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Deadly Tornadoes Rip Through Southeastern U.S.; President Trump Retweets Call to Fire Dr. Fauci After He Concedes on CNN that Quicker Response "Could Have Saved Lives"; Texas Governor to Issue Executive Order on Reopening Businesses; Trump Wants to Reopen Economy, But Governors Will Decide; Trump Retweets Call to Fire Dr. Anthony Fauci; Brazilian Researchers End Study of Chloroquine on COVID-19 Patients; Henry Ford Health Begins Study of Effectiveness of Hydroxychloroquine as COVID-19 Treatment. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired April 13, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

CAMEROTA: CNN's coverage continues right now.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good Monday morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow. I'm glad you're with us right now.

For the first time in U.S. history every state of the country is under a federal disaster declaration while nearly 30,000 National Guard troops are on duty nationwide, of course, responding to the coronavirus crisis.

It's happening as we move past the half a million coronavirus cases in this country and if you can believe it past 22,000 deaths. The CDC director saying this morning that we are close they think to the peak of this pandemic and the debate is already raging over restarting the shuddered economy. Dr. Fauci saying possibly as soon as May in some areas. The challenge is when, where and how to lift the patchwork of stay-at-home orders.

And if you thought the shutdown was inconsistent and confusing nationwide, wait until you see the reopening. It is a struggle right now both within the administration, between the president and his own public health officials, and outside of it as state governors across the country plan to make their own decisions.

So let's begin this hour here in New York City with our national correspondent, Athena Jones.

Good morning, Athena.

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy. You've been hearing the president talk a lot about March -- May 1st as this date certain by which they might reopen the economy. He's very eager to do so. But we're not hearing governors talk about specific dates. We're certainly not hearing that from folks like Governor Andrew Cuomo who of course leads the state that has the most cases, the epicenter of this crisis. He has been focusing on the need for a smart, safe, coordinated plan,

and his thoughts are echoed by CDC director Robert Redfield, who said this has to be gradual, careful, step-by-step reopening process. And Cuomo is not alone. Listen to what some of the other governors have had to say about this, in both parties, Governor Phil Murphy of New Jersey and Governor Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. Watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. PHIL MURPHY (D), NEW JERSEY: I fear if we open up too early, and we have not sufficiently made that health recovery and cracked the back of this virus, that we could be pouring gasoline on the fire even inadvertently.

GOV. CHRIS SUNUNU (R), NEW HAMPSHIRE: There's still a long way to go. We're not getting out of this in a couple of weeks, or probably even in a couple of months. So we've got to keep this momentum going.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: We need a public strategy that is safe, that is consistent with an economic strategy. The last thing we want to see is an uptick in that infection rate and an uptick in those numbers that we worked so hard to bring down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JONES: And that is a big fear from governors. We do not want to see a resurgence of this virus, certainly in a state like New York which has seen approaching 10,000 deaths, so really very, very hard-hit. It's not to say that they're not at all thinking about the future. Governor Cuomo says he is going to be working with New Jersey and Connecticut on a Tri-State plan to begin to talk about reopening the economy.

And one key part of that is going to be getting antibody testing up to scale. That's the tests that will allow people to know if they have the antibodies for the virus and it might make it easier for those people to be the first ones to go back to work -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Yes, I mean, you heard Governor Murphy lamenting yesterday the fact that because he didn't have enough tests they couldn't do the widespread testing they wanted. They could only test symptomatic people which is a lot -- you know, as to why we are where we are now.

Athena, thanks for that reporting.

Now to what could be a sign here of growing a little bit of help possibly here and also a growing rift between the president and some of his medical advisers. The president retweeted someone last night who called for top Dr. Anthony Fauci's firing.

Of course just a little background here on Anthony Fauci. He has advised six presidents. He has been at the National Institutes of Health since the 1960s when he graduated medical school and at the Infectious Disease Units since the '80s, where of course he was integral in responding to the AIDS crisis.

Let's talk about what's going on here. Our White House correspondent John Harwood is with me.

John, why?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy, if you're President Trump, reality is a very uncomfortable place to be right now. It is for all of us. We're living through a nightmare but if you're presiding over it in the Oval Office, while you're running for reelection, it's very, very difficult. And so what we know President Trump does when faced with uncomfortable realities, he lashes out at opponents, and so he retweeted somebody who had harshly criticized Dr. Fauci for comments that he made over the weekend about the situation we're in and how we might have averted some of the level of death and -- economic destruction we're facing now had we acted earlier.

