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Georgia, Louisiana Ramp Up Coronavirus Restrictions; Rural Communities Face Unique Coronavirus Challenges; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Mandates 14-Day Quarantine for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut Arrivals. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired March 24, 2020 - 10:30   ET

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

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: What long-lasting changes are you talking about for restaurants?

TOM COLICCHIO, CHEF AND OWNER, CRAFTED HOSPITALITY: Well, the difficult thing with restaurants is, because we don't have a -- you know, large capital reserves. In some cases, none at all. Once we get open, it's really important that we stay open.

And so again, with direct income replacement, if it's over a six-month period, for instance, we could start building up additional cash reserves so we have some runway when we actually get open. Because that's where it's going to be crucial.

Getting -- getting our restaurants open, we're not going to be as busy as we need to be to actually turn a profit, so we're going to need help to make sure those jobs are still there. Because what we don't want to do is get to the point where we could start opening up, but all of a sudden we have to start scaling back and in some cases closing.

SCIUTTO: Yes --

COLICCHIO: That's not going to help. We need those employees to stay employed, so we're going to need some additional runway to get our restaurants open, and some cushion until we get up to full capacity.

SCIUTTO: Understood. Well, listen, we send our best to you and we send best to your employees. We know a lot of people are suffering out there, and we hope to get relief soon. Tom Colicchio --

COLICCHIO: Thank you, Jim.

SCIUTTO: -- thanks very much.

Florida's governor is now pushing back against calls to impose a stay- at-home order there, across the state. Instead, he's announcing restrictions on visitors flying in from three other states. Why? And can that strategy work?

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[10:36:15]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. One-third of all Americans are now under some sort of a shelter-in-place restriction. Atlanta is one of the latest major American cities to impose a two-week stay-at-home order. And for residents across the state of Georgia, though, Governor Brian Kemp taking a different tack. He announced a mandatory shelter-in-place order aimed only at people with increased risk of complications from coronavirus.

CNN's Dianne Gallagher, she's in Atlanta. So, Dianne, this is, you know, a case where you have the mayor of the biggest city in the state taking a very different approach from the governor of the state as a whole. What's the immediate impact? And how do people balance when they're hearing two different things from two different people?

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, if you're in Atlanta, you have a stay-at-home order. But for the general population of the state of Georgia, the rules are a little bit more relaxed.

The governor did ban all large gatherings of more than 10 people across the state, he gave more power to local officials to break up anything they think could be dangerous in terms of the large amount of people gathering, he also increased the amount that SNAP -- of SNAP benefits that recipients will get, and he closed bars and nightclubs, Jim. But of course, yes, not as far as they went here in Atlanta with that stay-at-home order.

SCIUTTO: Let's talk about another state that I think a lot of our viewers have not heard about, the impact there. That's the state of Louisiana. The governor there says that in the last two weeks, Louisiana's case growth rate has been faster than any state in the country. What actions are being taken there and how far has the outbreak spread?

GALLAGHER: You're right. I don't think many people realize just how bad it is in Louisiana right now. The governor just issued a request to the president, asking for a declaration of major disaster in his state. It is the third state per capita in terms of cases after New York and Washington right now, Jim. They have at least 1,200 cases as of yesterday at noon.

Louisiana's taken the same sort of approach as the CDC, having a once- a-day release of the numbers there, at least 34 people have died. They're also dealing with clusters in retirement centers. In one retirement center in the New Orleans area, at least nine people have died, they're dealing with more than 30 cases there. And they're looking at other retirement centers across the state, seeing the same thing.

There has been a stay-at-home order issued in Louisiana, Jim, but they said they need more help or they're going to run out of hospital capacity in the next seven to 10 days.

SCIUTTO: Yes, a lot of those communities, they have real limits in terms of hospital beds, et cetera. Dianna Gallagher, thanks for being on top of it. We'll keep you updated. [10:38:55]

West Virginia, another state like we're talking about, the last state to discover a positive coronavirus case. But with a large rural population there, there are now legitimate concerns about the state's ability to treat patients in those communities as the numbers rise. We're going to take a look there, right after this break.

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SCIUTTO: Welcome back. You're familiar with this, major cities like Seattle and New York, taking every measure to fight off this pandemic. But what you may not be hearing is that rural communities across the nation, they are also preparing for the worst.

Joining me now, Dr. Michael Brumage. He's the medical director of Cabin Creek Health Systems in West Virginia. Good to have you on, Doctor. You say that although to this point, rural communities like yours are less affected by this, your concern is they don't have the infrastructure when the numbers inevitably go up. Tell me what they're lacking.

MICHAEL BRUMAGE, MEDICAL DIRECTOR, CABIN CREEK HEALTH SYSTEMS: Well, right now, we're lacking a number of things including, like everywhere else, the absence of or lack of N95, respirators. We're also lacking in testing kits that are able to detect disease among people.

