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New York Governor Andrew Cuomo: 1000 Workers Statewide Processing Flood Of Jobless Claims; New York Governor Andrew Cuomo: A Record 799 Deaths Wednesday, 7067 Total To Date; Houston Area Has More Known Cases Than Anywhere Else In Texas; CDC Issues New Guidelines For Essential Workers; Dr. Anthony Fauci: Antibody Testing Should Cover Nearly Every American. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired April 09, 2020 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As the Governor said we've been working with Google today between 5 and 7 pm. This system is going to go down to reboot 7 o'clock the new application goes online, streamlined a fewer questions and once you get to the end of that if you successfully fill it out it is going to say you're finished with the application process.

If there is any information that is left blank it is going to say don't call us we will call you within 72 hours - as the Governor said now has 1000 people on the phone lines they're going to be reaching out directly to the people. So that people don't have to go through this inferior process of calling and getting busy signals and thereby collapsing the system.

So hopefully starting today after 7 o'clock this system will be much better streamlined but as the Governor said it's a volume issue that we've never experienced.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Governor, last night you active chief - paint workers. Can you talk about - and also what made you to write that power to - contracts?

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): Yes. I'll ask Robin speak about the financial stress that the state is under. But look so many of these things we've never seen before. We've never seen the financial devastation done to the state budget the way it is happened here.

Again, in my lifetime we go back to 9/11 which was the catastrophic event. This is more devastating to the New York economy and New York budget which is the function of the New York economy then 9/11 by far. But Rob, do you want to speak to the question Karen's question?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sure. Just look at in the context that we're talking about. We're looking at a revenue shortfall of between 10 to $15 billion and those numbers are trending more towards the middle of that right now.

Look at the context of where we have 50 percent of the workforce is staying at home just of the state workforce as Melissa just mentioned over 800,000 new unemployment claims in the past three weeks. And we don't have frankly don't have the money right to make these parents.

We think at this time it makes sense to take a pause the two percent raises don't go in effect for at least 90 days and 90 days we'll review it. Once we have a better picture of what the state's fiscal picture looks like we've been asking the Federal Government to provide assistance to the state.

If you look at a lot of labor unions recognized the state only has a certain amount of resources trying to prioritize those resources right now to fund the healthcare crisis. On the mid - between now and then let's take a break and let's see if the Federal Government is going to step up provide the state with more resources to deal with the revenue shortfall and then we can deal with those commitments.

To your question on where does this take if they have the authority? Within the pay bills for each of these contracts from the legislature passes them there are provisions in there to allow for withholds of these payments. So that's what we're relying on right now. And again we will relook at it in 90 days once we have a better perspective.

CUOMO: Look. Life is options right you have a 10 to $15 billion dollar shortfall. What are you going to do about it? I can't just sit here and say I'm efficiently operating the state. I know we don't have the money to pay the bills that were occurring right now.

The options are you could do layoffs of state workers option "A" option "B" you could buy some time with freezing the raises to state workers. I choose option "B" rather than laying off people which would only add to the unemployment claims the stress the hardship.

Let's freeze the raises because that's better than losing your job and let's see if the Federal Government actually does what they said they have been going to do for the past several weeks which is passed legislation that understands the level of the crisis and guess the state some funding to stabilize our finances.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Just for Rob. How many people of workers this is a fact.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's about the 80,000.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How much is it calculated that it'll say if there's been a bunch of stuff three and a half?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: About $50 million dollars for the 90 day period.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Governor where are we on the antibody testing? Do you plan to you know share that once it gets approval with New Jersey and Connecticut to coordinate and testing protocols for getting back?

CUOMO: Yes. We are doing the antibody testing as we speak. State Department of Health has improved antibody test is now about bringing it to scale. All of these testing protocols they basically exist none of them are at scale and that's the next challenge. How to get rapid testing 15 minute test to scale? Right, we need millions of them. We have roughly a work force of about 8 million people. You want people to go back to work how many of those 8 million can you test on the rapid testing? How many can you test on the antibody test to see if they were infected? How many can you treat on the convalescent plasma protocols which were asking for blood donations?

[12:05:00]

CUOMO: So all of them to question come to scale these are not government run programs. They are basically private sector run programs. So we're reaching out and working with private sector companies who could bring these tests to scale in New York.

Whatever we do I tried to do with New Jersey and Connecticut. Again because this is not a New York centric situation this is a national situation. The best I can coordinate is by doing it regionally with New Jersey and Connecticut.

