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Wide Range of Measures Under Way as States Reopen and Model Predicts 137,000 Deaths; Coronavirus Long-Term Complications Coming into View; Interview with Matthew McConaughey. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired May 11, 2020 - 14:00   ET

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

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[14:00:37]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Top of the hour now, I'm Brianna Keilar and this is CNN's continuing coverage of the global coronavirus pandemic. And just in, new details about the vice president in the hours after he learned that his own press secretary tested positive for coronavirus.

This video, from his event on Friday in Iowa, shows food industry executives removing their masks ahead of Pence's arrival. It's not clear who the woman there is who is speaking to these panelists, but a source says she is a member of the Trump administration who told the attendees they could remove the masks since everyone was six feet apart. "Des Moines Register" and "The Intercept" first reported about this.

Now, today, despite the possibility of exposure from his staffer Katie Miller, Vice President Pence is still at work, he is not quarantining. However, several top health officials of the coronavirus task force have chosen some form of quarantine.

The White House has been scrambling to find out how Katie Miller became infected. And since her case and another infection in the West Wing became known, the president has shown frustration and irritation that certain staffers have not been wearing masks, sources also saying the president has expressed he doesn't want to be near people who have not been tested.

And yet, as he deals with this outbreak so close to home, President Trump continues to push for states to reopen. There is concern the White House situation will undermine his message, that the nation is ready to move forward.

I want to turn now to CNN's Erica Hill, she is in New York. And, Erica, you've been following how the reopening is going so far for some business owners. What are they saying to you?

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR AND NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Well, we're definitely seeing a mix. There's a lot of excitement for businesses who want to get back to business. They have families of their own and of their employees that they need to take care of. There is also concern and there are important safety measures being in place.

And as you'll see, the reaction and the response really depends on where you are.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HILL (voice-over): Face coverings and social distancing, the new norm as 47 states are now partially open for business.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's almost like we -- it's our first grand opening.

HILL (voice-over): Restaurants in Arkansas, Arizona and Indiana can welcome dine-in customers today with reduced capacity. Retail stores, open in New Hampshire and Indiana. Manufacturing is back in Kentucky, Michigan and Vermont. In Alabama, gyms, hair and nail salons and large gatherings have the green light.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm really excited for customers to come back and enjoy, you know, the experience --

HILL (voice-over): Palm Beach, joining more than 60 other Florida counties in reopening restaurants and salons with added safety measures.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're ready and we're clean --

HILL (voice-over): In South Dakota, the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, using checkpoints to control the spread.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you traveled to or from an area of reported COVID-19 cases?

HILL (voice-over): Measures the governor says are illegal because they interfere with traffic, though the state doesn't have jurisdiction over tribal lands.

HAROLD FRAZIER, CHAIRMAN, CHEYENNE RIVER SIOUX: That's all we're trying to do, is to save our people and the residents on this reservation.

HILL (voice-over): Despite nationwide numbers declining, South Dakota is one of two states showing cases are up more than 50 percent in the past seven days. A model often cited by the White House is now predicting 137,000 Americans could die by August because of increased mobility.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think any -- any end is still a while away.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The coronavirus is going to be with us throughout the rest of the year. We need to learn to live with it. We've got to learn to live safely with it.

HILL (voice-over): Remdesivir, which the FDA says can be used to treat the virus, arriving at hospitals across the country. The federal government has not said how it decided which facilities would receive the drug.

The FDA, announcing emergency use authorization for the first antigen test, while New York is investigating 85 cases of an inflammatory illness in your children that could be related to COVID-19.

Meantime, at the White House, concern growing about a potential hotspot, the vice president's press secretary the latest to test positive. Task force members including Dr. Anthony Fauci and CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield, opting to self-quarantine though the vice president will not.

PATRICE HARRIS, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION: In a public health crisis, it is so important to have a clear and consistent message. And unfortunately, that's not what we're seeing.

[14:05:03]

I think this is a perfect opportunity for leadership to model what good public health practice is --

HILL (voice-over): As more Americans venture out, a packed cross- country plane prompting Dr. Ethan Weiss to post this photo, saying a lot of passengers were scared, shocked. Dr. Weiss was heading home to California after working in New York City hospitals for the past several weeks.

