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Fauci Worries Reopening Early Could Lead to Outbreaks; Trump Claims U.S. Leads the World in Testing; CDC: Limited Data on Risk Factors for Severe Disease; Children Diagnosed with Possible COVID-19 Related Illness; U.K. Easing Restrictions on Movement; Russia has Second Highest Number of Cases, After U.S. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired May 13, 2020 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us here in the United States and all around the world. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM and I'm Rosemary Church.

Just ahead, grim forecast for the U.S. coronavirus death toll. Researchers warn of more deaths as states continue to open up, and a similar prediction from Dr. Fauci.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: My concern is that we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: The blunt assessment given at a social-distanced and virtual Senate hearing.

And in the U.K., the gradual reopening gets under way as new data shows the economy is taking a major hit.

Reopening the country in haste equals more deaths. That is the stark message from the U.S.'s top infectious diseases expert. Dr. Anthony Fauci warned U.S. lawmakers at a Senate hearing Tuesday that rushing to get back to normal would turn the clock back, rather than forward. And he's not alone in that thinking. A new coronavirus model now projects 147,000 U.S. deaths by August, 10,000 more than a previous estimate. And the researcher behind that model tells CNN it's tied to the reopening of states too early. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. CHRIS MURRAY, INSTITUTE FOR HEALTH METRICS AND EVALUATION, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON: We're starting to see the effects of two things driving up the numbers. One is the consequence of the relaxing of social distancing, people getting out and about, having more contact. We're seeing, you know, upward trends in case numbers in a number of states and big swings up in mobility. And then some further states have relaxed social distancing, like North Carolina in the last few days as well. All of that, unfortunately, is combining to push the numbers higher, as best we can assess in the data that's out there.

We really worry that we're on an unfortunate trajectory. You know, when we started off making projections, we had assumed that all of the states were going to sort of follow, if you will, the New Zealand model, which is to keep social distancing in place until transmission gets to a really low level, and then you can open up much more safely. We're not doing that. We're speeding towards relaxing social distancing. People are getting the message. They're getting out. And I think we'll see the numbers go up, unless we see the benefits of people being cautious, wearing masks, and capacities to test, contact trace, and isolate go up faster than we think they may.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: California is one state that appears to be listening to the experts. Los Angeles County is expected to remain under some sort of stay-at-home orders until at least July. And not just that. The state has ramped up COVID-19 testing. California's governor says they have already conducted more than 1 million tests statewide.

And although U.S. President Trump insists the entire country has prevailed on testing, health experts say the U.S. isn't close to the rate of testing needed to safely reopen the economy. CNN's Jim Acosta has the details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FAUCI: Thank you very much Mr. Chairman.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Testifying remotely at a rare Senate hearing on the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci warned the health crisis in the U.S. could be worse than what's already known. Telling senators the actual number of deaths may be higher than current estimates.

FAUCI: I think you are correct that the number is likely higher. I don't know exactly what percent higher. But almost certainly it's higher.

ACOSTA: Fauci and other administration health experts were grilled on some of President Trump's questionable comments about the virus.

Ahead of the hearing the president twitted -- our testing is the best in the word by far.

But that's not true. Some of the latest data show the U.S. still lags behind other countries in testing. The administration has frequently compared the U.S. to South Korea, even though the two countries are far apart in deaths. A glaring contrast noted by GOP Senator Mitt Romney.

SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): I find our testing record nothing to celebrate whatsoever. The fact is, their test numbers are going down, down, down, now, because they don't have the kind of outbreak we have, ours are going up, up, up.

[04:05:00]

ACOSTA: A clash over reopening schools, Republican Senator Rand Paul echoed complaints from Trump supporters that Fauci has been too cautious. Fauci fired right back.

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): I don't think you're the end-all, I don't think you're the one person that gets to make the decision.

FAUCI: I have never made myself out to be the end-all and only voice in this. I'm a scientist, a physician, and a public health official. I think we better be careful if we are not cavalier in thinking that children are completely immune to the deleterious effects.

ACOSTA: As the White House and some Republicans are clamoring for states to reopen, Vice President Mike Pence was spotted outside the West Wing, wearing a mask. Unlike last week, more White House staffers could be seen in masks too. Pence is keeping his distance from Mr. Trump, officials say, as a precaution after the vice president's press secretary tested positive for the virus.

