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Coronavirus Reaches White House West Wing; Cases and Deaths Spiking in Brazil. Aired 12-12:15a ET

Aired May 09, 2020 - 00:00   ET

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


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JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm John Vause.

Coming up on CNN NEWSROOM, another White House staffer with access to the president and the vice president is among one of the 1.2 million confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States.

Katie Miller tested positive on Friday, not only is she the press secretary for the vice president, Mike Pence, but her husband, Stephen Miller, is a senior adviser to the president and his test results have come back negative.

A spokesperson for vice president Pence, Peggy Miller has worked with members of the Coronavirus Task Force and, as of now, in an unrelated development, the head of the Food and Drug Administration has announced that he is in self quarantine for 14 days after coming in contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus.

A source tells CNN that Ivanka Trump's personal assistant has tested positive but she has been working remotely, away from the family for weeks.

This comes after the president's personal valet has also caught the virus. As the coronavirus spreads around the White House and the country, all but three states are planning at least partial reopenings by Sunday. Despite concerns that it is too soon and could trigger a second wave of infection.

The model used by the Trump administration now projecting the final death toll will be around 130,000 by August. They explained why the reasons for the increase.

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DR. CHRISTOPHER MURRAY, INSTITUTE FOR HEALTH METRICS AND EVALUATION: The greatest fear is that people will not only venture outside the home but they may be less vigilant about avoiding social interaction or close physical interaction, that they will not wear a mask, they'll come within 6 feet.

And then we will have a lot more transmission. And those states that are either flat or even trending up slightly, we'll see a large uptick of infection.

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VAUSE: Joining me now from Los Angeles is Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at UCLA, specializing in emerging infectious diseases.

Thank you for being with us. Starting with the White House, we now have 2 people, days, apart testing positive for the coronavirus. This seems to indicate how extremely contagious this virus is.

With that in mind, the V.P.'s press secretary, the day before the positive test result was seen well within 6 feet, talking to reporters. They're all wearing face masks, the reporters, which protects not the wearer but everyone else and Miller is not wearing a face mask.

She could easily be spreading this virus everywhere she went. And it's probably just a coincidence at this point but the head of the FDA is now self-quarantining for 14 days.

What are the concerns to you now about how the coronavirus is spreading and how it might be spreading within the White House?

ANNE RIMOIN, UCLA: The coronavirus has been spreading by this mechanism, human to human transmission, since the beginning of this pandemic. The fact that it is spreading in the White House, where people are not social distancing, they are not wearing masks and they do not appear to be using the kinds of methods that we are recommending to the rest of the public, is proof positive that if you don't social distance, you do not wear masks, you do not take these precautions, you put yourself at great risk.

So I don't think this tells us anything new, it just tells us something that we already know, is that the virus is very contagious and everyone should be taking this very seriously to protect themselves.

VAUSE: Maybe it's something about the members of the administration more than it does about the virus itself.

On Friday, we heard from President Trump, talking about Miller testing positive and in his mind, he has worked out in some way that it is proof that testing is not so crucial or important, here is.

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TRUMP: This is why the whole concept of tests are not necessarily great. The tests are perfect but something can happen between the tests where it's good and then something happens, then all of a sudden shoes tested really recently and tested negative. And then today, for whatever reason, she tested positive.

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VAUSE: Yes, because she caught the virus.

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VAUSE: This is why you need to test people and why you follow up with contact tracing.

This almost seems like it's beyond Donald Trump's grasp.

RIMOIN: I think that he is grappling with the same thing that many people are grappling with, that you can't have a test and that be the end of it. Your test for the day is your test for that day. That is what your status is, that day only. It is not what is going to be tomorrow or the day after and I think this is something that's very complicated or very difficult for people to understand.

It's hard to realize -- we're used to seeing people that had a test and this is my status, this will be good for a period of time and this is not the case here. Every day we are at risk, every day that we do not have a vaccine in place, we are at risk and every day that we don't have good therapeutics we are at risk. We are at risk. I don't know why this is so complicated.

VAUSE: There are some medical developments I want to get to, the coronavirus has turned up in the semen of men that have recovered from the disease.

Should they be worried about sexual transmission?

RIMOIN: This is a new virus to humanity. We learn things about it every day. I will say, finding a virus in semen post recovery is not unusual. We have seen this with Ebola, we've seen this with Zika. This is because the testes are immune protected sites. The brain, testes and then several spots in the body, where you are able to harbor virus.

When we talked about Zika over these last couple of years, this is one of the reasons why we are worried about it, the people can spread it. It's not something completely surprising, I'm certain we will learn new things about this virus all the time.

