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Trump Encouraging State Protests?; U.S. Death Toll Surpasses 40,000; Where Are Coronavirus Tests?. Aired 3-3:30p ET
Aired April 20, 2020 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[15:00:01]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Our special coverage continues now with Brianna Keilar.
I will see you later tonight on "360."
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Hi there. I'm Brianna Keilar in Washington.
It is Monday, April 20, three months since the first confirmed case of coronavirus in the United States, and yet we still don't exactly know who has the virus and who does not. Testing is the key to slowly reopening the U.S. economy without overwhelming hospitals, with patients and spiking American deaths forcing the country right back into shutdown mode.
So where are the tests?
President Trump claims there's no problem.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Already, we're doing testing at a level nobody's ever done before. But we will be doing testing at a level that -- the biggest tester in the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: But that's not actually the number that matters.
The U.S. has only tested right now about 1 percent of its population. And we're also now learning how the U.S. government blew it on testing from the very beginning. It took weeks for the CDC to sort out malfunctioning coronavirus test kits.
And federal officials failed to ensure that there would be enough supplies for the tests going forward. This included those swabs that the test requires.
Scott Becker, the head of a national association of health labs, told CNN -- quote -- "There's very little that has gone well. Actually, I'm not sure what has gone well. It's just been a continuing cascade of challenges."
And now there's a new battle. Crowds of protesters are demanding the U.S. reopen faster, even as their behavior risks the health of themselves and other Americans, even as the death toll today in the United States surpasses 40,000 people.
And, for context, the death toll was only 4,000 less than three weeks ago, on April 1, a devastating tenfold acceleration.
Let's bring in CNN's Nick Watt. He is live for us from Los Angeles.
And, Nick, there are now some new areas that the White House is watching as potential problem areas. Tell us about them.
NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There are.
Listen, Brianna, we are seeing some places spike, some places dip. New Jersey's governor just said, we have achieved relative stability. New York, the numbers are looking good. Relative, though, is a word we should be using a lot these days, because the governor comes out and says, numbers are looking better in New York, but still, as he points out, nearly 500 people died of COVID-19 in New York state in one day, yesterday.
The places the government is looking at now, those hot spots, we got Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia. Also, one more pork production plant is closing down today, after a spike, this one in Minnesota, that puts out about 4 percent of the pork that we eat in this country. So that's something that they're watching.
Nursing homes, of course, also another place where we are continuing to see spikes. Now, the people who make that model up at Washington State, Washington State University, they have come out now with a kind of formula for which states they think are ready to open. And the formula is that, per one million people in the state, the state can only have one new case per day.
That is the calculation they make, where the state is still able to treat that patient and also trace and test all of the contacts that that person has had. So, by their reckoning, the only states that will be ready to open a couple of weeks from now will be Montana, West Virginia, Hawaii, and Vermont.
Let's take New York, for example. New York would need to see 20 or fewer cases a day for them to reach that benchmark. Right now, they are seeing 50 times that. They are seeing 5,000 new cases a day.
The governor has just called -- the governor of New York has just called for 50 percent hazard pay for people in what he terms essential jobs. So that might not just be the health care workers, but the grocery workers as well.
Testing, as you mentioned, Brianna, is going to be the key. And, according to the governors and the people, many people who conduct those tests, there still is not enough testing. The vice president had a call this morning with governors. We heard from one governor who was on that call, who said it was pretty much all about testing.
There was a cry for help. And he said that Vice President Pence said the federal government is moving as fast as possible to do whatever it can to help the states with this testing -- Brianna.
KEILAR: Testing, testing, testing. All right, Nick Watt, thank you so much for that great report.
President Trump at this point insists that there are no problems with testing. He claims that it's up to states to take charge on this. But a group that's representing tens of thousands of lab workers is urging the White House task force to immediately address the lack of testing supplies and protective equipment.
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Joining me now is CNN senior investigative correspondent Drew Griffin.
And, Drew, this is the American Association for Clinical Chemistry that's issuing this major appeal. Tell us about this.
DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: These are the scientists that are actually in these labs, private, public, state health labs, crying out, sending a letter last Thursday night to the Coronavirus Task Force, particularly Dr. Birx, telling her that, no matter what comes out of the president's mouth about the states needing to do more, nobody can do more without the supplies.
And that's what the letter was all about. Listen to the president of this organization.
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DR. CARMEN L. WILEY, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR CLINICAL CHEMISTRY: We're experiencing a shortage of collection supplies, the supplies to transport the samples to the laboratory. And then, once we get into the laboratory, we require reagents, or you can maybe think of them as ingredients, to perform the testing and then report the results to the doctors.
So we feel there's a disconnect between the theoretical capacity and what we're actually able to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRIFFIN: The disconnect, Brianna, that we're hearing, not just from this group, from many professional groups involved in testing, is the fact that there is no national strategy on testing.
And that means when the president kicks this can down the road to the states, all the states are now competing with each other for these limited supplies. They don't know where the supplies are coming from. So these organizations are begging for leadership, some kind of direction, and a comprehensive testing strategy, so that all these different parts, all these different labs, can get together, know what's coming in the front door, so they can get the testing that we need out the back door.
Right now, that's not happening. And they have not gotten a response to their letter yet to the Coronavirus Task Force.
KEILAR: And bringing all of this into relief, Drew, is this Harvard study that says the U.S. needs to triple or quadruple the amount of daily tests to safely reopen the economy.
Can the country get there?
GRIFFIN: Can the country get there? Of course. The question is when.
Right now, the country can't get there. That's according to Dr. Carmen Wiley, the president of this association. The capacity is not there yet. But, of course, this is the United States. We have the ability to do just about anything when it comes to the industrialization of anything, and that includes testing capacity.
But, look, the lab testing community in this country was not prepared for something like this. And it takes time to ramp that up. We're seeing that not only in the testing machines, but, of course, everything else we have listed, including all the supplies.
KEILAR: All right, Drew, thank you so much for that report. Really appreciate it.
Joining me now is Dr. Mark Rupp. He's an infectious disease specialist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Dr. Rupp, thank you so much for being here to share your expertise.
DR. MARK RUPP, CHIEF, UNMC INFECTIOUS DISEASES DIVISION: Yes, good afternoon. My pleasure.
KEILAR: So, you just heard about that Harvard study that we were talking about that says the U.S. needs to times three, times four daily testing, to a minimum of half-a-million tests each day.
What do you -- I mean, what do -- what does that say to you about how long it's going to take to get to that point, and what that's going to mean for people who are wondering when things can at least get back to a little bit of normal?
RUPP: Well, I would tend to agree that we do need much more broad- based testing throughout the United States in order to more safely open up our society and try to get our economy rolling again in those areas where that makes sense.
So, it's really going to be predicated upon being able to do tests on people who have any degree of symptoms, being able to identify those cases quite quickly, and then having a vibrant and robust public health system that can help do the contact tracing, get those people into quarantine, and make sure that we don't get right back to where we are now, with lots of spread.
So it's going to be a delicate situation and one that will require, as part of the formula, much more broad-based testing.
KEILAR: Let's talk about this contact tracing and what a key component this is. I'm wondering if you can explain to us.
Let's just take a for instance. If someone is infected with the virus, I mean, say, I'm infected with the virus, how wide of a net has to be cast if, say, I went to the grocery store, or did the other limited things that I'm doing? What does that look like for people who may have had some contact for me and quarantining?
RUPP: Well, you point out the difficulties in this right away, that it becomes very difficult to trace very fleeting contacts.
And what we generally concentrate on are those people who have had longer-term or closer amounts of contact with an index case.
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So, this would be family members, people living in the same area, close co-workers, that sort of thing.
Clearly, you can't identify everybody who had just fleeting contact with an index case in a shopping mall or something like that. So, it really does appear to take more close contact for transmission.
And that's where we would be doing the concentrated contact tracing.