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The Vice President has made the choice to keep his distance for a few days, and I would just note that that's his personal decision to make that, as to how many days he does it.

ACOSTA: A new CNN poll shows a sizable majority of Americans don't approve of the President's handling of the virus, a measurable spike over the last two months. So the President is trying to distract the public from his record, taking credit for the positive poll numbers from many governors.

Tweeting, remember this, every governor who has sky high approval on their handling of the coronavirus, and I am happy for them all, could in no way I have gotten those numbers or had that success without me and the federal government's help.

The President is tossing out new bright shiny objects, coining the term "Obama-gate," to suggest former President Barack Obama somehow committed a crime even as Mr. Trump won't say what it is or produce any evidence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What is the crime exactly that light at the you're accusing him of?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You know what the crime is. The crime is obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.

ACOSTA: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell complained about Obama's criticism of the President.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): I think President Obama should have kept his mouth shut. ACOSTA (on camera): As for Senator Paul's comments about Dr. Fauci, it should be noted at the White House press briefing, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany repeatedly cited Fauci and his expertise on a whole range of subjects from testing to an upcoming vaccine.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Joining me now to talk more about all of this is CNN medical analyst and epidemiologist Dr. Larry Brilliant. Good to have you with us.

DR. LARRY BRILLIANT, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST AND EPIDEMIOLOGIST: Thank you, Rosemary. Good to be with you.

CHURCH: So, at the Senate hearing Tuesday, we heard from top infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, who issued a stark warning that the U.S. does not have the coronavirus under control, and if the country opens up too fast, it will result in more deaths and infections. What's your response to that and to the pushback he received from Senator Rand Paul, who told Dr. Fauci he was not the end all voice on this?

BRILLIANT: Well, let me first disagree with Senator Paul. Anthony Fauci is the be all and end all. He is the gold standard against which we epidemiologists measure ourselves. And what he said is accurate. If you think just back just two months ago, when we had only a couple of dozen deaths in the United States, now we're over 80,000. And now Chris Murray's new model is predicting that we will have 140,000 cumulative deaths by the first week of August. That's an explosive growth in a virus that can cause that much death in such a small number of months with such an acceleration.

We do not have it under control. The virus is leading us, not the other way around. And we open up recklessly at our expense. We have to open up, but we have to do it cautiously, and there has to be a quid pro quo. Every time we open up, we have to cram down on the existing viruses, put a circle around them with absolute quarantine. If we quarantine a few people, then the many, the rest of us, can begin to get out, but you can't do one without the other.

CHURCH: Dr. Fauci and other public health officials testifying with him Tuesday agreed that COVID-19 testing is not at the level it should be in this country, despite President Trump claiming Monday that the U.S. had met the moment and prevailed on testing. How much testing is enough, do you think?

BRILLIANT: So, if you have a cancer, a melanoma on your nose -- I hope you don't. I hope I don't. And you did one test three or four days after you saw it, and the surgeon could come and just take that one cancer away, that would be enough testing. But if you waited three months and then you did 1,000 tests after the cancer had already spread and metastasized through your body, it's not the quantity of tests, it's the timeliness and the number and the quantity and the quality of the tests. They're all important.

[04:10:00] We do not have enough for this moment in time when we have so many cases in every county in the United States.

If we assume, for example, that we had 100,000 active cases, that's the place where the virus is. That's where it's spreading. I'm making that number up. But if we were doing a kind of contact tracing of 50 people for every case, then we would need almost 5 million tests just to surround that one active case, all those active cases and put them in jail with quarantine. You can't do the quarantine until you've done the contact tracing and testing them. And that's the difference. If we had that number of tests that we have today back three months ago, we would have plenty of tests. But for this time, it's not enough.

CHURCH: Right.

BRILLIANT: We need millions.

CHURCH: Right, and doctor, of course, none of us will be getting back to any normal that we used to know until there is a vaccine. When do you think that will likely be? And how ready is the U.S. and the rest of the world to roll this out to every citizen across the globe, if and when that vaccine comes?

BRILLIANT: Well, that is exactly the question. You put your finger on it. When we get a vaccine, which we all hope will be 12 to 18 months from now, in sufficient quantities -- when you have a vaccine, you don't get rainbows and unicorns. When you have a vaccine what you get is a vaccination program. And as you say, we're going to have to deliver the vaccine to the most remote corner, the poorest and most remote people in the world in 220 countries.

