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Health Officials Tell Lawmakers Only About 11,000 People Tested For Virus In U.S, South Korea Testing About 10,000 Per Day; Trump Restricts Travel From Most Of Europe For 30 Days; Health Officials Tell Lawmakers U.S Does Not Have System In Place To Test For Coronavirus Like Other Countries. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired March 12, 2020 - 10:00   ET

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

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: White House corrected that and said, no, it's not for American citizens.

[10:00:02]

It's only for citizens of these countries in Europe coming to the U.S. Markets weren't calmed by that because of the kind of clumsiness of the message.

So you already had markets that were down considerably, already moving into bear market territory, and this morning is even worse.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: Christine Romans, thank you, very, very much.

I think we're going to go to Washington now. This is just in to CNN. We are getting news of the coronavirus briefing that is happening right now in Capitol Hill.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: Lauren Fox have been speaking to lawmakers as they come out. Lauren, what are you hearing, because these numbers on the testing disparity, 11,000 tests conducted around the country so far. A country like South Korea is doing 10,000 a day. It's got sixth of the population.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRSSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Exactly right, Jim. I will tell you, there is immense frustration both on the House and the Senate side. The House had their briefing this morning starting at 8:15. It has since wrapped. Now, the senators are having their own briefing, but the issues, the frustrations about testing and the rate of testing continue on both sides of the aisle.

I asked Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican senator who came out of this Senate briefing, how would you describe what you're hearing? And she said just one word. She said, quote, frustration. That's where members are this morning.

Another member who was in the House briefing said, you should have seen the line of lawmakers lining up to ask questions to these CDC officials, trying to get answers, especially to for some members who are going home to districts who are really strapped with this issue of coronavirus and are struggling to get testing. Remember, if hospitals can't get test kits, they're calling their member of Congress demanding answers.

So there is a lot of pressure on these members up here on Capitol Hill, not to mention the concern about their own personal safety. You have seen multiple members now announce that they are closing down their offices for the foreseeable future. Mitt Romney said he has asked his staff to telecommute. Joe Manchin said they're going to test that out tomorrow. So a lot of changes up here on Capitol Hill, so much has shifted in just a matter of days.

SCIUTTO: Lauren, let me ask you a question. You have lawmakers closing their own offices as a protective measure. What are they recommending to their constituents?

FOX: Well, I think that part of the reason that some of them are electing to close their offices out of an abundance of caution is the fact that how do they go home and tell their constituents to practice social distancing if they aren't doing it themselves. It's really tough because they have to pass some kind of legislation to bolster the economy.

A lot of Democrats are very aware of the fact that they need to do that first. But once they get their business done, there is going to be a real conversation about whether or not they come back from recess as previously scheduled.

HARLOW: And we've just learned from our Jim Acosta and Phil Mattingly that the president -- his top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, told Republicans, and we'll have a Republican senator on very soon, the president may sign a disaster declaration under the Stafford Act. So what would that mean? We'll get into that.

A lot changing by the minute, Lauren. Thanks.

SCIUTTO: Something he resisted as well so far.

HARLOW: That's right, very much. We appreciate it.

Let's talk more about sports world, NBA cancelling its season. Ed Lavandera is in Oklahoma City. It happened overnight to the surprise of a lot of folks.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Poppy. Well, if anyone thought that the reaction to the coronavirus was dubious, this really came as a jolt to many parts of the country as they heard news. This arena behind me here in downtown Oklahoma City filled with people last night getting ready to watch the beginning of the Oklahoma City Thunder and Utah Jazz game. The players were on the court about to tip off the game when suddenly all the players ran back into the locker room and it was announced over the loudspeaker system inside that the game was canceled.

So now, the teams here, the Utah Jazz team didn't leave the arena. The game was canceled around 7:00 Central Time. The Utah Jazz didn't leave arena last night until well after midnight. They are still here in the Oklahoma City area. Plans are being made to try figure out how to get the team moved safely out of the city, and this has really been a jolt.

NBA officials say that the player that has been diagnosed with the virus was never inside the arena yesterday, but there is still a great deal of concern here throughout the city as they try to figure out and scramble to figure out what to do next.

And it was a stunning moment just down the road in Dallas as the Mavericks were playing their game. Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was captured on video as he heard the news that the NBA season had been suspended. His jaw dropped. He was stunned. And he talked about that reaction and what it means after the game last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK CUBAN, DALLAS MAVERICKS OWNER: This is something out of a movie, and you just don't expect it to happen in real life, but that's the randomness of the world we live in.