Here's Fauci over the weekend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: But what goes into those kinds of decisions is complicated. Obviously if we had right from the very beginning shut everything down, it may have been a little bit different, but there was a lot of pushback about shutting things down back then.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[09:05:10]

HARWOOD: Yes, there was a lot of pushback and of course the "New York Times" documented over the weekend all of the attempts to warn the administration about what was going on. The challenge of course for the president, though, is he has very few good options right now. FOX poll last week showed Anthony Fauci had the confidence of 80 percent of the American public. Governors, the ones who were resisting the idea of some big reopen on May 1st, their positive ratings are in the high 70s.

President Trump is down around 50 percent, that's very weak for a chief executive at a time of crisis. And it has become pretty obvious, based on where economic activity takes place, how nervous ordinary Americans are about going back to work. That it's going to be very difficult to reopen the economy even if you wanted to on May 1st. So the president is not left with very good options at this point, Poppy.

HARLOW: And as he has even admitted, John, this is the most important decision that he could make in his presidency up to this point.

Thank you, John Harwood. Appreciate it, in Washington.

So this morning also you've heard so much from the administration about hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine. Well, this morning a group of Brazilian researchers are now issuing a warning against the use of chloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients. Doctors in Brazil deciding to end their study of the drug after some of their patients developed irregular heart rates and died.

Let's go to our senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. She's with me on this.

First of all, there may not be any difference, but hydroxychloroquine, explain to people if there is a difference and what the study tells us.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, so, Poppy, first came the drug chloroquine. This is many decades ago and they noticed that it was causing some eye problems and so they developed hydroxychloroquine, which is basically the same drug but without those retina, without those eye problems with. And Hydroxychloroquine is mostly what we use here in the United States and it's what we're using in clinical trials.

In this Brazilian study, they used chloroquine. Now it really doesn't matter because they're both just as effective or ineffective against coronavirus, and also as far as heart problems go, really it would be about the same. That's what we're told.

So let's take a look at what the Brazilian study found. They had 81 patients in their study, and they were either assigned to take a high dose of chloroquine or a low dose. What they found is that the high dose was associated with a higher incidence of heart problems, a terrible problem with heart rhythms that can lead to death, and they found that it didn't work against COVID any better than the low dose, so that led the Brazilian doctors to say, hey, we need to shut this study down, and we should -- nobody should be getting this high dose of chloroquine.

Poppy, this is on top of a Swedish warning that said look, we're seeing so many problems with chloroquine that doctors in Sweden are being told don't use it unless you're using it as part of a clinical trial in which case doctors are paying very, very close attention to these heart problems -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Good, I'm glad they are. It's an important update, Elizabeth. Thanks very much for that.

Let's go to Ryan Young now. He joins us in Detroit this morning. The Henry Ford Health System is rolling out a relatively large-scale study to try to look at the effectiveness of what Elizabeth was just talking about, hydroxychloroquine, on COVID-19 patients. Enrollment in the program started last week.

Talk to us about this because I know there was some confusion about who it was for. Was it just for -- they have over 800 health care workers at the hospital system that have been diagnosed with this. Is it just for them or is it for any patient that wants to try?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So they kind of focused it here, not only it's for -- sorry, I'm hearing myself here. It's for the 3,000 health care workers and first responders throughout the metro Detroit area. What they want to do is try to see if they can give them sort of a guard against the COVID-19. Anyone who's enrolled in this double-blind study cannot have any symptoms of COVID-19 and can't already have had COVID-19 at this point. What they want to do is have those first responders volunteer for

this. They will go through an eight-week study. Some of them will get a placebo and as they move forward they'll be looking at them.

Look, they're taking this to the front lines because they know so many workers in the Detroit area have been hit by COVID-19. They want to make sure that they give them every chance with this study to see if they can kind of fight back against this virus in this area.

You know, for the last few days we've seen the numbers exploded. In fact it's gotten close to 24,000 people who have tested positive for COVID-19. The city here has gone to fast testing. They've tested over 900 of their first responders. This includes bus drivers because they want to be able to give them something just in case they are able to discover that this drug can fight against COVID-19 -- Poppy.

HARLOW: Ryan, thank you for that update. We'll see how that goes.

Let's talk about that and all the developments over the weekend. Dr. Jennifer Lee is with me, CNN medical analyst and clinical associate professor of emergency medicine at George Washington University.

[09:10:06]

Dr. Lee, thank you for your time. If we could just start there, what do you make of this double-blind sort of pretty big test that they're undergoing now in Detroit at Henry Ford to see if this -- essentially if hydroxychloroquine can essentially be prophylactic, if they can help?

