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Health Experts Say True Death Toll in Italy May Never Be Known; South Africa Extends National Lockdown Through End of April; China Starts to Ease Restrictions Amid Fear of Second Wave of Infections; Regulatory Roadblocks Prevented Early Effort to Ramp Up Testing; Interview with Representative Dan Kildee (D-MI) about Flint's Water Crisis. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired April 10, 2020 - 10:30   ET

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


[10:30:00]

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: -- is actually twice as high as the official statistics. Now another problem is that people who die at home and who have not been tested are not being registered as having died from coronavirus. And because of this emergency, they want to get rid of the bodies as quickly as possible. So they're not tested. They're cremated and that's the end of that.

So when this is all over, and God knows when that will be, it is believed that the actual number of people who died from coronavirus will be much higher as well as the actual number of people who actually were infected but were completely without symptoms.

Now, as far as the situation goes here, we are expecting the Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte to announce that the lockdown which began on the 8th of March will be extended all the way to the 3rd of May.

Today is Good Friday. Normally here in front of the Fontana di Trevi, you'd have hundreds of tourists. Today there are none.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Wow.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. Amazing to see.

Let's go -- Ben, thank you. Let's go now to South Africa. David McKenzie is in Johannesburg, South Africa, where the lockdown is effective through April. And I just -- I think enough attention has not really been paid up until now on Africa and what this could mean for the continent.

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right, Poppy. I mean, in one way you can understand that because the numbers haven't been as high as other regions. But it's clear according to scientists that the cases arrived in the African continent substantially later.

If you look at the city behind me and these overhead shots of Johannesburg, this is a vibrant African city completely locked down. The lockdown we're facing in South Africa is much stricter than many other parts of the world, including the U.S. You can't even go for a walk, can't buy alcohol, can't get cigarettes. So it's really strict.

And they've now extended it, as you say, by another two weeks. Even with the case load relatively low. Now the reason for that is they fear, even in South Africa, with a relatively robust health system that COVID-19 could devastate this country's health infrastructure. And if you look at Africa in general, 43 countries in Africa have just five beds per million people, five hospital beds.

That compares to, you know, 4,000 beds per million people in Europe. That is why leaders across this continent have acted decisively and are really trying to stem this spread before it gets out of control. Even though the economy could be shattered by up to 5 percent, 10 percent of the GDP in this region -- Poppy, Jim.

SCIUTTO: David Culver, China, you're in Shanghai. China, of course, the first to be hit by this on a large scale, now the first to begin to lift restrictions, but already concerned about a second wave. Are they seeing hotspots? What are they doing about it?

DAVID CULVER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, here's the deal, Jim. It's happening within the northeastern part of this country along the border with Russia, I mean, the same week that you start to ease the restrictions, as you point out, within Wuhan, the original epicenter of all of this. We had this northeastern city along the border with Russia that is now going into Wuhan-like strict lockdown.

And essentially they are keeping folks inside their homes. They're limited to the amount of time they can come out, once every few days to do grocery shopping and only one person per family. And we can show you images here of office buildings, one in particular, now being converted into additional hospital capacity. So that shows you what they're concerned about and that is these imported cases.

And all of this happening as the Chinese government has now issues a list of livestock that they deem acceptable to be consumed, and of course this has to do with the original source of all of this, and that believed to have been transmission from animals to humans, ultimately at a wet market that was in within Wuhan. And so now they've gotten things like, you know, chickens, cows, pigs, sheep deemed OK.

They leave off that list some of the animals that may have been part of this initial transmission, and that is things like pangolins, bats, cats. Also off that list, Jim and Poppy, interesting to note, dogs. And so if that is approved, it will be early May that they actually make the official approval of that list. It will be the first time that dogs are considered to be off the consumption list here in China. So a lot of things that they're moving forward towards in concerns of a second wave.

SCIUTTO: I think a lot of folks would be amazed that dogs could still be consumed in China.

David Culver, Shanghai, David McKenzie in Johannesburg, Ben Wedeman in Rome, doing it internationally as only CNN can. Thanks so much.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Well, President Trump says we may never have mass coronavirus testing here in the U.S. CNN uncovers how regulatory red tape blocked early efforts to step up testing in January.

[10:35:00]

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SCIUTTO: Well, he said differently for some time, but President Trump is now conceding that mass testing in this country is, in fact, unlikely to happen. This comes as the White House begins pulling back support for federally funded testing at sites across the country.

HARLOW: Well, the president says some two million tests have been administered in the U.S., but CNN has learned how regulatory roadblocks prevented efforts to ramp up testing months ago.