[10:05:02]

And so it's stunning, but we are where we are, and we have to be smart in how we respond.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: And the Utah Jazz team is self-quarantined and you really get to think about the extent of what they're dealing with here at this point. Now, the Utah Jazz and these NBA teams travel extensively. There was another game in New Orleans that had to be canceled because the referee in that game had worked the Utah Jazz game earlier in the week. So the tentacles of all of this are really far-reaching across states and into Canada as well where the NBA is also played. So the implications of all of this far and wide across the country. Jim and Poppy?

SCIUTTO: Well, listen, that's one professional league. You've got Major League Baseball has to make a decision, the NHL, the NCAA, college tournaments. Ed Lavandera, thank, very much.

And then for folks at home, their high school athletic leagues, the Little League Baseball season, et cetera. This affects millions of people around the country.

HARLOW: For the latest on how this is unfolding at airports around the world, let's bring in our correspondent, Nick Valencia, he is in Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, one of the busiest. Richard Quest just flew overnight from London Heathrow. That's where he joins us.

Richard, let's just begin with you because the U.K. has been exempt from the president's travel pause, if you will. But just explain what it was like coming there in the midst of all of this and what we know on the ground. RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS EDITOR AT LARGE: Everybody was concerned and worried because people -- we heard the news as we were boarding the plane last night. There was a moment from the gate agent when it wasn't even clear the plane would go. But, ultimately, people wanted to know what happens when they got here and would they be able to get back.

And across Europe today, obviously, there is less flights back to the U.S. before the ban takes effect or the suspension takes effect on Friday night, are going to be extremely busy indeed.

There is chaos, there is confusion, there is uncertainty, but the gist of it is, to clarify, all U.S. national citizens, green card holders, will be allowed to fly from European airports, Schengen airports, back to the U.S. It is European citizens and others, anyone who has been in the Schengen region that will not be allowed to fly back to the U.S. It does not include U.S. citizens.

And, finally, Poppy and Jim, why the U.K. is not included is because the U.K. and Ireland are not part of Schengen, this open border region of the rest of the E.U. So the theory is it's more difficult to get into the U.K. There's not the open border with the rest of Europe, therefore, it should be safer from the U.K. to the U.S. You pay your money, it takes your choice whether that is the case.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And folks might not realize that in Europe, if you're driving around, you don't have to show your passport when you cross borders here.

HARLOW: And you could go into the U.K. with the passport.

SCIUTTO: Nick Valencia, you're at one of the busiest airports in the world right now. What is your sense of domestic travel, just in light of the spread of this fear of travel, fear of being on an airplane, et cetera?

NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we were told by a colleague earlier that their flight last night was just half full on Delta. This morning, it was very active. Morning things have considerably slowed down and there is mixed reaction among those traveling today.

Believe it or not, some telling us that they still think that this coronavirus is being overblown. The majority that we've spoken to, Jim and Poppy, say that they are taking things seriously, they are taking extra precautions. We've seen travelers show up here with gloves, googles, some even using scarves to cover their face and head, if only because they're unsettled by this news that we're learning of a passenger from JFK to fly to West Palm Beach International Airport, upon landing, notifying the airline that they had tested positive for the coronavirus.

We don't know how long that passenger had been feeling symptoms, but those travelers here that I've spoken to and relayed the news who are unsettled by this. JetBlue, the airline that that person was on, releasing a statement that they immediately commenced additional cleaning of the gate area, as well as kiosk, elevators, restrooms and beyond based on security camera footage.

They also say they're in West Palm Beach. Out of an abundance of caution, they closed a concourse where that flight landed.

One thing is clear here at the airport this morning, life feels different for a lot of us. Jim, Poppy?

SCIUTTO: Nick Valencia, Richard Quest, thanks to both of you.

Well, I'm sure you've seen the numbers. The stock market, it is plummeting this morning down now more than 2,000 points, edging up on 9 percent. It caused trading to stop, this after the president banned most travel from Europe. We're going to have the numbers, next.

HARLOW: Plus, all senators this morning briefed on coronavirus and the government response. A Republican senator who was in that briefing joins us to talk about what he learned, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:10:00]

SCIUTTO: Well, listen, the nation is on edge this morning as coronavirus cases spread in the country, and the president's primetime address seemed to raise more questions than it answered.

