shutting down schools and airports. We are just confused.

(CROSSTALK)

KOFINIS: S.E.?

BALDWIN: Go ahead, Chris, but quick.

KOFINIS: You know, with all due respect, you have planes being, you know, brought back to airports because someone coughs. I mean, there is a degree of panic. If you look at the polls in terms of the number of Americans that are concerned about this, there is a degree of real concern. And my only advice in terms of both political parties that they have a responsibility that's greater than partisanship especially in electoral season. The last thing you want to do is stoke these fears.

CUPP: Absolutely.

KOFINIS: That's why I hope there would be bipartisan agreement.

CUPP: But the concern is founded. There's concern and concern is founded.

KOFINIS: Yes.

CUPP: On either side shouldn't pretend that's panic.

KOFINIS: Fair enough. But there should be responsibility in terms of what they say and the acts that they take. And I'm not sure Governor Christie did that.

BALDWIN: Bottom line, both parties. Chris Kofinis and S.E. Cupp, thank you both very much. And let's get to the truth of it which we'll be hearing. Thank you,

from the CDC any minute now. I keep looking at the clock and waiting to hear. There will be teleconference. It will happen led by Dr. Frieden, chief of the CDC who will be delivering news specifically on those health care workers who will be returning home from West Africa. So we will have that for you, the update on the guidelines any minute now.

Also ahead here on CNN, an American decided he wanted to help fight ISIS. So the 28-year-old went to the Middle East and is now on frontlines in a war against one of the world's most dangerous armies. His incredible story is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: All right, breaking news. It started just couple of minutes ago. You are about to hear the voice of Dr. Tom Frieden. He is the head of CDC and he is about to break some news as far as refining some of these guidelines as it pertains to those health care professionals who are coming back to the states from West Africa. His point, thus far, I just been listening, he is basing decision on science. Let's listen.

DR. TOM FRIEDEN, CDC DIRECTOR: -- for fever and for exposure to Ebola. Starting a week ago Saturday we began providing to all entrants care kits, check and report Ebola. These kits consist of a thermometer, health education materials, information about how to contact the local health department or health care providers, a card to show if they become ill and seek care, and since beginning the entry screening to the U.S., we've also been providing information on the names, addresses and other contact information of all travelers returning to state health departments so that they can monitor the care and the progress of people who are going through their 21 day incubation period.

CDC has also worked with health departments throughout the country to expand the laboratory response network so individuals who are suspected of having Ebola can be rapidly tested and that can be assessed.

We've sent rapid Ebola preparedness teams to hospitals around the country so that they can be better prepared in the event of someone with suspected Ebola. We've established an Ebola response team. Any time there's a highly suspected or confirmed Ebola case. That team is at Bellevue today working side-by-side with the excellent clinicians and hospital infectious staff of that hospital to improve the safety and improve the care of that individual. And we've established protocols for management of individuals in the emergency departments who might have Ebola.

Through all of this, we expect there to be an increasing number of individuals for whom there's a concern that they might have Ebola. That doesn't mean there are more cases. Until laboratory test confirms a case it's not confirmed. But the series of steps at levels of protection to the U.S. Also, starting today, the six states to which 60 -- 70 percent of all

of the returning travelers return will be doing an active monitoring program to monitor their health on a daily basis so that if they develop symptoms they can rapidly be assessed and if they are found having Ebola effectively isolated and treated.

The new guidelines increase the level of protection by outlining different levels of exposure and outlining different public health actions that can be taken for each of those levels of exposure.

We identify four different levels. The first is high-risk exposure. Things like a needle stick from someone who has been caring for Ebola patients or someone who had a known exposure to a patient with Ebola, for example a family member who cared for someone when they were sick without using protective equipment.

The next level is the some risk category. In that category we include someone who might have been in the household of a patient with Ebola but didn't provide any direct care or direct contact or a health care worker returning from Africa where they had been caring for patients with Ebola.

We had about 100 or a little under 100 individuals per day on average returning from the three affected countries in West Africa. Of those, about five or six percent have been found to have a background of working in health care, specifically, it has been 46 out of the 807 people who we have evaluated.

There's also a low but nonzero risk such as someone who has been traveling within the affected countries but has had no known exposure. And we would put into that category also the health care personnel, doctor, nurse or other health care staff who has been working at a United States facility caring for an individual with Ebola. Bellevue, Emory, NIH and Nebraska are the facilities that are currently and potentially doing that.

For those individuals they have very important differences between providing care in Africa versus in the U.S. U.S. hospitals have a more controlled setting than a field hospital in Africa, and the staffing ratios very different. So in that category, we consider them to be of low but nonzero risk.

And the fourth category is those who have no identified risks. For example, individuals who did not travel to one of the affected countries or traveled more than 21 days ago. We've received over 500 inquiries from health departments and hospitals and doctors who have been concerned that patients might be at risk for Ebola. In 90 percent of those inquiries it turns out there is not either a symptom pattern or a travel history that's consistent with Ebola. And for the remainder, we've been able to facilitate rapid testing.

