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California Governor Orders Entire State To Stay Home; Senate Democrats, GOP, White House Officials Meet On Stimulus. Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired March 20, 2020 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: Good morning, everyone, I'm Poppy Harlow. It is the top of the hour Friday, March 20th.

And this morning, drastic measures and dire warnings as Americans wonder what is coming next. The entire State of California is now on lockdown. California's governor overnight ordering 40 million people, the entire state, to stay home with a stunning prediction that more than half of the state's population, 56 percent, will be infected with coronavirus over the next two months.

Here in New York City, the mayor says hospitals are on track to run out of key supplies like masks and ventilators in just two three weeks if immediate action is not taken. And across the country, officials sounding the alarm as critical supplies needed to treat patients, and, of course, to protect the medical team who is treating them, are running out.

And on Capitol Hill, lawmakers are working on a trillion-dollar stimulus package hoping to try to stem the massive, devastating economic impact currently affecting millions of you. It comes as Goldman Sachs is predicting a stunning number this morning. They suspect 2 million Americans filed unemployment claims this week alone again. If that is the case, it would be the highest level in a single week on record.

Let's begin though in Los Angeles, California. Our Kyung Lah is there with this new order by the governor. Kyung?

KYUNG LAH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy, this is what the new order looks like. 40 million people in California ordered to stay home by the governor, and this is the result. Normally on this sidewalk, because I don't live that far from here, you start to see people getting up, grabbing the morning paper, getting their coffee, food deliveries being made, trucks delivering everything in the morning to businesses. And there is absolutely nobody on the sidewalk. It is extraordinarily rare here in this community.

What the governor has ordered in the country's most populous state is for people to stay home. Don't go to work, don't go to school and do this to try to contain the coronavirus.

And so much has changed in just 24 hours. This sign, this is a bakery. It normally is open by now. It's 7:00 A.M. here. It is not open today. Yesterday, they were putting this optimistic, we are in this together, and right now they're simply not able to open.

What we do want to point out, Poppy, is that the governor says that he got to this point because of math, that if California continues along this path, 56 percent of the state would be infected with the coronavirus in just eight weeks.

And so that was it, that was the decision, they wanted to make sure that people who did get sick, Poppy, would be able to get care. Poppy?

HARLOW: And just how quickly this has developed, Kyung? I was listening to him on with Wolf last weekend, so less than a week ago, and he wasn't even sure if they were going to close the schools. And now, the entire state is on lockdown. It shows how quickly this is progressing, right?

LAH: Yes, absolutely. I mean, again, just hours ago, these businesses were thinking that they would still be able to open and a lot of them now are choosing to stay closed.

HARLOW: Kyung, thank you for that reporting.

So here in New York City, the dire plea is for medical supplies. The warning from the mayor is that this city, the hospitals will run out of necessary supplies in two to three weeks. Mayor de Blasio says the city need 45 million pieces of PPE or protective equipment, like surgical gowns, gloves, face masks to fight this epidemic -- this pandemic, I should say. There's also critical need ventilators across the country.

Our Sara Sidner is with us for a closer look at that need.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The vast majority of us will survive novel coronavirus. But for many of those who become critically ill, their lives will depend on whether there are enough ventilator systems to save them.

MIKE LEAVITT, FORMER SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: We simply are not going to have enough ventilators. We're not going to have enough capacity if we allow this virus to take the natural course, and it will. We're at war.

SIDNER: And if the U.S. outbreak tracks similarly to what happened in (INAUDIBLE) will be overwhelmed.

DR. IRWIN REDLENER, PROFESSOR OF HEALTH POLICY MANAGEMENT, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: We are so incredibly underprepared for a major onslaught to the hospitals, which is basically now inevitable.

[10:05:04] SIDNER: The desperation for ventilators made clear by governors around the country.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): We have about 5,000 or 6,000 secured. We need 30,000. I mean, this is a bad situation.

GOV. MIKE DEWINE (R-OH): We do not want to be in a position that the poor people who are -- they're deciding who is going to live and who is going to die because they don't have enough respirators, they don't have equipment.

SIDNER: And yet that's exactly where we could find ourselves, experts warn.

There are only about 12 large-scale global companies that produce ventilators, but there are also start-ups trying to help fill the gaps. One of them is smack in the middle of where the deadliest outbreak of coronavirus has happened yet in the entire United States.