And, yes, what this means that is very possible, not certain yet but possible, that it could be spread through sexual transmission once one is recovered. It is something we will need to learn a lot more about, as with all things of this virus.

VAUSE: Also, doctors in Hong Kong reported that a combination of 3 antiviral drugs, plus an immune system boosting drug, seemed to make people recover more quickly from coronavirus. The patients who got the cocktail tested negative after 7 days on average, those who just got the HIV drugs were positive on average for 12 days, rather.

How significant is something like this, find a treatment that will get us well and keeps us healthy?

RIMOIN: This is an interesting study. I think the key is we need rigorous studies that have enough power, the ability to detect a difference between treatments and allow us to move forward based on science. I think this is very great that there is a lot of research coming out,

that there is going to be a lot of tools in the toolbox we hope. But as with remdesivir and with many of these other drugs, we are still in early days of trying to understand where we are, what is going to be effective, what the side effects are and, very importantly, what can really help people who are critically ill and reduce the severity of illness for people, not just the length of illness but the severity, is very important.

VAUSE: That's a good point to end on. It's human nature to cling to any bit of good news, I guess, that we hear and hope it's some kind of breakthrough.

RIMOIN: It is good news, it is.

VAUSE: Professor, thank you so much for joining us here in Los Angeles, appreciate your time.

RIMOIN: Thank you, stay well.

VAUSE: It could be called coronavirus delusion syndrome, when a country's leader continually talks about positive outcomes and results and incredible progress and containing the outbreak and treating the sick. Most of which, is not actually real. It has been a constant problem for the president of the United States.

Now the man who is dubbed Trump of the tropics, Brazil's president, appears to be afflicted with the same condition. CNN Matt Rivers explains why.

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MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There is more and more bad news coming out of Brazil, the country in Latin America with the largest amount of cases and deaths so far.

It was on Friday that new government statistics released the largest day-to-day increase in reported deaths since this outbreak began, the government reporting an additional 751 deaths. That brings the overall death toll just shy of 10,000.

The government also reporting more than 10,000 additional cases. That brings a confirmed case total to more than 145,000.

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RIVERS: Now that is a number good enough to be eighth most in the world, just behind France and Germany. And if Brazil continues to increase the amount of cases we've seen over the past couple of days, in France and Germany, they can also continue their trends and it won't be very long before Brazil likely overtakes both of those countries in terms of the total number of confirmed cases.

This all comes as the Brazilian president, Jair Bolsonaro, continues to downplay the virus. He spent this entire week downplaying the threat but also talking about how he wants to lift quarantine measures, currently in place, because he is afraid of the economic damage that this outbreak can do.

Of course, most people around the world want economies to start back up again but what most, if not all experts will tell you, is that the amount of cases, the amount of hospitalizations, the amount of deaths, they need to be plateauing, if not going down substantially, before it is responsible to talk about opening up the economy.

And what we are seeing in Brazil, is not a plateau where cases go down, we are seeing the opposite. They are spiking, they are recording major increases in their death tolls and in their day to day increase in cases.

And yet the Brazilian president, in the face of an outbreak that looks like it's getting worse, wants to open his country back up in favor of trying to jumpstart the economy -- Matt Rivers, CNN, Mexico City.

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VAUSE: This coming Sunday, the British prime minister is expected to reveal a plan for easing restrictions, allowing some businesses and factories to reopen. When Boris Johnson makes this announcement, he will be walking a very fine line, trying to balance the desperate need to restart the economy with the safety and health of a country which now has the highest death toll in Europe and the second highest in the world.

CNN's Max Foster tells us that government officials are now trying to manage expectations.

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MAX FOSTER, CNN LONDON CORRESPONDENT: Earlier in the week, Downing Street sources were briefing British newspapers that lockdown could be lifted as early as Monday, at least the first stages of it.

Ministers are very much pulling back from that now, with one saying that we should not expect any dramatic change. Prime minister Boris Johnson will come out on Sunday to give us the final word. He is due to outline his plan to lift the lockdown when the time is right. We should get some sense of the timeline then.

Meanwhile, medics are trying to make sense of new data, which tells us that black people in England and Wales are twice as likely to die from the virus as white people. Even when you take into account age, location and some measures of deprivation. Black men are nearly 4 times as likely to die as white men.

New data coming in all of the time around the virus and, in fact, the data the ministers need to make decisions on the lockdown and when to lift -- CNN, Max Foster, Windsor England.

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VAUSE: That's what we have for CNN NEWSROOM, "MARKETPLACE AFRICA" is up next.