DR. JENNIFER LEE, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Right, Poppy, I think this is going to be very helpful when we see the results of this study, and it's a good point that we're looking at hydroxychloroquine not only as a potential treatment for COVID-19, but also as a way to help those prevent getting the disease if they've been exposed to someone who is positive, and that of course has really positive implications for health care workers, like myself, who are in contact with people with COVID-19 and also may not have known it.

So I think it will be very interesting the next few weeks, as we see the results of this study, as well as the many other trials that are looking at the effects of hydroxychloroquine on COVID -- on patients with COVID-19.

HARLOW: Right.

LEE: Yes.

HARLOW: The focus on hydroxychloroquine, while important for sure, it's sort of overshadowed another drug that has a lot of potential experts tell me, and that is Remdesivir, right? Can you talk about what we know in terms of how effective that is? I believe it's made by GlaxoSmithKline.

LEE: Yes, Remdesivir is an anti-viral drug that is currently in trials and that has been used for a number of patients with COVID-19. Even some of the patients in the first outbreak here in the States, in the state of Washington, and it's one of many actually. There are a number of different anti-viral agents that attack the virus at many different points of its process, of entry into the cells, of when it's replicating in the cell, and it's a great point that there are many different agents that are being studied right now.

We don't have to put all our eggs in one basket with hydroxychloroquine. We have the data, it's going to be so helpful for all of us clinicians in treating patients with COVID-19.

HARLOW: In terms of the antibody test, which are certainly getting ramped up, you have a few cautions just about what we don't know about them. What are those words of caution?

LEE: That's right. So these serology or antibody tests that are being rolled out could potentially be very helpful in helping us -- helping people who have been exposed to COVID-19 and who are now immune to go back to work, and to get back out into the community. But as you said, Poppy, there are a couple of things that we need to keep in mind here about these serology and antibody tests.

So, first of all, we need to know that they are very accurate. Imagine if someone got a false positive test showing that yes, you have had COVID-19 and you're immune to it when actually it wasn't the case.

HARLOW: Right.

LEE: That could have some bad consequences. So we need to know about the accuracy. Second, we need to understand more about the long-term immunity that develops after infection with COVID-19, and this I think will be helpful as we look at studies in other countries like South Korea and China, where they've been tracking patients who have had COVID-19 and recovered from it. They are also finding a few patients have also gotten tested positive again.

So what does that mean? Is the virus reactivated? Have they gotten re- infected? Is it a different strain? We need to understand that a little bit better. We hope -- we believe and hope that once you are infected and immune and recover from the infection and are immune, that that's a long-term immunity but we need to understand that.

And then, you know, the last thing is that even when we have these tests rolling out and we identify those who are immune, I think it's important to keep in mind that there's still probably over 95 percent of Americans have not been exposed to COVID-19 and would then not be expected to be immune, so we still need to have all those other measures in place to make sure that we are adequately testing, isolating, contact tracing before we think about really reopening whole communities or states.

HARLOW: Yes, exactly. Dr. Jennifer Lee, thank you for being with us this morning.

We have a lot ahead this hour. Still to come, the governor of Texas plans to unveil a plan or a timeline for reopening businesses across the state. What does the mayor of Houston think about that? Speak with him ahead.

Plus, the number of coronavirus cases showing up among New York City transit workers is growing. The MTA now implementing new measures to protect workers after at least 50 deaths.

Also ahead, deadly tornadoes rip through the south. We're getting our first daylight look at the damage there.

[09:15:00]

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HARLOW: Well, right now, crews are searching for survivors and victims after deadly tornadoes ripped through the southeastern part of the country. We know this morning that at least 18 people are dead after those powerful storms swept from Louisiana to the Carolina Coast. Dozens of people injured, hundreds of homes and businesses damaged or destroyed -- look at that. Our Martin Savidge is live in Cartersville, Georgia. Horrible to see, Marty, what do you know?

[09:20:00]

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy. Cartersville here is in Bartow County where they had one fatality, all totaled in the state of Georgia, six people died overnight according to the governor. In fact, the governor is now asking for the prayers of the people of this state, saying that there are just a number of communities that are awaking this morning to the tragedy that struck. The particular storm that struck in this community was around 1:00 a.m., that's what brought down a heavy tree that fell onto a home and killed a 34-year-old man, injured two other people.