In terms of the public health actions that can be taken, the first and I believe most important is active monitoring and that means that the health department, the local public health authority takes the responsibility for a daily monitoring of the individual's symptoms and of their temperature. And if people have symptoms or elevated temperature, they are rapidly assessed, evaluated and if appropriate isolated, cared for and treated.

This type of active monitoring is so important because it can identify people early in the course of illness and we know with Ebola that as people get sicker they get much more infectious. Those first few hours or days of the beginning of symptoms are far less likely to result in any infections than are of later course of disease when people have much, much larger numbers of virus that they are excreting.

But in cases where there's high-risk of an individual potentially becoming ill, or based on an individualized assessment of the exposure, of the activity, of the individual, of the circumstance, additional restrictions may be placed. Those may include on an individualized basis what's called a do not board order which would prevent the individual from getting on a flight. At the local level, restrictions on use of public transport, work, or attendance at congregate activities.

But fundamentally, people want to do the right thing. And what I'm hearing from returning health care workers and others is an interest in making sure that they are cared for effectively and they are responsible so that if they do develop any symptoms they are rapidly isolated and treated.

In fact, Doctors without Borders, MSF, has had very clear guidelines for their staff and for their own protection. They stay within close radius to a facility that can care for them. And this is the kind of approach that we think will be effective.

In addition, while I understand there are concerns that individuals may not fully disclose information about their history, I think those concerns about illness are of a very different order. Health care workers, of all people, understand that if they develop Ebola sooner -- the sooner they get care the more likely they are to survive and the sooner they get isolated the less likely they are to infect their family members.

Overall, there's real progress in different ways in the Ebola response, but we're still far from out of the woods. In Texas, we have seen most of the health care workers who cared for Mr. Duncan completed their 21 day observation period. Two nurses became infected in all likelihood in the initial Davis Mr. Duncan's illness. We have improved our personal protective equipment and infection-control guidelines to reduce infection in the future.

In New York City we continue to monitor closely the illness of Dr. Spencer, and monitoring of his contacts.

In Africa, we have now served along with the world health organization to respond to the importation of a case into the country of Mali where contact tracing has identified now more than 100 people who will be tracked and where the largest number are in a rural area similar to other Ebola outbreaks. But we're far from out of the woods.

And in each of the three heavily affected countries in West Africa we are seeing definite signs of progress but it is going to be still a long hard fight, and the assistance of health care workers from around the world will be central to stopping it there and protecting these countries as well as ourselves.

I wish we could get to zero risk in the U.S. But we will only get to zero risk by stopping it at the source. While we're trying to do that, we're also implementing a series of measures to reduce the risk in the U.S.

Bottom line is, we're today releasing new guidelines on the monitoring and movement of people who may have been exposed to the Ebola virus. These guidelines increase the level of protection of the health and safety of Americans which is our first and foremost concern while at the same time recognizing the heroic work that is going on in west Africa by these individuals or some of these individuals and that's protecting us from the disease.

BALDWIN: OK. So you've been listening to the director of Centers for Disease Control, Tom Frieden. We've been hearing from and seeing a lot of him in recent weeks for obvious reason. But I just want to pars through some of what he said and highlight the key points. This was news certainly as far as protocol in treating health care workers either in Africa and coming back to the states or those here on the states.

Dr. Nina Radcliff is joining me here. She was listening to all us very closely and are sorts of looking up at each other for those key moments.

So let's work backwards from the most recent item he mentioned when it comes to public health actions. He said, he mentioned the active monitoring of these different potential individuals who may have been exposed and he mentions depending on, you know, case by case there could be additional restrictions placed, i.e. don't board planes, don't get on trains, buses, et cetera but you said to me he didn't specifically say isolation.

DR. NINA RADCLIFF, PHYSICIAN: Correct. Correct. The point here is we need to base it upon risk. We can't put it across some of these across the board everyone who has fly over Africa, been in Africa been exposed, everybody will get 21 days. We have to have base it on facts, science and good sense.

BALDWIN: We've heard that over and over.

RADCLIFF: Absolutely. We don't make decision based on panic and fear. That's not what our health care system is about.

BALDWIN: Right. Final thought to you as he was outlining the different levels of exposure, one through four. One, being the highest risk, those who have been stuck by a needle by an infected patient and fourth being no identified risk. Not at the tip off of that list, but number two he identified those health care professionals who are working directly with Ebola patients in West Africa. Let me be clear.

RADCLIFF: In West Africa, exactly. And that's interesting to note because if you notice that most of them, Doctors without Borders, it's only been one so far out of 700. So that's a very low risk.

