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Senate Close To A Deal On Massive Coronavirus Stimulus Package; New York Governor Issues Alarming Warning To States: We Are Your Future; New Drug Trials Begin In New York Amid Surge In Cases. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired March 24, 2020 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: A dire projection today delivered by Governor Andrew Cuomo, saying his cases are doubling every three days. He says the curve is getting steeper. It is not flattening. And he warns that his state is the canary of the coal for the rest of the country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): Different regions have different curves of the infection. New York is the canary in the coal mine. New York is going first. We have the highest and the fastest rate of infection. What happens to New York is going to wind up happening to California, in Washington State, in Illinois. It's just a matter of time. We're just getting there first.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Cuomo is also calling out the federal government for a lack of proper response. FEMA says they are sending 400 ventilators to New York. Cuomo says he needs 30,000.

President Trump, in the meantime, is looking for ways to open businesses backup. The White House considering several options, which putting younger workers back on the job or relaxing federal guidelines on a state by state basis.

New York has ten times the cases of any other state and Governor Cuomo says the need for hospital beds is greater than was even anticipated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: The number of hospital beds needed could be as high as 140,000 hospital beds.

So flatten the curve, flatten the curve. We haven't flattened the curve. And the curve is actually increasing. That means the number of hospital beds, which is at 53,000 beds, 3,000 ICU beds, the anticipated need now for the height of the curve is 140,000 hospital beds and approximately 40,000 intensive care unit beds.

Those are troubling and astronomical numbers and, as I mentioned, are higher Numbers than had been previously projected.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Shimon Prokupecz is at the Javits Center there in New York City. This is a facility, Shimon, that's been turned into a makeshift medical hospital there. Some dire news, as you heard from Governor Cuomo, when he was speaking at the center. He also took shots at the federal government's response. Is he frustrated right now or is he just feeling like the clock is running out for how lag time they need to put in place to get the stuff done, like beds, et cetera?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think it's both fair to say both here, Brianna, sitting there, listening to him for over an hour talk about the dire need for these ventilators. He's practically begging the government to release -- he said, we need to release these ventilators. There are 20,000 ventilators that need to be released to New York State.

And he explained a lot has changed in the last 24 hours. There is an increase of cases. The apex now, the height of this is coming much sooner than they expected. It's now 14 to 21 days. But he's cautioning that it's probably more likely on the 14-day side. And if they wait any longer for these ventilators, by the time it comes, it's going to be too late. There's going to be no use for that. It's about saving lives in the end. That is what the governor was saying.

And the urgent need, I mean, I cannot underscore enough just hearing the governor. I've listened to him every day. This was about a somber and as urgent as we've heard him, as we've seen him in the last several weeks as he's been talking about this. And it was all about ventilators now and saving lives and how our hospitals are going to decide whose life get saved over another life because there aren't enough ventilators.

The hospital numbers are increasing. There are over 700 people now across the state in ICUs. There are over 3,000 people now hospitalized across the state. There are 25,000 people who tested positive. They have done 90,000 tests. They're testing people at a rate faster than any other city than any other state.

And then also behind me, he's here today because the Javits Center behind me is where they're setting up this temporary federal hospital. This isn't going to see the most urgent of people, people who need urgent care necessarily. A lot of the people are going to be coming here are people who the hospital can't treat because they're going to be so overwhelmed.

So they're setting up sites like this behind me so that if you have a broken leg, so that if you have some other serious injury or issue that needs a doctor's care or a hospital care, you can come here to alleviate some of the pressure from the hospitals.

[13:05:01]

There are ventilators here. There are hospital beds here. There's other equipment here. There are medical supplies. All of that is very much inside, the process is underway, they're building this out, it's probably going to be ready in about seven to ten days.

But I think the most important of all of this today and what the governor was saying was the ventilators. When are we going to get the ventilators? And that was probably and is going to be the most important aspect in all of this in the days going forward, Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes. He said he needs 30,000 of them and he doesn't have them right now. Shimon, thank you so much, Shimon Prokupecz from the Javits Center.