Our Drew Griffin has that reporting.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As coronavirus was silently racing around the world in late January and early February, the federal government not only failed to use the massive arsenal of hundreds of laboratories across the United States for emergency testing, it actually left roadblocks in place to prevent non-government labs from assisting.

[10:40:17]

That is according to documents obtained by CNN and interviews with more than a dozen scientists and physicians involved in coronavirus testing.

DR. AMESH ADALJA, JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR HEALTH SECURITY: At the very beginning of this pandemic, it was the federal government that had the sole ability to do the testing and made it very difficult for private labs, for university labs to make their own tests based on certain regulatory hurdles.

GRIFFIN: Several hospital and university-based labs have told CNN they saw the pandemic approaching, were developing their own tests as early as January to detect the virus. But the red tape with the FDA's regulatory process prevented them from moving forward, meaning labs sat idle.

DR. GLENN MORRIS, UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA: Rather than enlisting the tremendous strength and power of the U.S. laboratory capacity, getting everybody working on this and creating tests and having widespread test availability, we had CDC trying to keep running everything by itself.

GRIFFIN: The federal government was prepared to enforce the rules, sending this memo on February 6th telling state health departments to actively police against labs using their own coronavirus tests. The reasoning behind the tight regulations were good, assure the safety and efficacy of tests, but Dr. Glenn Morris of the University of Florida says the FDA rules were written for normal situations, not a crisis.

MORRIS: When we suddenly hit the point where we were looking at China and seeing what was going on there, what we needed was extremely aggressive leadership. We've got to move fast because otherwise we're going to run into a problem.

GRIFFIN: The problem developed as soon as the CDC rolled out its own test for verification. It didn't work. And weeks were lost as the CDC scrambled to make a new test.

SCOTT BECKER, CEO, ASSOCIATION OF PUBLIC HEALTH LABORATORIES: So we really were in a -- basically on a pause for a few weeks within the public health system, and meanwhile the academic laboratories who had developed their own tests also were not able to test because the regulations didn't allow it at that time.

GRIFFIN: What's even worse, in 2018, after the Zika outbreak, the CDC came up with a plan to avoid the very testing disaster that's happening. CNN obtained a copy of this memorandum of understanding between the commercial and public labs and the CDC that was supposed to increase national laboratory testing in an emergency by engaging commercial labs early in the response. It didn't work.

Dr. Karen Kaul, who runs the laboratory services for NorthShore University HealthSystem in Evanston, Illinois, was one of the labs pushing to launch its own test and was stopped by overbearing red tape.

(On camera): It seems like this has been a bit of a failure.

DR. KAREN KAUL, NORTHSHORE UNIVERSITY HEALTHSYSTEM: I do think there's definitely room for improvement. What's happened is we've had a number of laboratories and a number of manufacturers and groups that are not all working together in a coordinated fashion.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): In a statement to CNN, the FDA insists there was nothing wrong in its process and instead blames individual lab delays where labs did not understand the FDA process and mistakenly believed there was more work involved. Despite that, the FDA did publish new guidelines on February 29th, allowing labs to begin testing. Experts tell CNN it was just too late.

(On camera): In a written response to CNN's questions, the CDC said it did keep laboratory communities up to date about what was happening, but the CDC did not answer questions on why the agency didn't pursue those laboratories getting involved in this massive testing program sooner.

Drew Griffin, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Wow. Drew, thank you. A crisis on top of a crisis. Families in Flint still afraid to use the

water coming out of their pipes says they face the new realities of coronavirus.

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[10:48:33]

HARLOW: Well, in a crisis that focuses so much on washing our hands, right now there are still families in Flint, Michigan, who fear they cannot trust the water coming out of their pipes six years after the lead crisis there was discovered.

Yolanda Harrison is a home care nurse in Flint. She sees six to seven patients a day, and then she goes home to her husband and three children, a family still relying solely on bottled water.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YOLANDA HARRISON, HOME CARE NURSE: This virus has affected my community. People that I've known has passed away from this. This virus has made me scared and paranoid. On a daily basis now, I have to get up and take my temperature and my family's temperature before leaving the home. Also I am dealing with a water crisis. My pipes have not been changed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: With me now, Congressman Dan Kildee. That's his district and he grew up right in Flint township.

Congressman, thank you for being here. I really wanted to shine a light on this community, and I think Yolanda says it all. What do you want to say to her? This is her everyday.

