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Paul Manafort Released from Prison Over Coronavirus Fears; CDC to Warn About Possible Virus-Related Syndrome in Children; UNICEF Issues Dire Report on Pandemic's Deadly Impact on Children. Aired 9- 9:30a ET

Aired May 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]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: -- this doctor warns about opening the country too quickly, a key model has now increased the projected death toll. That number now stands at just an alarming 140,000 deaths just by August. Still, 48 states, and to be clear, that's red and blue states, will be partially reopened by next week. By next fall, the question, schools facing a major decision with major consequences.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And that's exactly right. California's main university system, the first to make big moves, the nation's largest four-year public university system, that's California State University, now says almost all of its classes in the fall will be conducted online.

Is this just the beginning of what is to come across the country? Without a vaccine, schools are facing a dilemma.

We're on that story, but first let's begin with John Harwood at the White House. He'll join us in a moment. Senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is with us.

Just to talk about this new modeling. So 147,000 new American deaths projected or total American deaths projected by August?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, so these models, Poppy, they're constantly updating based on various factors, how much are people moving around, how much are they not, what kind of numbers are they seeing come out of the states. And what they're seeing is that double the number of projected deaths compared to their projection two weeks ago. And this is deaths until August.

Let's take a listen to what one of the modelers had to say about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. CHRISTOPHER MURRAY, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE OF HEALTH METRICS AND EVALUATION: What's happened is that states relaxed early. People have heard the message. They've gotten out, they've become more mobile, they're having more contact. And we're seeing the effects already of that transition and then that's playing out in the infections unfortunately.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: Right, so it's really quite simple. The more people get together, the more this virus is going to spread. You don't have to have a PhD in immunology to know that.

Let's take a look at some of the specific states where there are going to be the most dramatic swings. So the most dramatic -- and they're all increases. The most dramatic one is New York, now projected to have more than 34,000 deaths by August. That's an increase of 2,448 from the last time that they did this modeling. In Massachusetts, 9,629 deaths. That's an increase of 2,084 from the previous modeling. North Carolina, 4,413 deaths by August. That's an increase of 3,220 deaths between -- by August.

So as you can see, the more that states get together, and there are other issues as well, but you can see these increases.

SCIUTTO: So, John, I wonder, of course, these are modelers, the White House itself has depended on. What is the president's reaction to this? Is there reaction at the White House or even, you know, you've seen some of this right as attacking the data, questioning the data?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, we didn't see a public response from the president yesterday. But in general the White House is saying, A, the models have fluctuated over time. So there is nothing fixed about them. B, they point to deaths from the consequences of being closed down. The despair that comes from economic dislocation, that sort of thing.

The deferral of elective surgery and medical procedures that aren't taking place because of shutdown of coronavirus and the devotion of medical facilities to coronavirus. But, look, it is important to acknowledge that there are some positive trends. U.S. testing levels keep rising. The rate of positivity keeps falling.

However, as Anthony Fauci told the Senate committee yesterday, it is important to follow the guidelines that the government laid out, that President Trump himself laid out a couple of weeks ago, to have a safe reopening. It is still in front of us exactly how these states reopen, and how citizens respond to the reopening, you know.

Americans don't necessarily do just what the government says. If they're feeling fearful, they are not going to go to the restaurant. And that's going to -- whether or not the governor of a given state says the restaurant can open. So there is a lot of uncertainty in front of us, but the administration generally speaking is pulling back from the virus suppression part of this and moving to the economic reopening part even though the economic resurgence depends on getting control of the virus.

HARLOW: Yes. Wow. All right, John Harwood, thanks so much. Elizabeth Cohen, our thanks to you as well.

SCIUTTO: In California, several universities will not hold in-person classes come this fall. CNN's Stephanie Elam joins us now with more. Stephanie, this is something to be closely watched around the country.

I've heard from parents, a lot of concern, everywhere in the country to whether schools will reopen. And the California state system is huge. How and why do they come to this judgment?

[09:05:06]

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. It's a really huge system. In fact this is the largest public university system in the country.

Good morning, Jim and Poppy. We are talking about the Cal State University system which has some 500,000 students and 55,000 employees on 23 campuses around the state. And they're saying that there's just no way they can have that many students that close together. So nearly all of their classes will be virtual come the fall semester.