I want to discuss this with Dr. Jennifer Lee. She is an E.R. doctor at George Washington University Hospital and a CNN Medical Analyst. And we also have CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta here with us.

I want to talk about the dire situation in New York both of you. But, first, the World Health Organization has just said, Sanjay, that the U.S. has the potential to be the next epicenter. When you hear that, what is that telling you and what should Americans be taking from that?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, we are not even 4 percent of the world's population and New York City alone, I think, has 5 percent of the world's coronavirus patients now who have been confirmed positive.

So this is not surprising. Obviously, it's not the news that people want to hear. But I think it adds a certain sense of urgency to all these measure that are taking place. I mean, some argued, long, we waited too long to implement these measures. That's what we are sort of thinking at this point. But in terms of going forward, the idea that they need to stay in place for some time to come, I think, is really pretty clear. The numbers are not going to go down.

And, Brianna, as you and I have talked about, the numbers that we are seeing now are sort of a picture of what things are like 10 or 14 days ago between the time someone was exposed, from the time they get tested to testing coming back. They can be 10 or 14 days. What do we think has happened over the last 10 to 14 days? Clearly, there has been more spread. We don't have the testing evidence of that yet. So these numbers -- this is not good news but not surprising news that we are likely the epicenter.

KEILAR: Right. And you just look at the graphs, Dr. Lee, and it's pretty disturbing to see the rise that New York is on. This is a steep increase. Look, we heard what Governor Cuomo said they need. They need masks. They need ventilators. The need beds. They need hospital capacity. They need PPE. Certainly, you understand his frustration, but what do experts who are working with the White House need to do at this very moment?

DR. JENNIFER LEE, E.R. DOCTOR, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL: We absolutely have to focus all our energy on helping New York. You know, as a country, I would say, we have no idea how we are doing in the fight against this virus because we have not had enough testing. In the area where I work in the D.C. metro area, we really have no

idea there are so many patients that I have seen and my colleagues have seen that we wanted to test and we haven't been able to because we haven't had enough testing capacity. As the capacity increases over the next few weeks, we are going to need to do more testing and open up the criteria to do that.

But in the meantime, one thing we know for sure is that New York is suffering and a crisis is coming there. They have over 80 times more identified cases than my home state of Virginia. And we need to do everything we possibly can to send them equipment, to support them in terms of staffing, build a capacity there for this coming surge.

KEILAR: And, Sanjay, the president tweeted, our people want to return to work. They will practice social distancing and all else, and seniors will be watched over protectively and lovingly. We can do two things together. And then he repeats, the cure cannot be worse by far than the problem.

We are learning that White House officials are mulling over some different options on how to ease the social distancing restrictions, including allowing young people to go back to work first, all the way to keeping restrictions for only older and immuno-compromised. Is that good policy, Sanjay?

GUPTA: Well, look, I mean, it's challenging. I am not going to minimize that part of things. But one thing that we have learned, I mean, we know and seen this around the world, is that anybody can be a carrier of this virus. I mean, this idea that there is asymptomatic spread is concerning.

I mean, you imagine, even if you're a young person, you're going to do your job, you come home, you have little kids, maybe you have elderly people who live in your hours. How is life going to work for those people exactly? I was out, I may have the virus. Now, I'm coming and home and possibly going to infect someone who is vulnerable in my home.

[13:10:04]

You have to sort of play this out a little bit, like what is life really going to be like.

I think that as we think about starting to get people back to work, an interesting notion that has come up, Brianna, is that there is a -- you talk about 100,000 or so people that have been tested. And we know that the majority of people who have been confirmed to have the virus, they don't go to the hospital, they do recover from this illness. And Dr. Fauci has argued said that they are probably immunized in a way now.