Ventec Life Systems is located just outside Seattle, Washington. It's racing to produce ventilator systems called VOCSN, trying to go for making hundreds of units a month to thousands.

It's not just a matter of having enough ventilators. There are a number of other things that work in conjunction with the ventilator to keep patients alive. We're talking about oxygen, cough assist, also a suction unit and a nebulizer. All of these things have to work properly to keep someone breathing. And this company has the device that can work in a hospital but it can also work at to asking about your product?

Who is reaching about your product?

CHRIS KIPLE, CEO, VENTEC LIFE SYSTEMS: We are literally having conversations with states, federal bases. We're trying to do as much as we can to increase our production capacity to meet the demand and help save lives.

SIDNER: He says government systems from 65 other countries are in talks with them as well as hospitals. The Society of Critical Medicine says according to a 2009 study, there are about 60,000 functional machines in the U.S., nearly 100,000 that were obsolete but could be used. And even with all those, it would not meet America's needs if the Italy scenario happens here.

KIPLE: The only way you save lives right now without a vaccine is having access to a ventilator.

SIDNER: Those in America's stockpile are only supposed to bridge the gap until industry can ramp up. That's why this operation is now going 24/7. His employees can't work from home, so there is a serious effort to ensure they don't contract the virus.

They are greeted, as we were, with a thermometer, hand -- who can maneuver testing and assembling parts with them on. The product is tested here and shipped here. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Everything can be accessed literally at the touch of a button. So let's say I want to activate a patient's cough. I just go to the cough icon here. I can preset any amount of cough, a small cough, a big cough, and all I have to do is hit start.

SIDNER: The question still still unanswered, how many units will be needed to ensure no one dies simply because there weren't enough ventilator systems to breathe life into them?

Sara Sidner, Bothell, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Exactly. Sara, thank you for that reporting

Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta is with me again along with Dennis Carroll, an infectious disease expert. Thank you both for being here.

Sanjay, I want to get to the president and the FDA and potential new drugs in a moment, but let's just begin with the supply. We just had Mayor de Blasio on essentially screaming, pleading for help from the federal government. The fact that New York City, which has 30 percent of the cases in the country, he says now, could run out of these supplies within two to three weeks, that is where we are this morning?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, look, it's tough to imagine, but there're all sorts of different things that are going on here. First of all, some of this was predictable because a lot of this has been modelled in the past looking at flu pandemics, what sort of supplies are going to be necessary, what sort of ventilators, Sara was just talking about.

But one of the things, I think, you have got to keep in mind right now, Poppy, here is the scenario. Because coronavirus is circulating in the community, a patient comes into the hospital, maybe not for an infection type thing, maybe for something else. Doctors see the patient, nurses see the patient, all the healthcare providers, and then that patient tests positive. All those people, all those healthcare providers now need to be quarantined.

So what has to happen to prevent that is to have enough personal protective equipment so that just about every patient visit is done with personal protective equipment. That means every time you see a patient, you have to have personal protective equipment to all the healthcare providers. And you can imagine that starts to make those types of supplies run out. But that's what's happening in a lot of hospitals right now around the country. It's a different sort of model because of the community spread.

HARLOW: So to your point, Dennis, we heard Mayor de Blasio essentially say where is the federal government, and he's calling on the president right now to enact the capability given to him through the Defense Protection Act to potentially force companies to make more of this stuff. Is that the solution, and can they do that in two three weeks?

[10:10:01]

DENNIS CARROLL, INFECTIOUS DISEASE EXPERT: Well, I think what we're watching both in New York and California are leaders taking a real reality check on what they are faced with and what is going to be playing itself out within their states over the next two to three weeks.

And as mentioned, the shortage of supplies are putting health workers and the larger community at risk. The only way you're going to really try to blunt the surge of cases that are likely to come forward is to take the kind of draconian measures that California has announced.

The real tragedy here is that it's not just California and New York. This is a national event, and this is really where the federal government needs to step forward. We cannot expect that the health system is going to be able to deal with the surge in cases that are predictable and will be playing themselves out in every single state across the United States in the weeks to come.

