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U.S. Smashes Record with More Than 63,000 New Cases; Trump Again Lies about Why Virus Cases Are Soaring; Trump: Doctors 'Very Surprised' I Aced Cognitive Test; Tropical Storm Fay to Soak U.S. East Coast; Brazil's COVID-19 Death Toll Nears 70,000; Hong Kong Battles New Wave of Coronavirus Cases; Hospital at Center of Italy Outbreak Reports No New Cases. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired July 10, 2020 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We did it right, we shut it down. Now it's time to get back to work.

[05:59:26]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The reality: cases are surging, states moving in the wrong direction.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASE: It really is the perfect storm: an infectious disease and public health person's worst nightmare.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I can speak for all the ERs here, and a lot of us are overwhelmed.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are in a much worse place than we were back in March. We have multiple epicenters all around the country.

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): For those who just think that now people are getting it, and no one's dying, that is very misleading. In fact, it's fundamentally untrue.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Friday, July 10, 6 a.m. here in New York.

We begin with another record-breaking day in the coronavirus pandemic. The United States setting a single-day high of more than 63,000 new cases. Researchers at Harvard say the outbreaks are now so severe in five states -- Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina and Georgia -- that shutdowns should be mandatory. Texas is very close to that threshold, as well.

At least three states now reporting a record number of deaths. Nearly 1,000 people died in the U.S. from coronavirus just yesterday.

Arizona, Florida, and Texas all seeing alarmingly high positivity rates. Dr. Anthony Fauci specifically calling out Florida for bypassing the reopening guidelines and allowing the virus to come roaring back.

Dr. Fauci stressing that the U.S. is not doing well and that political divisions are partly to blame.

BERMAN: Now, Dr. Fauci said political divisions are to blame, but he'd also be right if he said long division, because the president clearly can't do it. He either doesn't understand the math about the pandemic, or he's lying about it.

He continues to spew the nonsense that the surge in cases is because of more testing. It's not. Record hospitalization in some states, record deaths in states not because of more testing.

Incidentally, the president said overnight that doctors were surprised how well he did on a cognitive test. Why were they so surprised? What were they expecting? More on that in a second.

First, this morning, the president heads to southern Florida, where the positivity rate is more than 33 percent. The state just suffered its highest number of deaths in a single day.

CNN's Rosa Flores live in Miami with the latest.

Good morning, Rosa.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, good morning.

If we start nationally, the United States setting a single-day record of more than 63,000 coronavirus cases on Thursday alone and nearly 1,000 deaths.

And if you look at the trends of the hardest-hit states, those trends are going in the wrong direction.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FLORES (voice-over): Long lines for testing in Miami. Annual passholder previews at Walt Disney World in Orlando. And the debate on whether to reopen Florida's schools intensifying.

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): If you can do Home Depot, if you can do Walmart, if you can do these things, we absolutely can do the schools.

FLORES: This all while new coronavirus cases reached nearly 9,000 in the Sunshine State Thursday. The nation's top infectious disease doctor says Florida moved through the reopening process too quickly.

FAUCI: Certainly Florida, you know, I think jumped a few check points.

FLORES: It's one of four states accounting for about 50 percent of new infections in another record-setting day of new cases in the country. Hundreds in Phoenix waited in their cars for the chance to get a free coronavirus test, as temperatures reached 110 degrees.

Thirty-three percent of people are testing positive in Arizona. And intensive care units are about 89 percent full, with around 180 beds available across the entire state.

LAUREN LEANDER, ARIZONA ICU NURSE: We're kind of at the point where we are stretched so thing we're at the point of compromising patient safety. Things have definitely taken a bad turn since our state reopened here.

FLORES: Hospitals in Texas are also in crisis mode, and elective surgeries are on hold in much of the state.

California's governor announced a record high of coronavirus-related deaths.

NEWSOM: The mortality rates are still front-and-center and should be in your consciousness. For those who just think that now people are getting it and no one's dying, that is very misleading. In fact, it's fundamentally untrue.

FLORES: Around 100,000 people are tested for the disease in California daily, and Los Angeles County recorded nearly 1,800 new cases on Thursday alone.

More than 50 percent of people testing positive there are between the ages of 18 and 40.

FAUCI: I would hope we don't have to resort to shutdown. I think that would be something that is obviously an extreme. So rather than think in terms of reverting back down to a complete shutdown, I would think we need to get the states pausing in their opening process.

FLORES: And with testing efforts ramping up nationwide, there's serious concern for keeping up with PPE, and supplies for health workers, and a delay in results from labs.

The CDC director acknowledging there's a lot of room for improvement.

DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, CDC DIRECTOR: We continue to have greater needs for more testing, and even though we're now up over 600,000 tests a day we continue to need more testing in this country to confront this outbreak. And I anticipate that that capability will continue to come.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FLORES: Here's the reality on the ground here in Miami-Dade County. The positivity rate has spiked to 33.5 percent. The goal for the county is not to exceed 10 percent. Well, the county has exceeded 18 percent for the past 14 days.

[06:05:12]

As for hospitalization rates, those are up 76 percent, ICU beds 86 percent, and ventilators 124 percent.

Now, despite all those facts and figures, and well that Miami-Dade County is the epicenter of this crisis here in the state of Florida, President Donald Trump visiting Southern Command in Doral today. And John, he will be discussing drug trafficking in South America -- John.

BERMAN: Yes, it really is remarkable, with the alarming numbers, that the president is going there.

This as he continues to push lies about the huge increase in cases. CNN's Joe Johns live at the White House with that -- Joe.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

The president pushing more unfounded claims about testing. Once again, pushing the same error-filled explanations, as well as downplaying the current surge that's going on around the country. All of this in an interview last night. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (via phone): Let me just make one statement, though. We do testing like nobody has ever done testing. And when we test, the more you test, the more cases you find.

In other countries, you know when they test? And I ask them all. They test when somebody is not feeling well or when somebody walks into a hospital. So they don't have tests. They have tests that are very limited.

We have these massive 40, 45 million people have been tested. It's a record, and our tests are the best. So we have cases all over the place.

Most of of those cases immediately get better. They get -- you know, people, they're young people. They have sniffles, and two days later, they're fine. And they're not sick to start off with. They're asymptomatic.

A lot of things happen. And what we're doing is with all of these tests that we're doing all other the country. Test, everybody tests, pull up parking lots, everything else. What we've done is we've created a tremendous number of cases.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: OK. So there's a lot there that isn't true. Other people use testing to contain the virus, so it isn't just sick people being tested.

As for the president's claims about downplaying how sick people are, just take a look around the country. In Arizona, intensive care units are at 89 percent right now. In Texas, you see a record number of hospitalizations. In California, you see a record number of deaths.

So the question, of course, is how is the president's performance playing around the country? A new ABC News poll has him at 67 percent of respondents disapproving of the president's performance during the pandemic.

John, back to you.

BERMAN: Look, Joe, the president is either lying or he doesn't understand simple testing. The positivity rate is up. We have record deaths in three states, and we have 133,000 deaths in America overall on this.

Joe Johns at the White House.

On this overall point, this was not all the president said overnight. He also claimed that, for some reason, very recently, doctors administered a cognitive test on him. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (via phone): I actually took one when I -- very recently when I was -- you know, the radical left was saying, Is he all there, is he all there? And I proved I was all there, because I aced it. I aced the test.

And he should take the same exact test. A very standard test. I took it at Walter Reed Medical Center in front of doctors. And they were very surprised. They said, That's an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you just did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. Bear with me. Bear with me a minute here, because this begs so many questions. If true -- and this is a big "if" -- why did doctors give him this test at all? Was there some concern? Was this the unexplained trip to Walter Reed in the fall? If so, what was the event that was so pressing he had to be tested on an unannounced weekend visit?

Now, maybe he was lying about taking the test, which speaks to his moral fiber, rather than his cognitive ability. Or maybe he means the test he took two-and-a-half years ago. If that's the case, one could question why his mind processed that as very recent.

But the real doozy of a question is this. No matter when he took the test or if he took it, the president brags that doctors were surprised that he did well. Let that sink in. Why would they be surprised he passed? What was so different about his behavior and his test score that led to this shock?

If doctors are surprised you do well on a cognitive test, Alisyn, I'm just not sure that's something you want to brag about.

CAMEROTA: Hmm. Yes, it's a little bit like being surprised you passed a sobriety test. Something was still wrong that made you have to take that sobriety test. But I mean, on a serious note, John, I mean, I think that you raise

great questions. Hannity last night called for Joe Biden to release the results of his cognitive test and his medical records. Well, we'd like to see the results of President Trump's cognitive test and his medical records that he has not released.

[06:10:07]

BERMAN: Again, that's all true. It's all true. If they exist.

But I think it's even at a higher level than that. Think about how his mind processed what he's saying last night. Bragging that doctors were surprised that he did well on a cognitive test.

That's like someone saying, Oh, you're only 45 years old? Because you only look a day over 60. Or, Really, you're 175? Because with that gut, you look a spitting image for 230.

I just am shocked. I'm shocked that his brain is processing it like this.

CAMEROTA: Well, I mean, also, it is important for our president to be able to have mental acuity. And sometimes -- look, there are questions. I mean, there are questions.

If you read through some of the president's transcripts, even just what we played there, the fragments of thoughts and the stream of consciousness, sometimes, can make you wonder if there is connective tissue happening between these thoughts.

And so, yes, more information would be better to see the candidate and the president's results.

BERMAN: And there are 133,000 Americans dead in this pandemic.