Starting today, all Amtrak passengers must wear masks. And in the country's epicenter, Governor Andrew Cuomo, announcing his state will begin a regional phased reopening on Friday.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): This is the next big step in this historic journey.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HILL: Now, there are three regions specifically here in New York State the governor says have met these seven metrics that he's putting forth for reopening: the Finger Lakes, the Southern Tier and Mohawk Valley, saying they'll be ready and open May 15th.

But again, this will be, Brianna, a phased reopening starting with certain businesses, things like construction, manufacturing, retail for curbside pickup. And they'll see where it goes to decide when they can move on to the next phase.

KEILAR: All right, Erica Hill, thank you so much for that report.

Dr. Peter Hotez is a professor and dean of tropical medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine. Thank you so much for joining us, Dr. Hotez. I know you've seen the White House giving us a real-time example of how quickly and widely COVID-19 can spread in the workplace, especially when you're not I guess using the proper measures that people would expect to be used in the workplace.

What are you thinking as you watch this all go down? PETER HOTEZ, PROFESSOR AND DEAN OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Well, as I watch it, I'm thinking, you know, if they're having this many issues in the White House, imagine at routine places of work, if such a thing exists. You know, how are we doing this in law offices or Target or Walmart or other places of employment.

This is going to be really hard, to have a system in place where we can do that testing on a regular basis. Then to have all of the contact tracers that we need to track down the cases. Some new estimates are now saying, for every single positive case, you may need as many as -- to identify 50 contacts in order to adequately quarantine and isolate everybody.

So this is really tough. And we're starting to see some guidelines -- detailed guidelines (ph), not necessarily from the CDC but from private sources like Harvard and Columbia and Georgetown and a couple of others are putting out some detailed roadmaps for how to go about doing this. And the bottomed line is ,when you read through it, these are pages and pages of documents.

I think the larger corporations could probably put a staff in place to do this, but I don't understand how a company that employs maybe 20, 25 people, it would be really -- it's going to be really challenging for them.

KEILAR: You know, it's going to be very difficult.

We're watching, right now, three of the top health experts on the task force -- the heads of the CDC and the FDA along with Dr. Anthony Fauci -- are in quarantine. And then you look at Vice President Pence, whose press secretary, which is a role that typically is around the principal quite a lot -- she tested positive last week, he is not quarantining. The spokesman -- spokesman for Pence says, well, the vice president has tested negative every single day.

I mean, what is your answer to -- I guess what would your point be, to someone saying, But he's tested negative? And how that would affect whether he should quarantine or continue to be around people and not wear a mask?

HOTEZ: Well, there's really two parts to that question, if you think about it. It's, one, first of all, I'm quite concerned about the health of the president and the vice president, maybe some other key essential people in the White House. They're at risk. Once COVID-19 starts, we've seen how quickly it can spread through a workplace.

So you know, I have to be concerned about even the health of the president, of the vice president even if the vice president's testing negative now, has there been enough exposure, is it starting to take off in the White House?

You know, there's an option for them. There's now a -- that convalescent serum antibody therapy that we've been talking about, there's been efforts now to implement an indication for what's called post-exposure prophylaxis. That is, people who've had significant exposure can get that convalescent antibody to prevent them from getting sick.

This is now under way at Johns Hopkins by my colleague Shmuel Shoham and a few other medical centers. This may be something that we'll have to look into, to protect the health of the president and the vice president. And then to do all the contact tracing for those who may have been exposed in terms of what's going on at the White House. So this is -- these are going to be tense times, I think.

[14:10:00]

KEILAR: I wonder what you think about this trend that we're seeing in hospitals: fewer patients went to the hospital for strokes or heart problems. This is from a study of 65 hospitals across the U.S., and this is comparing what we saw this March, to March of last year. What are your concerns with these findings?

HOTEZ: Again, two parts to that as well. We've been hearing from Jon Reiner, a great cardiologist at G.W. and an old friend of mine who's been talking about the fact that because people are afraid to go to the hospital because of COVID-19, they're delaying their urgently needed medical care, so you're starting to see more individuals with strokes and with -- coming in with serious heart disease or myocardial infarctions. And he thinks that may be a component of the rise of sudden deaths that we're seeing in the United States.