HARLOW: Sanjay, we heard yesterday in that White House update on all of this, the president's request to basically make it easier for the FDA to push drug approvals through its system. And he talked about the possibility that anti-virals, like an anti-malaria drug, could be effective. Listen to the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have to remove every barrier. There were a lot of barriers that were unnecessary. And they've done that to get the rapid deployment of safe, effective treatments, and we think we have some good answers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Can you give us a reality check on what that actually means?

GUPTA: Well, look, I think that everybody on the planet probably, given this is a pandemic, everybody on the planet is hopeful for some sort of therapeutic, therapeutic and anti-viral to treat people after they've become infected as opposed to a vaccine to try to prevent the infection. Everyone wants these.

I think what the president was talking about, an existing drug, it's an 86-year-old drug, chloroquine, used to treat a parasitic infection, malaria, not a viral infection. But there's been some various small studies, a 20-person study out of France, very small, that did show promise. And there have been laboratory studies looking at this drug against another coronavirus, the SARS coronavirus. So I think that that is what sort of inspired this interest, I think, in this particular drug.

But, look, there are two things to keep in mind. It's not approved for coronavirus. It's not. I mean, the studies have not been done. And the second thing is the studies have to be done. I mean, a 20-patient study, you're not going to make big decisions in terms of giving this to the population on such a small study. You don't know how it's going to react on a larger population. That's what needs to be done now and that's going to happen. But it takes time.

I mean, as you know, Poppy, we've talked about there are different phases to clinical trials, and no matter how good our technology is, you can't really speed that part of the process up.

HARLOW: Dennis, what's your read on what the president is saying could be done here to expedite things?

CARROLL: Well, I think, obviously, a drug is highly desirable. But I think bringing it up at this moment is really a distraction. The White House should be very focused on messaging. And the messaging here, social distancing, personal hygiene and taking the kind of community steps that are going to break the back of this transmission.

We all hope for a drug, but as mentioned, right now, we do not have the drug in hand and it's not likely to be available over the coming months. So focus on what needs to be talked about and address those issues.

HARLOW: Fair enough. Doctors, thank you both very, very much. I appreciate it.

All right, we do have some breaking news here in to CNN. The deadline -- the United States has just been moved from April 15th to June 15th -- excuse me -- July 15th -- I'm just looking at Treasury Secretary Mnuchin's tweet there -- to July 15th. So the hope here is that that's going to give people a little break, a little bit of time breath here before your taxes are due.

So, again, the filing deadline for your taxes no longer April 15th.

Happening now, a pivotal meeting underway between Senate Republicans, Democrats and White House officials regarding that trillion-dollar stimulus package. Can a deal be reached between Republicans and Democrats to get you some relief?

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[10:15:00]

HARLOW: Right now, Senate Republicans, Democrats and top administration officials are meeting at the negotiating table over this $1 trillion stimulus package proposal. Let's go to our Senior Congressional Correspondent, Manu Raju, on Capitol Hill.

Manu, everyone wants aid to go out. The disagreement here is in what form, right? Is it checks? Is it to small businesses? Where are we?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's significantly different than what Democrats are putting forward. Now, this proposal, $1 trillion, as you mentioned, does have direct payments to individuals, people who make up to $90,000 a year individuals will get some form of payment. The most people would get would be you can get is $1,200 for individual taxpayers. And after $75,000 mark, it would decrease overtime. But it also has money and loans for airline industries, for instance, $50 billion of loan guarantees for the airlines who are hit hard by this economic crisis.

[10:20:07]

Also other tax incentives for corporations, other money for businesses as well. Democrats argue that this proposal is too corporation- friendly. They are demanding a whole host of other measures. And that's why a number of Democrats going into this first meeting said that they wanted Mitch McConnell to allow Democrats into the negotiation process earlier. But Mitch McConnell said the right way to get this done quickly is for Republicans to get on board themselves and then engage with Democrats.

So what we're seeing today is the first time that the senators have sat down together and start to hash out disagreements about this plan. Staff members, I'm told, continue to have discussions over the last day or so and will continue over the weekend. But both sides recognize the urgency of this. They recognize they have to get a deal at least by early next week, but there is a lot that need to go through, a lot of legislative landmines ahead and uncertainty about exactly when they could pull together this massive proposal. Poppy?

HARLOW: Manu, thanks. Keep us posted.