But as you start to look at the impact of this storm system throughout the south, Easter Sunday weather-wise was just horrific in many states, including say, Mississippi, where they had 11 people that were killed. And then on top of the destruction that you saw there, there is Alabama, and there is Arkansas, where there was at least one death. Louisiana and Texas, they've all suffered and the storm system has pushed into the Carolinas.

So, of course, the tallies of those killed and injured could continue to rise. Over a million people without electricity impacted so far. And we should point out that all of this is of course playing out in the background of a pandemic. Many people are getting in close proximity to one another. Social distancing is not something easily done in the middle of a natural disaster.

So, first responders are being taxed, so are medical facilities and then later could come the impact of the virus itself on top of this tragedy. Poppy?

HARLOW: Yes, that's a very good point, Martin Savidge, thank you for that reporting. Well, overnight, the president pushed back against the nation's top infectious disease expert, highlighting a message on Twitter that called for the firing of Dr. Anthony Fauci. It comes after Dr. Fauci told CNN's Jake Tapper just yesterday when asked if maybe lives could have been saved, had stay-at-home measures been enacted sooner, he said yes, that could have been the case.

This as "The New York Times" releases an in-depth investigation into President Trump's coronavirus response. The headline, "He Could Have Seen What Was Coming: Behind Trump's Failure on the Virus". Mark Mazzetti; Washington investigative correspondent is on the byline of that. Important reporting, Mark, thanks very much. Take us back if you would to February 25th, the president's coming back from his trip to India, and the woman who heads the National Center of Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Dr. Nancy Messonnier, makes a historic warning and a blunt assessment of what could come for the United States, the stock market tumbles and then ensues basically three weeks of delays.

MARK MAZZETTI, WASHINGTON INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: That's right, Poppy. So Dr. Messonnier's warning comes after several weeks of growing concern in the medical community among the president's medical experts about the spread of coronavirus, and especially the new revelation in the community of asymptomatic spread, that people could be spreading this around without showing any symptoms.

And that, this really as one e-mail showed, you know, one doctor says provides a hole in our response. And so they get to the point where they're ready to brief President Trump on new measures that includes social distancing. The president's returning from India, Dr. Messonnier makes the public warning, the stock market tanks, and by the time President Trump lands, his meeting with those doctors to deliver that warning gets canceled.

And so that -- those new measures don't get put into place for three weeks until the middle of March. And as Dr. Fauci said yesterday, those three weeks might have been critical to halt the spread of the disease and might have even saved some lives.

HARLOW: I actually remember that day really well because when I saw her comments come in, then a few hours later, the country was briefed by other medical experts and the message was much more -- it was less alarmist, if you will. And I remember thinking, well, what are Americans supposed to believe? In the middle of all of this, you have the head of Health and Human Services, Secretary Alex Azar, and you write that Azar quote, "directly warned Mr. Trump of the possibilities of a pandemic during a call on January the 30th.

The second warning he delivered to the president about the virus in two weeks. The president who was on Air Force One while traveling for appearances in the Midwest responded, Mr. Azar was being alarmist." Subsequently, Azar gets essentially demoted, Pence elevated.

MAZZETTI: Yes, that's right. Our story lays out a lot of different channels that the information was coming up through the system. These warnings that were getting delivered, sometimes directly to the president. Alex Azar does it twice. He's dismissed as being overly alarmist. There's been a memo that got reported on that, Peter Navarro; one of president's -- the president's trade advisors is warning, and his views are dismissed in part because he's a China hawk. His views are always seen as colored through the lens of being anti-

China. So, that is dismissed. And the people, the voices that did carry a lot of weight during this period are the economic advisors including Steve Mnuchin who are warning that any strict measures that are put in place could have devastating effects on the economy. And so this was playing out over two months, this push and pull, up until the very end, and the middle of March, when the president finally agreed to these more strict social distancing measures.

[09:25:00]

HARLOW: And look, every expert agrees, now looking back that the president's call to restrict that travel from China pretty early on was a good decision. The question is just what else could have been done in the subsequent weeks? Mark, before you go, overnight the president called your story "fake" and said Secretary Azar quote, "told me nothing until later". Do you want to respond to that?

MAZZETTI: Yes, we stand by our reporting, and saw all the president's comments and we'll just leave it with that.

HARLOW: Mark Mazzetti, appreciate your work. Thanks very much.

MAZZETTI: Thank you --

HARLOW: Parts of Texas could soon be back open economically. The state's governor will issue an executive order this week. What is he going to say? How long will they wait? We're going to talk to the mayor of the state's largest city, the mayor of Houston is with us next.

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