So you're starting to build a larger and larger population of people who are immunized, in a sense, against this virus because they went through the disease. Maybe those are people that should be released into the workforce early on versus sort of just saying young people, in general. And, again, and I know you know we've all talked about this, but we tend to measure things in terms of who live and who die. We know that 20 percent of those hospitalized in the United States are people between the ages of 20 and 44. So, yes, they are much more likely to survive this, but it doesn't mean that it's not a significant illness still. It can't be a significant illness for young people. So I don't think we should lose sight of that either as we are talking about this.

KEILAR: No, definitely not.

And, Dr. Lee, I wonder just what you think about the timing of discussing sending people back to work when you can't test to see if they are immune or if they are well at a time when we have not even crested this curve when it comes to infections even in the first place it's hitting big time in New York?

LEE: Exactly, Brianna. I think it's reckless. We undertook these measures because we wanted to flatten the curve. And my question is what evidence do we have that we are flattening the curve. In fact, we have evidence that indicates the exact opposite. So we need to test. We need -- the testing is opening up. It is better now than it was a week or two ago or three ago, but once we are able to test more people, we need to rapidly test.

And I think there are opportunities still for some states and some smaller communities who don't have as much coronavirus at this time to test aggressively and potentially contain the virus and protect their residents.

KEILAR: It's a very good point. Dr. Lee, thank you so much. Sanjay, I really appreciate it.

And our special breaking news coverage will continue. We have strong signals coming from Capitol Hill that a stimulus deal could be coming at any moment here. So we'll talk about what it's going to mean for you and your family.

And holding out hope for a coronavirus treatment, drug testing in one state starts today.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:15:00]

KEILAR: Right now, the Senate is inching close to a deal on a stimulus package that could be worth $2 trillion to help Americans and to help businesses due to the financial fallout from the coronavirus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Last night, I thought we were on the five- yard line. Right now, we are on the two. As I also said last night, at this point of the few outstanding issues, I don't see any that can't be overcome within the next few hours.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: This is really the deal that markets are waiting for. Take a look at the Dow here, a sight that we have not seen very often lately. Julia Chatterley is with me from New York, Manu Raju is live at Capitol Hill. And, Manu, the two-yard line, so what are the sticking points here?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they're negotiating some final measures dealing with how they provide aid to states, how they provide aid to hospitals. But both sides agree that those obstacles will be overcome in just a matter of hours. In fact, right now, behind closed doors, Senate Republicans who will take a part in the initial negotiations here are getting briefed about the the outlines of this emerging deal.

Included in there, Senate Majority Mitch McConnell, as well as the top White House officials who have been involved in the discussion, Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary as well as Eric Ueland, who is the White House Legislate Director. They have been involved in marathon negotiations over the last several days with Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority leader, as well as other, as they try to hammer out a final agreement.

Now, today also on the hill is the incoming White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows. So he, I spoke to just moments ago, is optimistic that the deal could come through and he also is a Republicans, House Republican and close to a lot of House Republicans. And they need to get House Republicans on board in order for this bill to be finalized.

And, Brianna, I can tell you the expectation here on the Hill is that this massive $2 trillion measure will pass very quickly once the final party sign off on this. We could see Senate approval and followed by House approval. It would require cooperation of all the members.

The House members don't want to come back in the town. They just want to quickly approve it but they'll need all cooperation as possible. That's why members are getting briefed. And we'll see if they ultimately sign on, Brianna.

KEILAR: And, Julia, what is in this for Americans who have lost their job or are probably going to lose their jobs?

JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN BUSINESS ANCHOR: Great question. First and foremost, cash. Get cash into some form out to people. There was a debate, I believe, over whether it was $1,200 check for adults, the Democrats try to push it up to $1,500. Bottom line, that's the keystone part of this.

Then the next layer, loans, hopefully grants. Let's be clear, no one needs to be racking up more debts for small and medium-sized enterprises in this country. I spoke to the National Retail Federation earlier.

[13:20:00]

52 million employees represented by the sector, we are a nation of consumers, he said, he's got businesses that don't have cash today. They are no longer viable for business. They need money ASAP.