Governors across the country are dialing up the pressure on the federal government to get them the supplies they need that are running out quickly. During a teleconference, some state leaders warned President Trump that there is not enough medical protection available in their states.

You heard right here from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio saying it's going to run out in two weeks -- two to three weeks. Trump told New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy that states should be working together to get whatever equipment they can, and the federal government is trying to do what it can.

Let's talk to Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security under President Bush about where we are and what can be done. It's so nice to have you, sir. Thanks for the time.

MICHAEL CHERTOFF, FORMER SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY UNDER PRESIDENT BUSH: Hey, Poppy.

HARLOW: You have been in the inner workings of the federal government during crises and moments of need. Mayor de Blasio just said to me in no uncertain terms, and I quote him, where the hell is the federal government right now? Is there more that they can do for states and cities like New York that are running out of equipment?

CHERTOFF: So I think the federal government can do a couple things. The president invoked the Defensive Prevention Act, but I don't know if they actually are going to execute on that yet. You certainly want to use those authorities to get the private sector to produce more than the necessary equipment, recognizing it's not going to happen instantly.

At the same time, we do have medical capabilities in the federal government, the military has them, the V.A. There are a couple of hospital ships. And one of which I'd gather is on its way to California, those were to be mobilized and sent into the field as soon as possible, but, again, recognizing it's not something that will happen instantly.

And the states also have a role to play. The governors control the National Guard. They have certain capabilities. And they ought to be reaching out to the private sector as well.

So this is an all hands on deck moment. It's not a time for finger pointing or shifting responsibility.

HARLOW: Yes, absolutely, right? No time for politics.

As far as we know and understand, the Defense Production Act has not been used yet, right? The president has the authority to do it. He said this week, he would use it in the worst case scenario. At this point, there is no indication it has been used yet.

Can you give us a sense of if you were to say this afternoon, we're kicking this into gear, we're going to mandate companies make certain things? What's the lag time on that meeting? How long would it take? Say, Ford and G.M. have offered to make ventilators. How long would it take to actually turn that in to supplies that we can use?

CHERTOFF: Well, I'm not an engineer. I can't tell you how long it will use to take order production (ph) line to making ventilators. Some things are easier than others. Masks and things of that sort, I think, are relatively easy to turn around. Things that have more precise medical requirements may take a little bit longer. And, of course, you have to distribute them.

But I will say that we are overdue for triggering this. And I wouldn't wait any longer because there is a lag time between when things get reported and when the virus actually spreads, so we're always a couple of steps behind in our situational awareness.

HARLOW: We've just gotten word that the Trump administration is expected to announce plans to halt all non-essential travel between the United States and Mexico, so essentially shutting the southern border except for goods, which is what we saw earlier this week with Canada. What will that actually mean, and is it an effective combatant at this point when we progress so far in the virus?

CHERTOFF: I think at this point, every in the country is putting into effect travel restrictions. Now, there is a supply chain issue for Mexico, and there are many critical supplies for our manufacturing that wind up having original sources for some of the components in Mexico.

On the other hand, right now, I don't get the sense that they are doing a lot of order manufacturing. So it may be that this pause doesn't really have major economic impact. [10:25:00]

What this is about is, again, doing everything we can to flatten the curve, as people have said, and slow up the onset of this so we don't overwhelm our strained medical capabilities.

HARLOW: You wrote about this when you were head of DHS in 2006 about preparedness for a pandemic, and there is no use in Monday morning quarterbacking at this point, but what is your hope going forward that this country, this world, will take away from what we are living through right now?

CHERTOFF: I think we did get complacent. We did not have a pandemic back when I was in office, although we were concerned about avian flu. Since then, there were a couple scares but then no real pandemic. And so it's easy to get out of the habit of exercising, building up resilient supplies and otherwise preparing. And I think in this case, we need to learn the lesson about building extra supplies and training and exercising on a regular basis, because this is going to happen again.

HARLOW: Michael Chertoff, I really appreciate your time, Secretary. Thank you for being here.

CHERTOFF: Stay safe.

HARLOW: Okay. Stay safe. Good luck.

All right, the food industry, right? So many of you are asking is there going to be enough food. The answer is yes. You don't need to panic buy. But once again today, we're going to be joined by a CEO of one of the biggest food companies in the world. The CEO of Kraft Heinz will talk to us about what they're doing in this crisis.