And we talk about the tri state metropolitan area the work force comes in to New York City, New Jersey and Connecticut there's a lot of sharing among those three states. So whatever we try to do we try to do together and we all we are doing this.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It sounds like in terms of--

CUOMO: Same thing, I spoke to Governor--

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Andrew Cuomo the Governor of New York giving his daily Coronavirus update reflecting yet again as he does every day on the deep complexities both from a health care perspective and an economic perspective the state budgeting perspective of this pandemic.

Some encouraging news in the Governor if that's the right word in this pandemic. He says that rate of hospitalization the number of New Yorkers who are hospitalized is going down. The number of New Yorkers who require intensive care and intubation meaning ventilators is down.

But the Governor also again announcing the status of the sad news as he puts it another increase 799 New Yorkers dying just yesterday that is another day to day record as the New York death count continues to build. The scientists tell you that's what happens even if you're starting to get to a plateau 7067 New Yorkers have now given their life in this Coronavirus pandemic.

New York of course still the epicenter others around the country watching this including in Houston joining me now is Dr. Cedric Dark. He is an Assistant Professor at the Baylor College of Medicine also an ER Physician.

Doctor I appreciate you being here today. So you're in Houston in Harris County where you're still going up the slope when you listen to the Governor of New York who believes he's at a plateau the death numbers are staggering and so it is - I can ever find the right words there is no good news in this story? But when you do hear the more encouraging or less discouraging news about rate of hospitalizations down the number of intensive care units needed down. What does that tell you with someone who is on your behind New York if you will in terms of the build? What do you learn from that?

DR. CEDRIC DARK, ER PHYSICIAN AND ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: I mean one of the great things as there is light at the end of the tunnel for New Yorkers and I'd like to send you know my prayers and well wishes to all my friends that are in New York that are practicing there and folks that I know from medical school being a medical student in NYUS health.

KING: And so, where are you? Where are you in Houston as you go through this? What are you saying and again you've been able to see what has happened in New York in New Jersey other places that have developed faster more quickly than your area? So, what are you seeing now and what does it tell you when you compare it to others and compare notes?

DARK: So, what I would say - what it's like in Houston right now is it's the calm before the storm if I can use that hurricane analogy that we're so used to in the Gulf Coast here. Right now, in our hospital and I work at a public hospital in Houston we have 11 positive cases in our hospital itself.

We have 30 patients under investigation essentially waiting for testing. Over the past month or so we've had 24 positive tests that were as of last night. Actually, this morning Dr Chuck Becker sent me a text message or an email saying that one of the patients I saw previously in the week tested positive so that numbers creeped up one more.

The nice thing for us in Houston is that the numbers of positive patients are about 7 percent of all those that we've tested which is drastically lower than what we've seen out in New York. Second just a little bit of hope that we are not having as huge a surge as what is happening in New York however you know they're still over two thousand cases in Harris County.

Texas is approaching 10.000 cases and so as I said this is the calm before the storm. We are expecting a peak to happen it may happen in the next couple of weeks. It may take up to a month, but we have to get ourselves ready for that.

And as such we have actually been trying to do that over the past let's say 5 to 6 weeks in our department by creating what we call the respiratory decision unit. Some of us like to call it Corona built essentially where we see about 40 to 60 patients per day isolated from the rest of the emergency department.

And so when someone checks and then they have symptoms like cough or fever body aches we send them to that separate area of the emergency department where providers can use the maximum personal protective equipment or PPE available to reduce the risk of infection to healthcare workers. The remainder of our emergency department the places where the heart attacks and the strokes and let's say the appendicitis cases go. Those still are seen by patient - physicians and nurses and respiratory technicians and the remainder of our technicians wearing surgical masks.

[12:10:00]

DARK: Because one of the biggest dangers of this is not necessarily contracting the disease from our patients but also from ourselves because as you know asymptomatic transmission is a very possible thing. And we are sitting in close proximity to one another throughout the day without wearing a mask we could always infect one another.

KING: I hope those lessons learned help as you go as you say the calm before the storm. Doctor keep in touch as this plays out in Harris County in Houston obviously a giant growing here the United States. We will watch how you deal with and we wish you the best of luck. Thank you, Sir.

DARK: Thank you.

KING: CNN's Shimon Prokupecz is in New York and I was listening to - the Governor makes his presentation a bit earlier. Shimon again it's always a tough challenge for the Governor in the sense that he goes through the death count which continues to rise which is horrific and painful.

But in those other numbers, hospitalizations intensive care units a drop that the Governor says hopefully he kept saying so far. He kept urging New Yorkers do not go out do not think now is the time for lax. But so far he says he sees a flattening of the curve.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So far, he does see that flattening of the curve John. The biggest thing now I think for New York City officials certainly state officials is that people are going to think this is over and that somehow, they don't have to abide by the stay at home and social distancing.

