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New York Hospitals Currently Remain Above Capacity; U.S. Meat Industry Warns of Shortages; Cancellations of Elective Surgeries Threaten Patients' Health and Hospital Solvency. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired April 13, 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]

MELANIE MALLOY, ATTENDING PHYSICIAN, MOUNT SINAI BROOKLYN HOSPITAL: -- pretty much full, but I have to say it's doing a lot better than a couple weeks ago, when we had 86 to 96 in the department, 40 people boarding (ph). It was really tough, it was really bad, bad week.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the intensive care unit, it's a similar scene.

MALLOY: I just wanted to give you guys a little look at the ICU. So we have a full ICU. We have every patient in here on a ventilator. As you can see, it's not a huge space but it's quite full. Every bed is full.

Now I'm going to try to go to the tents. This is our fast-track extension to -- you know, from -- from the get-go, you can see, you know, we have to tell people we can't test them for mild symptoms.

They can get registered here -- good morning -- here is our fantastic staff, and then we have separate areas for people getting treatment.

WARD (voice-over): For the doctors working around the clock to save lives, there are occasional perks.

MALLOY: One of my favorite things to do is eat free food. I'm super- excited because we have Shake Shack, what!

WARD (voice-over): Moments later, it's back to work.

MALLOY: So I'm waiting for my next patient to be placed in a room. This one is different because as opposed to the mostly older patients we've been seeing today, he's in his early 20s. I think one thing we're learning is that we don't really know what somebody's going to come in with, and have COVID.

Everybody has coronavirus, but some people also have heart attacks at the same time. This happens, and it makes things even harder.

Well, my day's over. Well, my hospital day is over. It was -- it wasn't the worst day I've had, but it's always pretty draining. It's just, it's hard. It's hard to think that some of your patients that you diagnose today might not be here tomorrow, when you come back for your shift. Or, you know, all of it. I don't know, I'm just tired.

WARD (voice-over): For Dr. Malloy, the challenges don't end with her shift. A widow, she's raising three children on her own.

MALLOY: So it's almost 10:00 at night, and on my way home, I got a FaceTime from my youngest child, who's four. And I think that's the hardest part. I think that's, like, just being alone when I come home, knowing that, you know, my child care is going to go home, my helpers are going home and it's just me and whatever state my children are in. And I don't really have a lot left in me.

WARD (voice-over): The next day, Dr. Malloy takes a moment to talk to us.

WARD: It's crazy, what you're seeing and dealing with. Have you ever experienced anything like this?

MALLOY: Never. And, you know, like, even the older folks, like the older doctors, are like, I've never seen this before in my life.

WARD: So one thing that I know you weren't allowed to show us is the morgue.

MALLOY: There are now two large tractor-trailer trucks that are refrigerated. They are full of bodies, wrapped in white plastic bags. I was told that they can hold 50 people, and the one that I saw was full.

WARD: Do you not worry about getting sick?

MALLOY: Of course we do, of course I do. The way that our -- we're working in the E.D., it's so -- it's a pit of coronavirus, it's literally dozens of positive patients. The viral load in that place must be astronomical.

WARD: What do you wish all Americans understood about what you're going through?

MALLOY: I really want Americans to take this seriously, to know that even if you're in an area that's not a big city, you still are in danger and we don't know who is going to get really sick. It does not spare anyone particularly.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WARD: Now, you heard in the piece, Poppy, that at the absolute peak, Mount Sinai Brooklyn Hospital was operating at 150 percent of its capacity. It's currently now operating at about 110 percent of its capacity. Obviously, that is a significant improvement but so important to remember that that is still unsustainable in the long term -- Poppy.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: I'm so glad you brought us your friend's story. I mean, I'm so, so glad because the struggle for her is unbelievable at work and at home. Clarissa, thank you very much.

[10:35:04]

Well, there's a new warning out about the supply of meat here in the United States. Pork could soon be hard to get. We'll talk to you about why, focusing on one facility.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: So this just in to CNN, for the first time ever, the Supreme Court will hear some cases remotely by telephone, starting next month. Oral arguments for several major cases were on the calendar for March 31st, but were obviously delayed due to this pandemic. Those case include the president's -- about the president's financial documents, cases about religious freedom and the electoral college. That's ahead.

[10:40:13]

The spread of coronavirus across the U.S., we're learning it could impact how much meat makes it to your local supermarket. A Smithfield Foods plant -- this is in South Dakota -- is closed until further notice after 238 employees tested positive for coronavirus. It's one of at least half a dozen meat processing plants shut down due to the virus. Our Dianne Gallagher is with me.