Here to clear up the confusion.

HARLOW: Epidemiologist Dr. Larry Brilliant and Assistant Professor at George Washington University Hospital Dr. James Phillips.

Good morning to you both. We appreciate it.

We have a number of viewer questions that I'm going to get to in just a minute, but if you could address the main announcement from the president, Dr. Brilliant, last night, and that is this temporary travel pause halting travel for people coming from Europe into the United States.

[10:15:01]

Because the president's former Homeland Security adviser, Tom Bossert, tweeted last night that it's not going to work and is less useful, saying, we have nearly as much disease here in the U.S. as in Europe. Who is right?

DR. LARRY BRILLIANT, EPIDEMIOLOGIST: Good morning. I've been following epidemics since the 1970s when we saw smallpox kill half a billion people.

HARLOW: Right.

BRILLIANT: We have to take a step back. Everybody is frightened and worried right now. We will get through this. But we need to have radical transparency and we need to have enough test kits so we can see how much disease there is. Otherwise, we are blind. So to answer your question, should we be banning travel from countries that export small pox and export COVID to us? We don't know that there are cases in the United States of any epidemiological consequence that are coming from Europe because we don't know where the cases that we have are. Almost all of them are now coming from inside the United States. We need to get millions of test kits out there.

I heard Jim Sciutto earlier today, there's been a total of 11,000 tests while the South Koreans have done almost a quarter of a million. We can't stop this disease unless we have millions test kits in the hand of an epidemiologist.

SCIUTTO: Yes, the number is 11,000 so far nationally in the U.S. South Korea is doing 10,000 a day with a much smaller population, therefore, they can get a handle on this.

BRILLIANT: That is so wrong, epidemiologically. We have to have radical transparency. We have to make test kits as ubiquitous as we can. This is the United States of America. We can solve this problem.

SCIUTTO: Dr. Phillips, I want to get a sense of the numbers here because the estimates are so wildly desperate. We had Vice President Pence on national television this morning saying that we may have thousands of cases. Dr. Sanjay Gupta here said that it's a reasonable estimate that is perhaps as much as 1 percent of the population in the U.S. already has been exposed to this. That would correspond to more than 3 million cases.

You have other estimates. A Harvard epidemiologist is saying perhaps half the population, 50 percent, will be exposed. You've heard Angela Merkel of Germany make a similar estimate, which, of course, it translates to tens of millions. You're an expert here. What is the most reasonable estimate?

DR. JAMES PHILLIPS, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL: Reasonably, we don't know. And that's the problem. Dr. Brilliant is absolutely right. He's been a champion in the media and on social media about getting test kits available.

And the important thing is not just those test kits but also the ability to take those test kits, put them in a machine and determine the outcome and getting as close to the patient as possible, rather than sending it to Atlanta or a faraway place that takes several days.

The numbers that we're seeing right now are expected, right? So those of us who study this stuff, we're not seeing anything that surprises us as far as numbers going up in America. It's going to continue to do so. And the public should be ready for very dramatic increases as testing becomes more available. And not to be frightened by that, just understand it's expected.

HARLOW: Right. Dr. Phillips, I was struck by the op-ed you wrote earlier this week and your opening line is this. We don't have to be helpless in the face of coronavirus. I think a lot of us feel helpless. I guess, what is your message to all of us? PHILLIPS: There is growing anxiety in the country. I think Monday of this week was an inflection point, one of the many coming inflection points, where there is a significant rise in anxiety. As we start to see professional athletes and politicians and celebrities get sick and ill, when we have that first child who gets ill, that first pregnant woman, our anxiety is going to continue to rise. So it's not just old folks and people with comorbidities that we need to be concerned.

What we need to be able do is feel empowered. Right now, people feel helpless, like there's this wave of death coming and there's nothing they can do. I say that's not the case. I say that there is not a wave of death coming but you do need to make yourself as maximally healthy as possible by taking care of the medical problems you already know you have. And maybe by improving your baseline health by even just a few percent, that might be enough to keep you from going over the edge from sick to very sick.

SCIUTTO: Dr. Larry brilliant, we should mention, you contributed to senior technical adviser to the movie, Contagion, which is based on this kind of thing. I just want to ask you a question, because folks at home have so many questions. What is one thing folks can do right now to help protect themselves and their family? Should they already be -- not quarantining but social distancing? What's the first thing they should do?