And then following suit with that, you have the University of California system which says it's probably not very likely that they will have in-person classes in the fall as well. So that's about 280,000 students who would be involved in that system.

There are 10 universities across the state that fall into that camp. But overall seeing that there are already universities planning for the fact that their education will be virtual in the fall has a lot of people wondering about what will happen with kindergarten through high school education. Those are big topics.

And people are trying to figure out if perhaps what they need to do is look to have staggered school schedules when people are coming into school, but still we are seeing that this idea of the fall being anything like normal being anything but the case -- Poppy and Jim.

HARLOW: Yes, and it's such a question when it comes to the economy, right? Because how do you get the economy back and people back to work fully, with child care issues, when they don't even know if their kid is going to go to school.

Stephanie, thank you for that reporting.

Let's talk about this on the university level. Michael Wiafe is with us. He's the president of the Cal State Student Association.

Good morning, Michael.

MICHAEL WIAFE, PRESIDENT, CAL STATE STUDENT ASSOCIATION: Good morning.

HARLOW: Nice to your beaming smile this morning, even though I'm sure this is tough news for you guys to take. What do you think? Is it the right call by the chancellor?

WIAFE: It is the right call. Looking at the safety of our student body population, looking at the safety of our campus communities. We're talking about more than half a million people on 23 campuses across 800 miles of California and we're looking at the most diverse ethnically, economically and academically student body in the nation. SCIUTTO: Michael, question for you then. What are you, what are your

fellow students looking for to feel safe going back to school? I mean, Dr. Fauci, you know, made clear yesterday that a vaccine, it's not going to come in the fall, may not come even reliably in the spring. Are you saying you need to have a vaccine, that level of protection, to go back, or is it more broad testing? I mean, is it changing the way kids live in dorms? What's the standard, I wonder, that you're waiting for.

WIAFE: I would say something along the lines of all of the above. Right now students are facing some of the highest levels of uncertainty that maybe has ever happened in this nation. And, you know, we're looking at a lot of different situations on a lot of different universities. And it's super uncertain what the future is going to look like. And in order to give students a little bit of a level of certainty I think this decision might have needed to happen sooner rather than later.

Students don't know whether to sign leases in the fall. They don't know what classes they might want to be taking in the fall as well.

HARLOW: Yes.

WIAFE: Obviously they don't know what their employment is going to look like. You know, those employment numbers across the nation also includes students as well. We have undocumented and DACA students who also are very uncertain about the future of their education. Our international students aren't sure as well. So I think, you know, once we get a little bit of certainty about what the future will look like in general and also the future of the education as well, one could really think about whether it will be safe to come back.

HARLOW: Michael, on top of this news out of your university system, there are other states where they are opening. For example, Harvard is opening, a bunch of universities in Texas are going to open. I wonder if people are starting to talk about transferring, transferring out of the Cal State system to another state where they can actually go to school, physically.

WIAFE: You know, students do have to make that personal decision at this time. And there is a lot of different circumstances. There are some students who maybe need to work more in order to provide for their families and certain -- being closer to home and, you know, I'm sure that that's the case for a lot of out-of-state students, or students who really went far away from home.

I think I wouldn't advise to transfer out of the CSU and our CSU community because you have been part of the campus community if you've already been part of the campus. And this isn't something that we look to do permanently and this isn't something that we hope will happen permanently and hopefully we'll be back. We'll be back -- you know, not to what we used to consider as normal, but to a new normal, and the future of higher education, which we hope will be a lot better than it has been in the past.

SCIUTTO: The other option, Michael, you hear a lot of folks talk about is deferring, right? In other words, say, you're admitted to start in the fall, say, OK, I'll start in the fall 2021. Of course it becomes a numbers game because if you have thousands, tens of thousands of students doing that, you've got a big balloon in fall 2021. How does that affect seniors applying for that year?

[09:10:02]

I mean, do you envision a big wave of that coming, kind of pushing things back another year?

WIAFE: You know, really, it really is a possibility at this time. But what I would encourage students to really think about is the dreams that they were following when they decided to enter education in the university. There has been so much uncertainty in these past couple of months and huge movements have had to happen in order to ensure the safety of students and campus communities.