So, we have to figure out, where does the vaccine go? Where is it manufactured? How is it distributed? How do we organize a program as large and as vast as the polio eradication program and do it in a fair and equitable way? We should be thinking about that now. Our leaders should be coming together with W.H.O. and Gavi, which is the global vaccines institute that Seth Berkley admirably runs. And we should be having those conversations in anticipation of having the vaccine. It'll take us months, if not a year, to plan for that vaccination program.

CHURCH: Yes, it is critical, that planning. Dr. Larry Brilliant, thank you so much for talking with us. Appreciate it.

BRILLIANT: Rosemary, thank you for having me.

CHURCH: There are still a lot of unknowns when it comes to the coronavirus. At first, older adults and people with underlying conditions were believed to be most at risk, but now it appears the virus is also affecting younger patients and even children. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta has the details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now I am ready to go out into the ER. I don't know quite what to expect yet. DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Don't

know what to expect in so many ways. The coronavirus has challenged ER doctors like Matt Bi (ph) since it hit, baffling doctors with its mysterious symptoms. Coronavirus is a respiratory virus. It can spread through droplets with each cough or each breath.

DR. MANISHA JUTHANI, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AND EPIDEMIOLOGY, YALE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: You have a droplet that then goes into your nose, maybe down to your throat, and eventually down into your lungs.

GUPTA: But some people have critically low oxygen levels, and yet, still appear like you and me.

DR. RICHARD LEVITAN, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN: Almost unimaginable how people could be awake and alert and have oxygen levels that are half normal.

GUPTA: And it gets even more confusing. A respiratory virus doesn't typically cause isolated loss of smell or bumps and lesions on the feet, from nose to toes and nearly every organ in between. How does a microscopic strand of RNA wreak so much and such varied destruction?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So, when they come in, they can be to the extreme where they have no pulse already, or they're coming in breathing really fast and hypoxic with a very low oxygen level and are cold and blue.

GUPTA: It could have to do with the way the virus typically enters our cells in the first place. You're looking at the ace 2 receptor. See how the spikes on the coronavirus bind to the surface of the cell.

JUTHANI: This particular receptor is known to be in lung tissue, but it's also known to be in the heart and other parts of the body. It seems that this ace 2 receptor is expressed more, potentially, with age.

GUPTA: Higher levels of ace 2 are often present in men, which could also explain why they are most likely to be affected more severely. Patients like 33-year-old Warren Alvega (ph), who had a life- threatening blood clot in his lungs.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Next thing I know, I was on the floor.

GUPTA: Then there's the mystery of what it's doing to some children. At least three dead now in New York from an illness with symptoms similar to Kawasaki disease, a condition where the blood vessels become enflamed.

[04:15:00]

ANDREW CUOMO, NEW YORK GOVERNOR: We have about 100 cases of an inflammatory disease in young children that seems to be created by the COVID virus.

JUTHANI: The children that are having these signs of inflammatory conditions, they already had the infection over two weeks ago. So this is not like another virus that I've seen.

GUPTA: This tiny, little virus, which cannot even be killed, because truth is, it's not even alive.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: And that was CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, reporting.

Well still to come, coronavirus cases are soaring in Russia. It's now second to only the United States. And President Putin is feeling the pressure with the virus even reaching his inner circle.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHURCH: Welcome back, everyone. Well, the coronavirus lockdown is taking its toll on the U.K. economy. Its GDP contracted by 2 percent in the first quarter and 5.8 percent in March alone. That's the biggest monthly fall since 1997.

[04:20:00]

This news comes as Prime Minister Boris Johnson's plan to gradually reopen the country is now under way. He's called on his citizens to return to work if they can't do it from home. And starting Wednesday, Mr. Johnson says people in the U.K. will be able to sunbathe in their local parks, exercise outdoors as much as they want, and drive to other destinations. But he warns, social distancing must be maintained.

The U.K. is one of the hardest hit nations in the pandemic. More than 32,000 people there have died. And CNN's Nick Paton Walsh joins me now from London. So, Nick, after a very muddled message yesterday from Prime Minister Boris Johnson, are Britons any clearer now on what they can and cannot do as the country slowly emerges from this lockdown?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Well, this was, Rosemary, the first day of clarity, really. And behind me, let me just pause for a moment. This is Kings Cross in Central London. And even today, when everyone's supposed to be getting back to work, unless they can work from home, it's pretty deathly silent. That wasn't the case a few hours ago. Staff here say about 60 percent, the usual volume of people here, but the rest of the station kind of a limited bustle, frankly. And that could be a reflection of messaging problem the U.K. government had here.