We had some missteps back in Dallas that makes us concerned. Yes, we need to keep a guarded risk for these people, we need to make sure that their protocols are able to be followed, that we do enhance protective equipment as needed, but we can't sit there and overreact. And just with the public, they are practically a zero risk for that. So people are worried, can we touch a bowling ball? Can we go, you know, on the subway for the people in New York. There's a very low, if any, risk for them and that is something important to note.

BALDWIN: Dr. Radcliff, thank you very for coming in. And I really appreciate it.

RADCLIFF: Thank you very much.

BALDWIN: More breaking news today as we are getting some chilling video here from ISIS showing this hostage, John Cantlie. But the most striking thing about the video isn't who's in it, it is where he is. That's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: We are getting breaking news now out of the besieged city of Kobani right along the Turkish-Syrian border involving this new ISIS video and British hostage John Cantlie. So let's go straight to Turkey to our senior international correspondent there, Nick Paton Walsh.

And Nick, talk to me about this video.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is quite disturbing and shocking to behold. What ISIS have done, it seems, about a week ago, according to the time references inside that video, is take this British hostage, a former war reporter, still in captivity, still a journalist but taken under duress to Kobani and ask him to report on what he sees there. He seems clearly relaxed. Listen to how he introduces himself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN CANTLIE, BRITISH REPORTER: Hello. I'm John Cantlie. And today, we're in the city of Kobani on the Syrian-Turkish border.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALSH: Now, in the images you see here, it's clear he is in Kobani. He says that ISIS are just mopping up now, going street to street fighting. He talks about the half million-dollars that he says the U.S. has spent on its air campaign against those same ISIS militants. But remember, at the end of the day, this is a man being held against his will. Now part of ISIS' propaganda machine which frankly a time seems to be eerily sophisticated -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Nick, just a quick follow-up for you. Because we've been covering Kobani for so long, where does that fight stand? WALSH: As it stands, ISIS is pushing in from the east and the south,

where John Cantlie says he's standing much of the time. They are, it seems, running into a lot of resistance from the Kurds who are being resupplied and the fight certainly not over. And this video shows how important the fight for Kobani has become, that they would go to these lengths to put John Cantlie in that situation -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Nick Paton Walsh for me, thank you so much for sharing that. That is incredibly significant. We've been focusing so much on this city and here he is.

And while the U.S. is fighting from the air there, the groups battling ISIS on the ground have added an American to their ranks.

CNN's Ivan Watson has an exclusive interview with this one American man who left everything behind to fight ISIS.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Armed men are a common sight here in Kurdish-controlled northern Syria, a country embroiled in a vicious civil war. But one of the gunmen in this truck is not like the others.

How do people react to you when they see you and realize that you're from the U.S.?

JORDAN MATSON, FORMER U.S. ARMY: They ask me if I'll come over for dinner and spend the night at their house.

WATSON: Jordan Matson is a 28-year-old former U.S. army soldier from Sturtevant, Wisconsin.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm good.

WATSON: For the last month, he's also been a volunteer fighter in the Kurdish militia known here as the YPG.

MATSON: I got in contact with the YPG on facebook. And I prayed about it and for probably a month or two and just really soul-searched and said is this, what I want to do? And eventually, you know, decided to do it.

WATSON: During his two years in the army, Matson never once saw combat or deployment overseas. But soon after arriving here in Syria, he says he ended up in a battle against ISIS.

MATSON: The second day in, I got hit by a mortar on a fight.

WATSON: While recovering from shrapnel wounds, Matson went to work online, recruiting more foreigners to help the YPG fight against ISIS.

MATSON: I've had an ex-military come from Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Canada, the United States, Australia, you name it, they've been asking. You know, ISIS has threatened all these countries that I've named to push their agenda in those nations. And the veterans of those nations who love the veterans of those nations who love their countries don't want to sit by while this is happening.

WATSON: Back home in Wisconsin, Matson used to work in a food packing company.

MATSON: Other than that, we just hang out in here.

WATSON: Now he lives in places like this former restaurant converted into a militia camp. What are the pictures?

MATSON: These are all men that have died fighting against ISIS.

WATSON: The YPG are very lightly armed guerrillas. Is this a flak jacket?

MATSON: No, this is just a vest to carry ammunition.

WATSON: So basically people are running into battle without even any armor?

MATSON: Yes.

WATSON: And wearing sneakers half the time?

MATSON: Yes. Combat Adidas.

WATSON: U.S. law enforcement officials say it's illegal for an American to join a Syrian militia. But Matson says being here, fighting ISIS alongside the Kurds is a dream come true.

You could not be further from home right now.

MATSON: Yes. I guess this is the other side of the world. All my life, I just wanted to be a soldier, I guess growing up. So I just fit well over here.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BALDWIN: Ivan Watson reporting there for us.

I'm Brooke Baldwin here in New York. Thank you so much for being with me here on this Monday. We will see you back here, same time, same place tomorrow. In the meantime, to Washington D.C. we go "TH LEAD" with Jake Tapper start right now.