REP. DAN KILDEE (D-MI): Well, this is something I hear every day. The people in Flint have been going through a crisis now for several years, and I think it's important for people to understand that while the whole world is dealing with this coronavirus pandemic, Flint is dealing with a crisis on top of a crisis.

And imagine telling people that they have to wash their hands and then they're turning to the water source that while technically has improved, the truth of the matter is one of the biggest casualties of the Flint water crisis is trust in institutions, institutions of government.

[10:50:10]

So it makes it more difficult for people in Flint to trust what they're being told by any source of authority when they were once told that their water was safe when the state government knew that that water was poison.

HARLOW: And we looked back at the numbers, and as of March 30th, so not that long ago, in Flint, they had excavated 25,400 service lines to replace, and according to the mayor's Web site, 5,000 are still left to check? So it's sort of like an "are you kidding me" moment in America when the direction from the CDC and everyone else is wash your hands and wash them for, you know, 40 seconds, and yet these folks don't trust the water coming out of their pipes.

KILDEE: Yes, and it takes a long time for a community to recover. I think it's important to note, though, that the quality of the water in Flint, while seriously a problem in terms of the fact that people don't trust it, is only one aspect of Flint's recovery. There is a lot more pain that Flint has experienced as a result of the water crisis that goes beyond just the quality of the water itself.

The economic hit has been tremendous, the psychological impact, the fact that one out of five children in the Flint schools require special education services, largely as a result of the water crisis. So there is a lot to this that needs to be addressed, and one of the bigger tragedies would be if somehow we got through this pandemic and then Flint was right back where it started from.

That was our goal with the Flint water crisis recovery. We don't want Flint to get back to where it was right before the water crisis because that wasn't a very good place to be.

HARLOW: That's part of why you wrote this letter two days ago to Speaker Pelosi. You outline a number of things you're asking for for Flint in terms of funding. But I'd like to focus on the children because you bring them up. And I just -- I think about them all the time. I think about this little boy that a local news station there has done such a nice job of tracking. His name is Taylor, he's 5 years old now, but he's way behind because of the lead in the water that he consumed, you know, as -- you know, when he was a baby.

And so all of these things that have helped him, like going to get special therapy every day, et cetera, he can't do that now. So not only is he not in school, but he's not getting that help. How concerned are you about those one in five children in Flint that were already set back and now they can't even go to school or get the special education they need?

KILDEE: I'm really worried about them because those are the most fragile of our citizens, those young people, those kids who were very young when the water crisis occurred and who will carry with them for a lifetime some of the impact of that. We know we can overcome it. We know we can help these kids through, but we have to do it with really good nutrition, with the kind of experiences that open a child's mind and create new narrow pathways, the kind of support that special education or early child education provides.

That's been part of the solution. And so when I wrote the letter to the speaker, who, by the way, has been a tremendous champion for Flint. She's been here a couple of times. She knows the story here. She asked me to put together what I thought we needed for the next phase of Flint's recovery, so it happens to coincide, sadly, with this crisis, but it's something that we think is the logical next step for helping Flint, and especially the kids of Flint, to have some sort of hope and some sort of a future that can be bright. It's possible, but it won't happen without us making it happen.

HARLOW: Congressman, I'd like to spend our last minute talking about your loss because this is very personal for you. You've lost two of your very close friends to coronavirus. We have their pictures. And I'd just like you to tell us a little bit about Ruben Burks, the first black secretary of treasury of the UAW, and also Nat Burtley, the first community schools first black superintendent.

KILDEE: Well, Ruben Burks was a guy who I've known, you know, really all my adult life. I started in the political process when I was really young. I got elected when I was 18 years old. And Ruben has been just one of those people that I've been able to look to as a mentor but also as a contemporary. You know, even though he was a bit older than I was -- than I am, you know, I -- my whole career tracks what he's done. He's just been this incredible voice for workers.

And likewise Dr. Nat Burtley who I came to know when I was a school board member, a really young one, and he was the assistant superintendent. He took me under his wing. He was one of those leaders that treated me as an equal even though I was just a teenager when I first got elected to the Board of Education. We stayed friends ever since. He's just been one of those voices of calm.

[10:55:00]

Both of these men in different ways really stood up for people who needed somebody to stand up for them and they've been great friends for all these years. It brings it home in a personal way that's really difficult, I think, to reconcile unless you know somebody who we've lost to this terrible, terrible pandemic.

HARLOW: I'm very, very sorry for your loss, Congressman Kildee. Thank you. Thank you for being with us today.

And thanks to all of you for joining us today. Have a nice weekend. I'm Poppy Harlow.

SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim Sciutto. "NEWSROOM" continues now with John King, next.

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