This is the old message. Now it says, stay alert, control the virus and save lives. But a lot of the focus has been about trying to protect the NHS here and ensure that there isn't a second peak when it comes to the virus later on this winter. And that has caused some people, perhaps more reticent to go back to work than might normally have been expected.

And as you said, the government here today putting out very dire economic news. And that, of course, is the continuous balance that this country, the worst hit in Europe in terms of the full number of deaths announced so far -- there are different ways different countries gauge these deaths -- the balance they are currently facing. They deeply are concerned about a second peak, but they're also having to slowly, gradually relax what's happening here as well.

The R-number of infections is thought in the U.K. to be between 0.5 and 0.9, lower here in London. The street outside past there busy with traffic in Central London today, and this after, as you said, a messy few days. A speech on Sunday from Boris Johnson talking about what measures there would be but missing some of them out, elaborated in detail by many documents over the days ahead. And this the first morning in which there was a clear change after nine weeks of extraordinary lockdown. The people were supposed to be getting back to their daily lives. But I have to tell you, looking around me here, there are signs of life returning, certainly, but not the overwhelming flow of people you might expect with a country that's been desperate to get on with its normal lives now for two months or so.

CHURCH: Almost eerily quiet there. Nick Paton Walsh reporting from Kings Cross station there in London. Appreciate it.

Well, Russia is dealing with an alarming development. Johns Hopkins University reports the country now has the second highest number of coronavirus cases in the world after the United States. Take a look.

Russia has reported more than 10,000 new cases per day over the last ten straight days. And now the virus has reached Mr. Putin's inner circle. The President's spokesman is hospitalized with COVID-19.

CNN's Nathan Hodge, our Moscow bureau chief, joins us now, monitoring this story from London. Good to see you, Nathan. So, Russia's President has been struggling with this pandemic. The numbers show that. They tell the story well. And now, of course, the infection and hospitalization of his top aide. What is the latest on all of this?

NATHAN HODGE, CNN MOSCOW BUREAU CHIEF: Well, Rosemary, you know, this pattern of increased cases over the past ten days have really shown that the pandemic -- that the virus is really spreading not just in Moscow, where the bulk of the infections initially were, but to the rest of Russia's regions. And what a contrast it is from let's say about six weeks to two months ago, when Russian President Vladimir Putin was very confidently projecting that they had things under control, that they had managed to sort of nip the virus in the bud.

Very different right now, where the Kremlin seems to be on the back foot and Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to be somewhat detached. He's been leading the country's response over video teleconferences with his regional leaders, with his top ministers, while he's been in isolation in his residence outside of Moscow.

Now, of course, the main concern on the minds of many is the Russian President's health. And we've been reassured for weeks now that President Putin is in robust, good health, that he's isolating.

[04:25:00]

But we saw with the hospitalization of Dmitry Peskov, his spokesperson, that this is now reaching the inner circle of the Kremlin. Now, Peskov himself was quick to clarify that he has not met personally with Putin in over a month, but certainly, this is raising a lot of concerns, I think in Russia, about the response. As well as the economic impact, the fallout, because Russia's very heavily dependent on oil. Oil prices have plummeted amid dropping demand, and it's really been a one-two punch for the Russian economy.

So, I think there are a lot of questions, both about the impact on Putin's popularity as well as about how the Kremlin plans to move forward to respond to this. But again, they have said -- and Putin said earlier this week that it was time to start thinking about easing lockdown. But he's delegated a lot of those specific decisions to his regional leaders.

And in the capital, Moscow, for instance, they have said there's no way that that's going to happen, for instance, until the end of May at the very earliest. So, lots of questions here. And Russia, again, occupying the second position, after the United States, in total number of coronavirus cases -- Rosemary.

CHURCH: Nathan Hodge bringing us up to date on the situation in Russia from his vantage point there in London. Many thanks.

And coming up, when is it safe to reopen, and in what capacity? As various U.S. states take different approaches, we will hone in on the response in California, that is next.

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CHURCH: Welcome back. Well, the largest county in the U.S. plans to extend its lockdown for at least three months. Health officials in Los Angeles County say while some restrictions will be loosened and lifted.

END