The flip side of that is, now we've learned a lot about this virus and one of the scariest parts for me is that this is -- the virus is causing thrombotic events, meaning it's causing pulmonary emboli, it's causing DVTs, it's causing strokes. And this may be responsible for some of the coronary artery thrombosis that we're seeing as well. So that may be a cause of sudden death.

So you know, we're -- I know it seems like it's been forever, but the truth is we're still in the early stages of COVID-19 in America, and we're learning so much about this virus. And the first wave of it seems to indicate that we're seeing types of disease that we really didn't anticipate before, and now the docs are scrambling in ICUs in New York and everywhere else, to think about how to give thrombolytic therapy for patients with COVID-19.

And so you're -- there's a lot of serious complications that we're I think only beginning to fully understand.

KEILAR: Yes, it does seem that way and we appreciate your perspective on that, Dr. Hotez. As you said, we are only in the early days of this pandemic. Thank you.

New York's patient zero is opening up about his battle with coronavirus, what he endured before many in the state even knew that the virus was there.

Plus, a cluster of coronavirus cases in California, traced back to one birthday party, one of the patients joking that she probably had the virus as she coughed.

And actor Matthew McConaughey, calling on Americans to put their politics aside in the midst of this pandemic. He will joins us, live.

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[14:16:49]

KEILAR: A lawyer from New York who became known as the state's COVID- 19 patient zero is opening up about his fight with the virus. Fifty- year-old Lawrence Garbuz got sick in February, before coronavirus was on the radar of most Americans. He was one of the first people in the New York area to test positive, and his case prompted New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to declare a containment zone in the city of New Rochelle, one of the country's first hotspots for the virus.

Now, more than two months later, Garbuz and his wife recalled their journey to recovery on NBC's "The Today Show."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LAWRENCE GARBUZ, PATIENT AT EPICENTER OF NEW YORK'S EARLY OUTBREAK: I had a cough, a slight cough. One night, I woke up -- and this was a few days before the diagnosis -- and I had a fever -- it was a low- grade fever.

I had no intention of going to work. I went to the doctor, and he examined me, and he said I needed to go immediately to the emergency room. After we entered the emergency room, I have absolutely no recollection of anything that transpired until I woke up from the coma. So it's as if -- if three weeks of my life had completely disappeared, and I was asleep for all of it.

SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, NBC ANCHOR, THE TODAY SHOW: That's shocking.

ADINA GARBUZ, WIFE OF PATIENT: We thought, OK, you have pneumonia. You know, you get some medicine, you come home. And over the weekend, it increasingly got worse and worse. He was struggling to breathe.

I was trying to keep him calm. You know, you feel awful and scary.

GUTHRIE: Adina, what do you remember about that first conversation after he work up from the coma?

A. GARBUZ: All he cared about was his family. I mean, the first words he said to me was, I love you. That's it.

L. GARBUZ: I appreciate life a lot more. I think every day is an absolute gift that God has given every one of us to enjoy, that we need to appreciate our family and our friends, and to live life.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Garbuz says he has no idea how he contracted the virus.

Health officials say that a birthday party helped trigger a cluster of coronavirus cases in Southern California. This was a party that took place in Pasadena after the city had issued a stay-at-home order on March 19th. Health officials say one person at the party was coughing and not

wearing a face covering. And they add that five or six other party guests who live outside of Pasadena may have also been infected, and they are urging them to quarantine.

With me now is Matthew Feaster, an epidemiologist with the Pasadena Public Health Department. Matt, thank you so much for joining us. And there was actually a patient at the party, we have learned from another person at the party, who was joking about having the virus even as she was coughing around other people. And in the end, lo and behold, she did have the virus. What does that say to you?

MATTHEW FEASTER, EPIDEMIOLOGIST, PASADENA PUBLIC HEALTH DEPARTMENT: Yes, that's -- well, as the pandemic was expanding, it's very difficult for people to process something as serious as this. And sometimes we (INAUDIBLE)

KEILAR: Matt, I think we're having some trouble with Matt's signal there. Let's try to re-establish that if we can. Are we -- can we re- establish that? All right, no, we can't. We're going to try to sort that out and bring that to you.