BRILLIANT: I think the first thing that we should all do is participate in the civic discourse and make sure that our government practices the best healthcare that we can, which means radical transparency, giving us the truth about the numbers.

[10:20:07]

In every epidemic I have worked, the government always has a tendency to underestimate or underplay how bad the epidemic is. The truth is this is a novel virus. There are 8 billion people on there are 8 billion people on the planet. Left alone, it will infect a third or more of us until we have a vaccine, which is the definitive way of solving this problem.

In the meantime, we need to put speed bumps in the path of this virus. Social distancing, closing public spaces, these are the things we need to do, being six feet apart whenever we can, taking care of our own health. Dr. Phillips has given us a wonderful medical prescription for our health and for public health. We need to follow it.

HARLOW: I said I'd get a viewer questions, so here is a quick one. Should we stockpile food and other necessities? I just think this like getting all this toilet paper, et cetera, is any of that justified?

BRILLIANT: I think what we need to do is the same as we would do here in San Francisco in an earthquake or a fire area. Just be wise. Don't underplay it or overplay it. Have enough food and have enough necessities to be able to isolate yourself for two weeks. But let's not go and hoard things.

And, by the way, get some food for the food banks. Poor people don't have the money to hoard things. They don't the money and get things. Let's take care of our brothers and sisters. There can be love in the time of COVID.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Listen, Dr. Brilliant, Dr. Phillips, thanks to both of you. I appreciate you sharing news you could use with our viewers.

HARLOW: We appreciate it very much, gentlemen.

U.S. senators just, moments ago, left a briefing on coronavirus. They were briefed by the top U.S. health officials on it. One of those senators will join us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:25:00]

HARLOW: Right now, several lawmakers from both parties venting frustration after their latest briefing from top U.S. health officials moments ago. Our Manu Raju asked Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito she was satisfied with the level of testing in this country on coronavirus, her answer was, no.

SCIUTTO: Joining us now, Republican Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming. He serves in the Foreign Relations Committee. We should also note, he's a doctor.

Senator, we appreciate you taking the time this morning.

SEN. JOHN BARRASSO (R-WY): Thanks for having me.

SCIUTTO: Let's begin on testing, because this is such a primary concern for, I'm sure, you constituents. We had a lot of viewer questions about it. Less than a week ago, the president said, anyone who wants a test can get a test. In fact, we're learning from inside the briefing that today in a country of 33 million people total, 11,000 tests have been conducted. South Korea is doing 10,000 per day. How many more tests will be out there so the American people can get a sense of how far this has spread and how quickly?

BARRASSO: Well, according to the Center for Disease Control, 4 million more by the end of the week. But the concern rightly expressed by senators from both sides of the aisle is that part of the reagents used in the testing isn't available, so that the number may not be accurate for how many tests can actually be done. And that was the reason for so much concern and basically disappointment on behalf of the American people with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

HARLOW: Given the concern you just outlined on that front, we heard from Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is leading this effort from the medical side, alongside the president said yesterday in his testimony before Congress, we must be much more serious as a country about what we might expect.

On Tuesday, the day before that, this is what the president said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: And we're doing a great job with it, and it will go away. Just stay calm, it will go away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Who is right?

BARRASSO: Well, Tony Fauci was at the briefing today, and they are both right in the sense that Tony Fauci said, the largest growth in new cases right now is coming from Europe. Actually 70 percent of all of the new cases in the world are in Europe, and Europe failed to do what the United States did in terms of putting in a travel ban, Dr. Fauci said. They should have put a travel ban in from China when the United States did.

He went further to say that, from a public health standpoint, the ban that the president put in place last night from Europe was the right thing because in 30 of the 35 states right now in the United States who have positive tests, in 30 of those states, it's a direct connection from Europe.

HARLOW: But the president's former Homeland Security adviser, Tom Bossert, tweeted, there is little value in European travel restrictions. His point is, at this point, this might have worked a long time ago, but at this point, it is just as prevalent the argument is in terms of how as the spread it is across the United States. Is that wrong?

BARRASSO: Well, that's not what the senators heard today from Dr. Tony Fauci, who is a master in terms of understanding virus transmission worldwide. He is our spokesman from the National Institute of Health. He was there through SARS and MERS and H1N1. And if I had to choose anyone to listen to, I'm going to choose Tony Fauci.

SCIUTTO: I want to ask you about numbers here. The vice president, who, as you know, the president designated to be in charge of the response, he said this morning to expect thousands of cases in the U.S.

END