We're fortunate at Cabin Creek, we've tested 35 people so far, 15 are negative, 20 are pending. But there's this general absence of testing kits. And plus, we're dealing with a sicker population at large.

The Kaiser Family Foundation recently did a study for adults over 20, and found out that West Virginia has 51 percent of our population at high risk for COVID-19 complications, compared with 41 percent nationally.

[10:45:04]

SCIUTTO: I see, OK. And that's a real concern because they of course have been bearing the brunt of the serious cases of this illness.

I wonder, speaking to doctors, have they been beginning to hear of calls from some rural communities around the country, saying, hey, we're starting to see cases, we can't handle all these cases. Should we see those as canaries in a coalmine to some degree, about this spreading beyond those kind of populated centers around the coasts?

BRUMAGE: Yes, absolutely. I think what we're dealing with right now is that calm before the storm. Right now, we run an outpatient population -- sorry, outpatient -- patient clinics through northern and eastern Kanawha County, West Virginia.

We're not really seeing an uptick in cases dramatically yet, but our hospitals would really bear the brunt of all of this, if we had this wave of disease sweeping through our community like this. And we do have an at-risk population here. SCIUTTO: Understood. And I wonder this as well, though. Do -- does

lower population, do the lower population concentrations provide something of an advantage, though, when you speak about social distancing, et cetera? In other words, by its very nature, folks aren't living on top of each other in a lot of these communities.

BRUMAGE: Yes. And that's one advantage, I think, most places in rural America have, is that we do tend to live apart. Here in West Virginia, the landscape is such that people either live on the top of ridges, or they live down in the hollows, in the valleys. And so we tend to keep our distance anyway because of the topography.

But when it inevitably arrives -- and it is here already, we know it's spreading in our community. We've had the first community transmission in the state reported. We know that this is going to bear a very heavy burden unless people can maintain social distancing.

And so far, I think most of the people I'm connected with on social media are strongly in favor of strong social distancing measures and supportive of the governor putting us in a position where we are not doing business as usual, essential services only.

SCIUTTO: Understood. It depends on all of us, right? You know, we're in this together when it comes to social distancing and responding to this. Dr. Michael Brumage, we wish you and members of your community all the best of luck as you handle this.

BRUMAGE: Thank you very much.

SCIUTTO: Coming up next this hour, some domestic travelers are quarantined inside Florida's new plan to fight the coronavirus pandemic.

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[10:52:00]

SCIUTTO: The state of Florida is resisting calls to impose a statewide lockdown or shelter-in-place order. Governor Ron DeSantis there is mandating that travelers arriving from airports in three states -- New York, New Jersey and Connecticut -- self-quarantine or isolate themselves for 14 days.

CNN's Rosa Flores is at Miami International Airport. So, Rosa, how does the governor propose to enforce this, particularly as he's under pressure to take more action?

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, about enforcement, Jim, according to the governor, he says that law enforcement officers and members of the Department of Health will meet passengers from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut at the airport. They will take their temperature and also gather some information. And at that point, the order mandating the 14-day mandatory quarantine will be issued. And that a violation of that order is also a violation of Florida law. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): It is actually a criminal offense if you violate the quarantine orders. And so people could end up being held accountable here in the state of Florida, if they -- if they buck the law.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FLORES: And according to the executive order, a violation would be second-degree misdemeanor, punishable with up to 60 days in prison.

Now, all of this is happening as more and more states, more governors are issuing shelter-in-place orders, and the governor of Florida is getting criticized for not issuing one, including in a scathing editorial by the "Miami Herald," where they urged the governors of New York and Connecticut to share their strategies with the governor of Florida so that he could issue a shelter-in-place in the Sunshine State -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: So as you're there, are people doing this on their own to some degree? I mean, the streets behind you look relatively empty, you know, outside the airport there. But are people doing some of this of their own volition?

FLORES: You know, some localities are issuing stay-at-home orders. Just today, Miami Beach announced that that's exactly what they're recommending for their citizens to do.

Governor Ron DeSantis says that he maintains that he's not going to issue the order because he says that not every corner of the state has been impacted by the coronavirus, saying that in at least 20 counties, there are zero cases -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Rosa Flores there in Miami, thanks very much.

[10:54:35]

We are waiting to hear now from New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. He's going to be speaking shortly. We'll bring those comments to you, live.

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JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: Hello, everyone. I'm John King in Washington. Any moment now, the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, will update us on the response efforts. This, as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in New York State continues to go up. It is the epicenter now, at more than 21,000. We will bring you the governor's remarks as soon as he speaks. You see it there, New York City.

Here we go. The governor's now starting, Andrew Cuomo at the Javits Center.

[10:59:46]

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): -- General Patrick Murphy. My left, we have General Raymond Shields. These are two gentlemen who I have been through many situations with. We've been through hell and back.