KEILAR: OK, I want -- let's listen to what the former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said about the lack of contact tracing, where we are right now, also with testing in the U.S.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: I think a good rule of thumb would be about 1 percent of the population a weekly basis, so the ability to test about three million people. We're not going to be there. We're not going to be there in May. We're not going to be there in June.
Hopefully, we will be there by September.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: September, Doctor, because I mean, I think of schools going back -- or they're supposed to go back in August and September.
RUPP: Yes.
So, that again, gets back to the idea of having broad-based testing available for people. And then, as we talked about, doing the contact tracing is also very important.
And when you have many cases, it just becomes very quickly overwhelming. As we heard earlier in the story, if you're having 1,000 cases per day in New York City, that's very, very difficult to try to get a handle on that, as opposed to having just a few cases, where easily you can get in, really do very, very careful contact tracing, get those people into some sort of a quarantine or watching their symptoms, so that you can try to prevent the spread from person to person.
KEILAR: OK, let's talk about antibody testing now.
Some -- we know now that a lot of people may be carrying the virus, they don't have symptoms, they don't even know they have it. But they could be tested to see if maybe they have had it, if they have the antibodies for COVID-19.
The issue that we have seen is with the accuracy of a lot of these tests that are not FDA-sanctioned. Is it actually worse that there are a bunch of tests out there confusing things vs., say, there just weren't tests at all that -- for people to use? What do you think?
RUPP: Yes, it's very confusing. And it's very difficult when you have a lot of uncertified tests that are circulating around being promoted, sometimes, I think, inaccurately, that they can yield reliable results.
So I'd much rather see it a little bit more strongly regulated, having these tests really being -- test the test, before they come out and are starting to be promoted.
It is a very important, however, part of our capability to do what we call serologic study, so testing for the antibody directed towards the virus. So, this is a test that won't be very useful in making an acute decision as to whether somebody is infected, but it's going to be very important in figuring out, what has been the penetration of the infection through society, who is potentially immune?
And I think that that's a very important point that we need to talk about as we go forward in trying to open up parts of our society. It's going to be important to know who's been infected, who hasn't, what's the level of potential immunity throughout a community?
KEILAR: Yes, so important.
Dr. Rupp, thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Mark Rupp from the University of Nebraska Medical Center. We appreciate your time.
And coming up: protesters packing in and pushing for a faster reopening of the U.S. We are live on the ground where they are next.
Plus, President Trump putting the blame over testing on governors. So, how did the White House call with those governors go today?
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KEILAR: They're getting larger, they're getting louder. They're mostly not worrying masks.
Protests across the country demanding state and local governments end quarantine orders and reopen their towns.
CNN's Miguel Marquez is at one such rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
And I mean, Miguel, it just -- are these protesters not worried about their health?
MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: A lot of them say that they are not, that they don't think this sickness is as bad as the media says and they don't think that either they can get it or that it is of great concern, at least in places like Pennsylvania and other places.
They say, New York, New Jersey, let them quarantine, but, here, let's go back to business as usual. Most of it has broken up at this point. This is in front of the state capitol here. There were probably in excess of 1,000 people both in front of the Capitol here at one point and then on the other side of the street as well.
The other thing these protests have sort of brought are the number of people on cars. Here, we have a panda bear on a scooter. I'm not quite sure what that's all about. But most of that has now stopped.
But you had hundreds and hundreds of cars sort of cruising back and forth on the capitol here. And most of that activity has stopped.
We have seen lots of people with Trump signs. And it has the feeling of a Trump reelection rally, for the most part. There's also a very big Second Amendment contingent here, with lots of heavily armed individuals, indicating that they want the government here to know that they're protecting their Second Amendment rights, also a big religious angle as well.
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Many people -- some of the signs we have seen are -- "Jesus is my vaccine" is one that I have seen throughout here as well. So a lot of different voices coming together here,and we're starting to see it in other places.
Many of these rallies not very big at all. This one, because the president is obviously pushing it on his Twitter feed and officially at the White House as well, it really started to pick up steam here in Pennsylvania -- Brianna.
KEILAR: And so what is the plan? What is their plan, just reopen the economy and roll the dice, or they just think it's not rolling the dice?