Then the really thorny issue, of course, the corporations and loans for them. This has been whack-a-mole on the conditions that Democrats wanting to see a third of the board, the executives appointed by M.P.s (ph) of these companies. That's gone, I believe. Congress controlling executive pays for ten years, that's gone.

There are a lot of things that remain though, things like collective wage bargaining powers, all sorts of trying to tackle things like climate change. Some of this is very important, and some of this is way less important in the short-term. Bottom line, they have to get this agreed.

KEILAR: They certainly do. And, Manu, one of the things that some folks in Congress are looking back on is that bank bailout, where they gave hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out during the financial crisis, big corporations. And what they found out was if they didn't put safeguards in place or how that money was used, well Wall Street was going to do whatever it could do with that money. So how is that kind of affecting the situation here.

RAJU: Yes. That was a big fight in the last several days over how to structure $500 billion that will be put aside in this measure for loans to distress the industries, to localities, to businesses that need that money. How will that be overseen? Because the concerns have been raised exactly what you mentioned about what happened in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

And what the negotiations apparently have agreed to is an increased oversight over how the treasury secretary doves (ph) that out, over how industries would use those loans. And so we'll have to ultimately see exactly how that language is structured but we do expect that there will be some sort of inspector general, someone who is involve in reviewing how these loans have been allocated.

But it appears to be enough to satisfy Democrats who are pushing for that measure, the Treasury Department seems to have sign on. So that issue is aside, which is one reason why there is a lot of optimism that the sweeping measure could become law as soon as tonight, Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, as soon as tonight. Manu, Julia, thank you so much.

New York state is beginning drug trials to fight the deadly coronavirus, what the results could mean for the rest of America.

And ice skating rinks becoming makeshift morgues. The difficult decisions that are now being made around the world.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:25:00]

KEILAR: Happening right now in New York, drug trials are under way treat coronavirus patients. The state has become the pandemic's epicenter in the U.S. with more than 25,000 cases. But the drugs being tested today come with their own set of controversies. One of them has been touted by the president but not necessarily by scientist.

New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, addressing this issue a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: We are also trying all the new drugs, therapies, the hydroxychloroquine, which the president speaks about and he's optimistic about. And we hope for optimistic results. Also, we are actually starting that today. The president and the FDA accelerated that drug coming to New York.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Elizabeth Cohen, our Senior Medical Correspondent, is here with us. Tell us where we are on these drug trials, Elizabeth.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So, as the governor said, those trials are starting today. Let's talk about that one specific one that he mention, Brianna. Hydroxychloroquine, plus an antibiotic call the azithromycin, when they tried it on 20 patients in France, people who had COVID-19, who had coronavirus, it lowered the viral load in their nose. In other word, they have less of the virus in their nose compared to people who didn't take it.

Is that promising? Yes, that's great. And it will be terrific if this works out. But we don't know until we've done the trials that is something that Dr. Tony Fauci has been adamant about, that we need to do trials to get answers. But they're doing this because it does show some promise. They are safe drugs but there is a narrow margin between the safe dose and the toxic dose so that's why you want to be doing this in a very carefully controlled study.

KEILAR: Yes. No, it's a very good point. because, we've seen actually, Elizabeth, issues where people are getting sick or even dying from at least -- if it's not taking this meds, something that they think is akin to these medications.

COHEN: Right, they're sort of doing DIY medicine, and that is not a good idea. These drugs, again, usually safe but there have been reports of cardiovascular issue, there have been reports of terrible eye damage. You don't want to DIY this.

KEILAR: No DIY. All right, Elizabeth, thank you so much, Elizabeth Cohen, from Atlanta.

I'm joined now by Epidemiologist and Pediatric Infectious Disease Dr. James Campbell. He's with the Center for Vaccine Development at the University of Maryland. He's an expert on respiratory viruses and vaccine.

[13:30:01]

So, Doctor, thank you for being with us. And you see these therapies that are being tested in New York today.