And that is the biggest concern right now for city officials. They still need people to stay home. It's going to be quite some time before things return to normal. I mean the Mayor was talking earlier that we may not get back to normal until June.

They need sustained periods of flattening the curve. They need to keep seeing the numbers go down as they're starting to see, and they want it to continue. That's only going to happen is people keep following the rules staying at home, social distancing.

So, it's going to be some time I think before we see anything return to normal here in New York City or even a hint of some normalcy. The numbers are good. The sad part of course is that the number of people that are dying keeps increasing.

Of course, these are people who've been in the hospital for some time now. They are on ventilators they may have other issues. And so, they're not surviving and that's sad. The thing for the hospitals and doctors and some of the nurses and hospital officials that I've talked to, they are seeing signs that less people are coming into the hospital.

Admissions are down, people coming into the into the emergency room is down. So, what's allowing them to do is focus on a lot of the critical patients giving more time to these critical patients that still remaining in the hospital that are still on ventilators.

And, of course, it's easing the pressure on a lot of these doctors and nurses who been working so hard throughout this. And seeing the numbers go down seeing some of the help that they got in the relief from state officials the transfers by transferring some of patients from hospital to hospital some of the patients at the Javits Center all that is working and helping them with the stress and what they've been dealing for the last few weeks John.

KING: Shimon Prokupecz for us in New York. Shimon, I appreciate that live reporting. And let's go now to the folks Shimon was talking about dealing with this right on the front lines in New York. Sharon Pollard is the Director of Respiratory Care at Long Island Jewish Medical Center with hers is Jojey Abraham he's a Respiratory Therapist also at the Long Island Jewish Medical Center.

Thank you both for joining us. We really appreciate your time today and applaud and your bravery in your work throughout this. Following on what we heard from the Governor today what we just heard from Shimon you're in Long Island which is the Governor mentioned New York City seems to be getting better but he's worried very much about the suburbs and this is supposed to be New York's work week? Tell us what you're seeing? Let's start with you Sharon.

SHARON POLLARD, DIRECTOR OF RESPIRATORY CARE, LONG ISLAND JEWISH MEDICAL CENTER: We're still seeing a lot of integrations and ventilator usage, but it seems better than it was a week ago. Where it seemed like it peaked at that point and the usage continue to be high, but it didn't seem like it was happening at pace it happened early in the week.

KING: And Jojey to that point the patients coming in there was a fear just a few weeks ago that New York would not have enough especially when it came to the sensitive ventilators and the respirators and the like? The Governor saying those efforts to flatten the curve have made it so that it is sustainable at your level at the level of patient care. Do you have everything you need?

JOJEY ABHRAHAM, RESPIRATORY THERAPIST, LONG ISLAND JEWISH MEDICAL CENTER: We do. Our administrators Sharon our other bosses everyone's getting us all the stuff we need. We feel fully safe and we're able to take care of our patients the best that we can. It's unfortunate we feel bad for the hospitals but at Northwell we're lucky to have a great team who take care of this stuff.

[12:15:00]

KING: And Sharon in terms of the - do you have do you believe you have firm evidence that the social distancing is working or one of the concerns in the city early on with the people are then going to move out into the suburbs to escape sort of the density of New York City and move out into the suburban areas? You're saying you see clear signs of progress?

POLLARD: Yes. I think people didn't move out to the suburbs or for a while we saw a great increase in the number of intubations and people on ventilators. But this week so far it's not at the same level it was a week ago.

Yes, so a lot of them I'm not saying there are not a lot, there are a lot of them but it just seems not to be as drastic it was at the end of last week.

KING: Sharon and Jojey I want thank you for your time and especially I want to thank you for your courage and your bravery in helping people get through this and best the best of luck in the tough days ahead.

Coming up for us here there may be some New Hope in the fight against Coronavirus could a 100-year-old vaccine meant for tuberculosis help protect us from COVID-19.

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[12:20:00]

KING: Public health experts say life cannot fully returned to normal unless and until there is a vaccine for the Coronavirus. Today researchers say a 100-year-old tuberculosis vaccine could offer some promise. CNN's Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now. Elizabeth why do they think this particular vaccine might work?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: John it's kind of intriguing there it was noticed that in developing countries that use this vaccine and it's a very widely used tuberculosis vaccine in the developing countries that those countries tend to have lower rates of COVID lower rates of Coronavirus compared to developed countries.

So they said well could it be the vaccine let's study it. So trials are going on right now in the Netherlands and in Australia. They expect they could have results in say three to six months. It's a little bit unclear but somewhere in that neighborhood.