MARQUEZ: Yes, I think, interestingly, the governor, Tom Wolf, which a lot of the ire and anger is directed at with these protesters, he extended the stay-at-home order to May 8.
They are calling for a May 1 opening of Pennsylvania. My sense is, it is going to be sort of lots of different individuals and groups pushing back against the government here, testing what they can do, and we will see where it goes -- Brianna. KEILAR: All right, thank you so much, Miguel, for bringing us that story from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Republican and Democratic governors at this point pushing back against the White House's claims that there is enough testing available for states to reopen, and insisting they will need more federal help to make that happen.
But the president says, if there are any issues, the governors are to blame for not moving fast enough to ramp up testing in their own states.
CNN's Kaitlan Collins is joining me live now from the White House.
Kaitlan, the White House, Coronavirus Task Force spoke to those governors today. Tell us about this.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that was a call that the vice president led. He's been doing these weekly calls with governors.
And the other members of the task force were on that call with him. But, noticeably, Brianna, the president was not on that call.
And, of course, this came -- this call was -- had a lot of things to discuss for several reasons, not only including those protests that Miguel was just talking about, a lot of those protests which the president has encouraged these protesters out there, saying that he does believe that some of their stay-at-home orders are too strong, but also because these governors are saying that they do not have the supplies that they need to conduct the test that they want to conduct to be able to reopen their states.
The president has repeatedly pushed back on that, including today on Twitter, comparing it to when they were asking for ventilators. He was saying that they asked for more ventilators than they needed. We saw how that turned out. And now he's saying testing is the same way.
And the president has been dismissing this as just Democrats playing politics.
But, Brianna, listen to these three governors. This is a mix of Democratic and Republican governors all talking about the shortages that they are facing as they are trying to reopen their states.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. RALPH NORTHAM (D-VA): We're fighting a biological war. We have been asked, by the way, as governors to fight that war without the supplies we need.
GOV. LARRY HOGAN (R-MD): It's not accurate to say there's plenty of testing out there, and the governors should just get it done. That's just not being straightforward.
GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER (D-MI): It would be nice if we had a national strategy that was working with the states, so every state knew precisely what was coming in.
But at the end of the day, we governors are doing the best we can with what we have got.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COLLINS: Now, one thing that is also notable between how the president and -- excuse me -- the vice president and what the task force was saying on that call today is, we were told by sources they were stressing a partnership between the federal government and these state entities as how they are moving forward with trying to reopen.
And they're moving forward with these phases that they have put forward and that these own states are coming up with. But the president is repeatedly pushing back, saying, no, it's up to the states to handle this on their own.
KEILAR: Kaitlan, thank you so much, Kaitlan Collins at the White House.
Here's the scary thing, right? You can be sick right now and you might not even know it. We're going to talk to an expert about the stunning new data about so-called silent spreaders next.
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KEILAR: As U.S. governors, health experts and White House officials are at odds over the next steps needed to reopen the country, researchers have made it clear that there needs to be significantly higher rates of testing to safely get people back to work.
We're joined now by Dr. Ingrid Katz. She is the associate director of Harvard's Global Health Institute.
Doctor, thank you so much for talking to us, getting the word out. We know you have been working with patients, and we certainly appreciate your expertise on this.
I want to ask you about this antibody testing that we have seen, where it's pretty problematic, but the hope is that, if you have the antibodies, you're immune.
But China -- there's actually some reports out of China that folks are testing positive for COVID again, basically several weeks after they had it before,. What does that tell you?
DR. INGRID KATZ, HARVARD UNIVERSITY GLOBAL HEALTH INSTITUTE: So, thank you for having me on.
And I think the critical piece is, the antibody tests are going to be critical for really determining population level spread. The repeat positivity in what we are using right now is a little bit more challenging to interpret. And so when we are trying to get a sense of what is going on at the
population level, that's where really accurate antibody testing is going to be key.
KEILAR: OK.
And I want to ask you about something that also complicates all of this, which is these silent -
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