[14:20:10]

Meanwhile, actor Matthew McConaughey is behind a new public service announcement, calling on all Americans to stop the partisan politics as we respond to this crisis. And he is going to join me live, next.

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[14:25:05]

KEILAR: We have this just in from Connecticut, a new plan has just been announced that would allow for summer camps to open June 29th, but there will be strict guidelines such as class sizes of no more than 10.

This decision is being made to help out parents with much-needed childcare. We will wait to see if any other states follow suit.

Actor Matthew McConaughey has been providing quality quarantine content. He and his family hosted a virtual bingo night with seniors, and he's taken to Twitter with a very simple but effective message: wear a mask.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY, ACTOR: We've got an I-24, I-24. Oh! Richard (INAUDIBLE) is waving a hammer up high!

(via translator) Please, if you must leave home, be sure to wear a mask, please!

Now, remember, stay at home. But if you've got to go, strap it on like so. Now, I'm challenging all your triple-Bs out there, it's time for us to band together and see who can make the most bad-ass bandito bandana so we can beat the corona-V.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: McConaughey and his wife also donated 80,000 face masks to first responders. And now, the Academy Award-winning actor is out with a new PSA called, "It's About Us," which is calling on Americans to reject the politics and come together.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave, over the land of the free --

TEXT: This is not about politics.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: -- and the home of the brave.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And Matthew McConaughey is joining us now. Matthew, thank you so much for being with us. You -- I mean, some of what you've done is funny, as you try to draw people into this message about the mask. You employed one of your friends, Canelo Alvarez, a very famous Mexican boxer, in your Spanish-language PSA that you did. You're really trying to reach out to people here. Tell us what prompted you to take your platform and raise awareness here.

MCCONAUGHEY: Well, I, like everybody, you know, when this virus came on, we were all very united in a singular purpose: how do we beat this virus? So in riding the wave of what should we do, what's the message that needs to get out, I'm trying to stay on the pulse of what that is.

The first message, six weeks or so ago, was stay at home. Then it became wear a mask, then it became how do we get the -- that message of wearing a mask to the Spanish-speaking community.

And then just recently, just started to notice a little bit of a partisan political divide in the country, and wanted to remind everyone with this latest PSA: Hey, it's about us, as in the USA. We have to stay together, this is a human thing. Don't be divided. We don't need two wars, we have one against the virus.

KEILAR: Yes. And we noticed -- I mean, you're there, having a great time with your family and with elderly folks who are playing Bingo. You were also reaching out to vulnerable populations, you're speaking Spanish for instance, and I know you got a big response from that ad.

MCCONAUGHEY: YEs.

KEILAR: The Hispanic Americans and the elderly are dying disproportionately. Was that factoring in to why you wanted to reach out to them?

MCCONAUGHEY: Well, it did. I mean, we've known about the elders across the board. But the mayor of Austin, Texas, Steve Adler, came to me after I'd put out the first Bobby Bandito Wear a Mask campaign PSA. He said, Look, the Spanish-speaking community, the Mexican-Americans in Austin, Texas are not getting the message.

And so I did research, found out that a lot of them weren't getting it in Texas or across the United States and even worldwide. So that's why I reached out to Canelo, that probably a lot of them will listen to him before they listen to me. And it seemed like that was a good message to get out in their language at that time.

KEILAR: Yes, Why do you think that people are not getting the message, or have not gotten the message about wearing a mask?

MCCONAUGHEY: Yes, it's a really good question. Because that seems to be a unanimous truth in this time.

You know, science is behind us right now. And the mask is about letting science catch up, you know? It's really -- it's been about help protect the people on the frontline, don't let happen what happened in New York, where there's two patients for every bed. We've got to buy time. A mask is a very good tool for that, and I have not heard any science that says it's not.

So I don't even understand how there's a real argument right now about the wearing of a mask or not, especially when you can spread asymptomatic symptoms and not even know it.

[14:30:01]

I think it's an image thing. And I think part of it, people still think, Oh, you know, it's a bit of a retreat, or I want to express my --