That is a ton in one facility.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's half the cases in South Dakota, Poppy. And that one Smithfield plant, it produces four to five percent of all the U.S. pork that's out there. And so the CEO has said, look, if our plants can't operate, we can't get food on the shelves in U.S. grocery stores.

They're not the only one either. Meat processing plants are sort of sounding the alarm, that the U.S. food supply could be in trouble in the coming weeks here. It's not just in South Dakota. We're talking Iowa, we're talking Pennsylvania, where there are four processing plants that are shut down due to outbreaks of the coronavirus amongst its employees.

And, look, in Greeley, Colorado, the JBS meat processing and packaging plant there, it shut down for cleaning after the union says at least 50 of its workers tested positive, that they have the virus. The governor, telling CNN there in Colorado that they believe that once everybody's tested, 200 to 400 people will probably have it.

Poppy, two employees at that facility have already died, according to the union. And it's important to point out here, the health of the U.S. food supply is important but so is the health of these workers. The union says that they need better PPE and hazard pay, because they are putting their health and their lives on the line for the health of the U.S. food supply here.

HARLOW: There's been a lot of talk about that. The EMS workers here in New York are talking a lot about hazard pay and more protection as well, being on the front line.

GALLAGHER: Yes. HARLOW: Dianne, thanks very much for that reporting.

So, ahead, this is something I certainly had not thought about until I was -- drawn attention to it in an article. Cancer surgeries, organ transplants across the United States, some of these are considered elective surgeries, if you can believe it. So many are being put on hold indefinitely because of coronavirus. Next, I'll talk to the author of a shocking article about how life-saving procedures are just being delayed.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:47:04]

HARLOW: Well, this morning, as health care workers across the country battle the coronavirus pandemic, there is a growing number of Americans who are not COVID-19 patients but need potentially life- saving surgeries and can't get them right now.

Our next guest, Joanne Lipman, wrote a fascinating article for "ProPublica." The headline: Cancer Surgeries and Organ Transplants Are Being Put Off for Coronavirus. Can They Wait? She is also former editor-in-chief of "USA Today," and a distinguished journalist and fellow at Princeton.

Dr. Mary Cardoza, chair of the Department of Surgery at John Muir Medical Center in Concord, joins me as well.

OK, so I just can't believe -- Joanne, let me just start with you -- that I hadn't thought about this much --

JOANNE LIPMAN, CONTRIBUTOR, PROPUBLICA: Right, right.

HARLOW: -- before I read your piece. And I'm so glad you wrote it. You talk about patients like 63-year-old named Russell Green, diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer and initially, they just took his surgery off the calendar indefinitely. This must be happening for hundreds, thousands of patients?

LIPMAN: Probably hundreds of thousands at this point. I mean, what -- the problem is that most states have cancelled elective surgery, and most of us think of elective surgery as like a knee replacement or a face lift. But in fact, an elective surgery is any surgery that is scheduled, which means we're talking cancer surgery, heart surgery, organ transplants. They have all been put on hold.

HARLOW: Dr. Cardoza, I mean, you deal with these patients. Are people dying, do we know? Or at risk of it because their surgeries are being taken off the calendar completely?

MARY CARDOZA, CHAIRWOMAN, DEPARTMENT OF SURGERY AT JOHN MUIR MEDICAL CENTER CONCORD: I'm sure there are -- in parts of the country, there are people who are dying. But here in California, fortunately, we've been able to flatten the curve. And at least at my institutions, the truly life-threatening cancer surgeries are still taking place, but there are many patients with less life-threatening cancer issues such as breast cancer, that are definitely having to wait.

HARLOW: But that's amazing. I mean, so many women, diagnosed with breast cancer in this country, and those -- those, Joanne, are being put on hold in terms of those -- I would assume that would also maybe mean going in for a mammogram, et cetera?

LIPMAN: Yes. So first of all, it's not just breast cancer, it's virtually every kind of cancer. I've heard, since this article appeared, from patients and from doctors around the country who have had to put off life-saving surgeries. We don't think of these as elective.

And you're right about the preventive measures, so we're not doing the mammograms, the sonograms. In an average month, 150,000 people in this country are diagnosed with cancer alone. So if you think about that we haven't had these procedures now, these preventive procedures, for the last month, you're talking about tens of thousands of people --

HARLOW: Yes.

LIPMAN: -- life-threatening conditions are being missed.