But, you know, as a current student myself, what made me keep on going and I am going to graduate school in the fall is thinking, am I going to let my own education and my future and my dreams also be put on pause because of this pandemic when we have the opportunity to continue it.

SCIUTTO: Listen, Michael, we wish you fellow students, we know it's such a challenge and there's a lot of lost time. You've got four years in college, right, and one of those year being taken away is -- that's no small thing. So we wish you the best of luck and we hope you all -- we all find a way out.

HARLOW: Yes.

WIAFE: Thank you. Absolutely. And you as well, thank you for having me.

SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, a new alert coming from the CDC on children in this pandemic. You're going to want to hear it, what doctors are being told to watch out for. And a leading economist predicts that a staggering 42 percent of jobs lost during this crisis will never come back. We're going to ask him why.

HARLOW: Plus, sticker shock at the supermarket? The cost of your groceries across the country has spiked. The most in 46 years.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

SCIUTTO: Breaking news this hour. CNN has learned that former Trump campaign Chairman Paul Manafort was released from prison this morning over fears of the coronavirus.

HARLOW: Evan Perez joins us now. I mean, he had been, you know, sentenced to seven and a half years. So now he's served how long?

EVAN PEREZ, CNN SENIOR JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: That's right. He served just under a third of that seven and a half years sentence, Poppy. And of course, you know, he had health problems even before he went to prison. He was showing up to court for a period in a wheelchair, so we know that his health was one of the issues, the one of the reasons why his lawyers had asked the Justice Department, asked the Bureau of Prisons to allow him to serve the rest of his term in home confinement, so we expect that that's what he's going to do.

He's going to go back to his home here in northern Virginia to serve the rest of his term. As you remember, he was convicted on financial crimes, on lobbying charges, as a result of two separate trials in Alexandria and here in Washington. So for now, it appears because of the COVID crisis, Paul Manafort is going to be coming home and serving the rest of his term there.

SCIUTTO: Evan Perez, thanks very much, a story we're going to stay --

HARLOW: Yes --

SCIUTTO: On top of.

HARLOW: Also this morning, a new warning about a mysterious and sometimes fatal illness potentially linked to COVID-19, and this affects children. Young children. CNN has learned that the CDC is preparing to alert doctors to be on the look-out for this inflammatory syndrome often marked by persistent fever, organ damage and symptoms similar to toxic shock.

SCIUTTO: Right now, New York State is investigating 100 possible cases, three children there have died. Joining us now, CNN medical analyst Dr. Jennifer Lee; she is an ER physician and a clinical associate professor of Emergency Medicine at George Washington University. Dr. Lee, good to have you on this morning. These are worrisome signs, right? Because one of the consistencies, not just here in the U.S., but in other countries has been the kids have been largely --

HARLOW: Yes --

SCIUTTO: You know, impervious to the worst effects of this disease. How extensive is this phenomenon we're talking about here? How concerned should parents be going forward?

JENNIFER LEE, ER PHYSICIAN: Well, Jim, it's something we're watching very closely, and that there's still not a lot of information out yet about -- we need more research to fully understand the syndrome. But what we do know and we're calling -- it's being called right now pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome, that's potentially related to COVID-19.

The things to know about it is, first of all, it is still very rare. This is a rare occurrence. And second, that it is still very treatable. The kids that have had this with the -- of course, unfortunately a few exceptions, the three deaths that we know about in New York. The vast majority of the kids have done well, and we know treatments that work for this, these types of symptoms that are similar to Kawasaki's, not exactly, but Kawasaki-like. And so it's important, I think, for parents again to know, this is

rare, it is treatable, and one of the things to look out for as we continue to follow this, you know, the kids present with persistent fevers. And the symptoms tend to come after they have had COVID-19. Whether they've been diagnosed with it or not.

HARLOW: Doctor, can you explain to us why this is killing children, right? Three have died in New York so far, 100 cases are being investigated. And obviously there was no treatment that could save at least those three children there, several in other states as well. Why is it killing them?

LEE: So, again, there's a lot we still don't know about this, but what is emerging that's interesting is that some of the -- it has more to do with the body's response to infection. Just like we're seeing in adults, where, you know, after a few days or even weeks of the infection, the body's immune response can actually be more dangerous to the body than the virus itself.