And it'll be interesting to see if it works. There is a huge caveat here just because those developing countries have lower rates of Coronavirus does not mean that the vaccine is the reason why there are so many reasons why those countries could have lower rates?

They might not be testing as much. They don't have the infrastructure. They don't have the money to do testing if you don't test, you're not going to find the cases. Also, in those countries perhaps there's not as much international travel which of course will up your case count.

So it's not clear that it's the vaccine that's helping them out but they're studying to find out John. KING: And in the middle of this Elizabeth therapeutics months away a

vaccine a year or more away most likely so in the interim the CDC putting out some new guidelines for essential workers essentially say some people can go back to work but what?

COHEN: Right can go back to work after they've been exposed to Coronavirus so not people with Coronavirus people who've been exposed to Coronavirus. So, let's say a doctor or nurse is taking care of someone later it turns out that someone had Coronavirus and the doctor and nurse wasn't wearing full protective gear they might have been exposed.

In some countries they're testing that doctor or nurse to see. In this country we're not what we're saying is hey you can still work. You should wear a mask. You should take your temperature before you come in to work. You should social distance don't congregate with your fellow doctors and nurses in the break room.

If you actually start to feel sick you definitely shouldn't come to work. They're saying but you can work as long as you do all of those things. Now this is also true for people for example who work in the food chain supply. It's also true for first responders these are the guidelines the CDC is putting out.

And I will tell you John that I've spoken to experts who are not happy with this. They say wouldn't it we really ought to test these people and see if they have Coronavirus rather than just putting the back out there but it's a guideline of necessity because we just don't have enough workers at this point.

KING: Especially on the front lines whether it's in the hospitals public transit in the like Elizabeth Cohen I appreciate your insights there. Joining me now to continue the conversation share his expertise and insights Dr. Christian Brechot he's President of the Global Virus Network.

Doctor Brechot thank you for being here help us first just with a little calendar context - it's our pleasure sir. So, they're all these research on potential therapeutics from antibody testing to other things.

All those research on vaccines what is your best hope based on what you know today? Where on the calendar should we be looking for something on the therapeutic front that has been tested and proven and a vaccine? When is the earliest we could see those things?

DR. CHRISTIAN BRECHOT, PRESIDENT, GLOBAL VIRUS NETWORK: Right and yes before coming to this one. And you mentioned this diner sick is at the heart of its strategy against infectious disease and it is a fact that now we are going to have the antibody testing available we definitely changed the way we can fight I would say against this virus.

So this is a very important point but we need to validate these - test and this is what is presently going on the Global Virus Network which is composed of about 50 research centers all of those are whether we continued to ease. No talking about vaccine, we have huge important vaccine and commanded the fault of so many companies and I - we still have to - nobody has ever so far developed an efficient vaccines against a human Coronavirus.

So I'm sure - to come I'm sure about who would succeed but we have to know is difficult. So we do have a number of possibilities and many trials which are coming but as you have introduced what would be at least say 18 months or two years. So this is not for the first to find.

[12:25:00]

BRECHOT: The introduction you made on the BCG vaccine as also - the immunity against the Coronavirus is very intriguing and by the way is a bit not only - of Coronavirus but you have now some people which is short collision between an efficient BCG vaccination and it must deteriorate.

This has to be confirmed but that could be extremely important. But this is not a specific vaccine. So, for a specific vaccine we will have one, but we need to look at studies. You see we know that you do not have antibodies but for how long? How many of them are neutralizing? Do we have a cellular immune response?

And I know they are hugely fought worldwide and I'm also a Professor at the University of South Florida and I can see the photo for award universities as on these parameters. And - universities obviously in particular many - achievement is very much connected with.

So, they - vaccine we will have one. It could take some time and we also have to be careful to balance of these kinds of benefits, They got - treatment is a very good news is that when patients have a very severe - there is really - about Immuno Modulation we have what we call anti - can have a very significant effect.

We know so much molecules so it has Hydroxychloroquine and - can have an effect most specifically in the early phase of infections. And finally, we have the new - which are aiming to test the --. So, I really believe it but we are facing an extremely difficult situation it is really heartbreaking to see what's going on.

But that is a global effort of so many universities and again these networks such as a Global Virus Network which definitely leads to success.

KING: We certainly hope that this on the therapeutic front come sooner rather than later as we wait as you lay out the very important safety guidelines to wait as the vaccine 18 months or more. Dr. Brechot we very much appreciate your insights as we go forward.

Here up next for us we shift from the medical impact to the economic. Another record-breaking week a bad week for the economy millions more falling jobless claims. This as the President says he hopes the economy will bounce back as quickly as possible.

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