[10:50:00]

HARLOW: Dr. Cardoza, you make a point of telling your patients, who have to have surgeries delayed, in-person. What are those conversations like?

CARDOZA: It's hard for them. It has been hard for the patients, which is why I choose to do it in person. Of course, any woman who gets breast cancer wants to have surgery pretty much yesterday. And being told that you may need to wait a month or two is a bit disconcerting.

Fortunately, most -- the patients that I've had to do this with all have cancers that are sensitive to hormones, so we're able to put them on a hormone blocker, which actually is relatively safe and helps buy time.

And I'm not at the point where all women (ph) will be coming back, you know, three weeks to a month after we first had the conversation. And again, because we're flattening the curve in California, I should be able to start scheduling them slowly.

HARLOW: Well, that's good news.

I just found it so striking in this article, that a lot of the reason that these surgeries are being taken off the calendar isn't necessarily that the doctors don't have the time, it's that the facilities, they don't have the correct -- enough PPE or protective gear for them, which is just a travesty in America.

Joanne, let me just ask you about something that crossed over the weekend. I paid particular attention to it because it's in my home state: the Mayo Clinic, right? Famous Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, says that they will have to issue across-the-board pay cuts, they're going to have to furlough employees, they're projecting a $3 billion loss this year.

And the head of it, the chief administrative officer, Jeff Bolton, said that they're making cuts akin to what they did during the Great Depression. Can you just talk about what the lack of elective surgeries -- "elective," in quotes -- means for doctors, nurses, health care workers?

LIPMAN: Right, this is the sort of travesty of this, or the tragedy of this. Is that so many hospitals -- and actually even smaller community hospitals -- I don't know how they're going to survive from this. Because the elective surgeries are the ones that actually pay the bills.

And so these scheduled surgeries -- I heard actually from a doctor in the Midwest after the piece ran, he said he had just taken a pay cut, that he was concerned about his own hospital because they don't have the ability now because the money's not coming in.

So on the one hand, you've got this massive rush of COVID patients. But on the other hand, you're halting all of these procedures that actually pay your bills. So that's going to prevent these smaller community hospitals from being able to service their communities.

HARLOW: Yes. Risk your life, right? You know, put everything on the line --

LIPMAN: Right.

HARLOW: -- and you get a pay cut. It's an impossible situation.

LIPMAN: And the other really important point, Poppy, that you mentioned was about the PPE. Because a major reason why they're putting off these surgeries is because they want to preserve the PPE for the COVID -- the physicians treating the COVID patients. It's not because surgeons like Dr. Cardoza (INAUDIBLE) to operate.

HARLOW: Understood. Thank you for writing the piece, Joanne.

And Dr. Cardoza, thank you, obviously, for all you do each day.

[10:53:14]

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: So for the first time since Congress passed a huge -- more than $2 trillion -- economic relief package, Americans, beginning to get some of that money. The IRS says it's sent out the first wave of stimulus checks over the weekend. Julia Chatterley joins me now.

Finally, checks are out. Are people actually -- and not even checks, right? Direct deposits into their bank accounts?

JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN ANCHOR, FIRST MOVE: And that's the key . Good news, start checking your bank account because the money has already arrived. The hope is by midweek, tens of millions of people will have the money. But, Poppy, to your exact point, this is only if you've given your direct deposit details to the IRS, i.e. filed taxes over the last couple of years.

Practical advice, if you've never filed before, go to IRS.gov. You can give direct deposit information, there's a website being set up on Friday, "Get My Payment." You can also provide your details there. This is key, because otherwise you have to wait for that paper check and that could take weeks -- Poppy.

HARLOW: What --

CHATTERLEY: Give the information ASAP.

HARLOW: Yes, I know. And there's a lot of concern, just over processing issues, et cetera, for people --

CHATTERLEY: Yes.

HARLOW: -- but that's a very good tip, where people can go. Julia, thank you. Appreciate you.

CHATTERLEY: Thank you.

HARLOW: All right, so let's end on something just stunningly beautiful, uplifting, right? We all need that. Italian opera singer Andrew Bocelli, giving just a remarkably beautiful Easter performance from an empty cathedral in Milan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDREA BOCELLI: (UNTRANSLATED)

HARLOW (voice-over): Bocelli sang four songs, accompanied only there by the cathedral's organist. The "Music for Hope" concert was livestreamed to millions around the world. What a voice, gets you every time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:00:00]

HARLOW: Thank you so much for being with me today. I'll be back here with Jim. We'll see you tomorrow morning. I'm Poppy Harlow. NEWSROOM continues with John King, next.