[09:20:00]

The infection. And the same thing may be happening with kids, where it's that immune response that causes this -- these unfortunate outcomes. But again, we do also know how to treat some of those things. You know, with steroids, with drugs that can moderate the immune response, the immune system.

SCIUTTO: That's good to hear that there is -- there is a treatment for the children who face this. I want to ask you about another bigger picture question. Because in testimony on the Hill yesterday, a top health experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci, you saw break out into the open. What's the essential disagreement right now on the response to this?

Health experts saying, listen, as you reopen, cases, deaths are going to rise. That's just a fact. On the other side, some Republicans, the president say, well, but you know, economic costs are too great, et cetera. Just on the data here, 48-some odd states are relaxing stay- at-home orders, et cetera, to some degree. Do residents of those states, basically the majority -- the vast majority of the country have to expect that as you reopen, you will see more people suffer from this.

LEE: I think, you know, that's going to happen without a doubt. There's going to be more infection. You know, whether state or a region can adequately handle and contain that infection is the question. You know, as people move around more, as some of these restrictions are relaxed, there absolutely will be more spread of the infection.

And that's why you're seeing some of those new models revise their estimates for numbers of deaths upwards to take that into account. So there's always been an understanding it's just a fact. The question is, do we have the systems in place, the testing, the contact-tracing, the ability to actually handle those who get infected and those who are really sick from it in terms of hospital capacity and healthcare workforce.

And so the important -- the -- what we needed to do with this time -- and we've tried to varying degrees of success to prepare for that. And so some states, you know, a few states do have that capacity and are moving forward, and that makes sense. You know, they've looked at all the data, they've carefully evaluated their own ability to test and trace. And they're doing that. But for those states that don't, that's a really big risk that they're taking --

HARLOW: Yes --

LEE: And that they're -- yes, their --

HARLOW: OK --

LEE: Population is going to face.

HARLOW: Before you go, doctor, quickly, could you help us understand this new reporting out of UNICEF that 6,000 children could die every day from preventable causes. This is in -- especially the developing world and 56,000 more maternal deaths over the next six months, related to COVID --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

HARLOW: Because of a lack of care from hospitals that they're predicting there, especially in more low income countries will be overrun?

LEE: Sure, Poppy. So, this is a report that came out of UNICEF in response to a study done by -- that was published in the lancet, just recently. And, you know, what -- to me, what it reminds me of is that as hard as COVID-19 has been on us in the United States, and on our health system, it is -- it has the potential to be devastating to countries that have -- that --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

LEE: In the third world, that are low income or middle income. And so what the study did was basically modeled that out. What are the potential effects of COVID-19? And interestingly, it's really -- it's not just what COVID-19 can do to people, you know, as a result of the virus. It's what happens to the health of the whole population --

HARLOW: Yes --

LEE: Because you've directed your resources to take care of COVID-19, and what they found not surprisingly is --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

LEE: That it's women and children who are going to suffer. You know, just imagine, 40 percent of the world's population actually doesn't have the ability to wash their hands with soap and water at home. You know, so how do you -- you know, how can you take care of -- have basic infection control if you can't do that? And how do you -- SCIUTTO: Yes --

LEE: If you don't have access to food now, what happens when your food supply chain gets disrupted --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

LEE: When you start shutting things down. So, it's going to be so much more worse, and it means those countries need to really jump on this and contain it quickly because --

HARLOW: Yes --

LEE: We've seen what happens in our --

HARLOW: Yes --

LEE: Own country when that -- when you don't act quickly enough.

HARLOW: And we certainly have. Dr. Lee, thank you very much on all of -- all of that. Very helpful.

LEE: My pleasure.

HARLOW: Two messages, two very different predictions as White House officials say they expect an economic rebound by the end of this year. Other economic experts say nearly half of the jobs lost may never come back. One of those experts is with us next.

[09:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: House Democrats are proposing a new $3 trillion relief plan that includes a second round of checks to families with up to $6,000 for some households. But the White House and Republicans are not jumping on board. CNN's senior congressional correspondent Manu Raju on Capitol Hill. This morning, Manu, I wonder if we have seen the end of this sort of blank check from Capitol Hill in response to this. What's the basis of Republican opposition to this proposal?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Republicans are saying they want to hit pause, see what happened and how the -- already the $3 trillion that has already been appropriated through various programs just this Spring alone.

[09:30:00]