CAMEROTA: More on that, John, but first, Tropical Storm Fay is bearing down on the East Coast. It's expected to dump a lot of rain today. CNN meteorologist Chad Myers is tracking the storm.

How's it looking, Chad?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: This is the same low pressure we were talking about on Monday that was in the Gulf of Mexico, moved over the Florida Panhandle, through Georgia into the Carolinas, and now it's in the Gulf Stream now. And it's getting bigger, getting stronger. It's a 50 mile-per-hour tropical storm.

Now, it isn't going to become a hurricane, but it is going to affect the northeast cities. It's going to affect Philadelphia, Baltimore, even D.C., all the way along Cape May, all the way up to Sandy Hook and even, for that matter, on up into Long Island.

So we're going to take these tropical storm warnings for the day. By tomorrow this is gone. This is long gone and on up toward Saratoga. This is way up north of Albany by tomorrow. We take you hour by hour. Around 6 p.m. tonight, that will be the worst weather you get in New York City. By 11 p.m., it's gone, and then that weather gets into Boston, Connecticut, all the way through New Hampshire and Vermont and then farther to the north as we move into tomorrow and away.

So this is a quick little hitter storm: 50-mile-per-hour winds. We're going to see some trees down. We're going to see some power lines down. Probably a little bit of beach erosion and that heavy, heavy rainfall. Some spots will pick up four to six inches of rain, but it's long gone by tomorrow morning -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Good to know. Thank you very much, Chad.

All right. So what can be done today to stop the death, and the hospitalizations, and the sickness in the United States? Surely, we can take some steps today. That's next.

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[06:16:56]

BERMAN: All right. Alarming new numbers this morning. More than 63,000 new cases of coronavirus in a single day. That is a record. At least three states are reporting having a record number of deaths. The nationwide death toll obviously trending in the wrong direction: 133,000 deaths total. And the daily average of deaths is beginning to rise again.

Joining us now, Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. He's also the co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

And Dr. Hotez, you say you're having a hard time sleeping now because of what you're seeing. Why?

DR. PETER HOTEZ, DEAN, NATIONAL SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Well, I'm having a hard time sleeping for two reasons. One is this steep acceleration. You know, as we've been talking about, every two days it's a new record. It was 40,000, and 50,000, now 60,000. By the end of the weekend it will be up to 70,000, and we're rapidly approaching Dr. Fauci's apocalyptic number of 100,000 cases.

And it's now associated with a very sharp increase in hospitalizations. ICU admissions across all the southern states. And hospital staffs are getting exhausted, donning and doffing PPE, and hospital staffs are getting ill. They don't have enough hospital staffs.

And now the deaths are starting, as we predicted. They lagged. Now the last two days in Texas, we've set record numbers of -- of -- number of deaths. That's problem No. 1.

Problem No. 2 is the absolute refusal by the federal government to initiate a response.

What we're starting to see now, John, is what I think is more than the occasional gaffe or misstatements. I think when we look at this in totality, what we're really seeing is a coordinated misinformation campaign coming out of the White House.

You know, it's sniffles. It's the testing. It's the 99 percent harmless. The embers. The no deaths. The hospitalizations are due to elective surgeries. The Chinese conspiracy theories. Blaming WHO.

This is an administration that refuses to engage, refuses to do anything about this. And that's also what's keeping me up, is the fact that the states are more or less on their own. We're getting back-up FEMA and PPE support, but there is no national strategy, no national road map, and any interest in even inaugurating any kind of national road map.

So what's supposed to happen? I don't see anything reversing this trend as the numbers continue to rise.

CAMEROTA: According to Harvard researchers this morning, five states are flashing read. Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Georgia. And they feel, Doctor, that they should have mandatory stay- at-home orders now. They're no longer optional in those five states, that that's what the governors should do. Do you agree?

HOTEZ: Yes. We're in a public health crisis. We're in an emergency. We absolutely have to go to lockdown in multiple states. And this would be an opportunity now to fix things, to bring the entire nation back down to containment mode or something that resembles it, meaning something where you can actually conduct public health.

[06:20:13]

Because right now you can't do contact tracing when you're -- have this rapid ascent of cases.

What we need to do is have a national strategy and roadmap where we look at every state and say, this is what -- as a directive, what has to be done to bring us back down to containment mode.

And if we were to do that, we could do things like open up schools safely. You can't open up a school where you a COVID epidemic raging and teachers getting sick and demoralizing the staff. It's not going to work.

We have -- or -- and we could open up colleges and universities. We can get to some semblance of normal life, if we do the hard work now over the next six weeks. By the fall, we could do some good things.

But there's no -- no even acknowledgment that there's a -- that there's a crisis. So we're two or three degrees of separation away from that. And now this coordinated misinformation campaign gives me pause for enormous concern.

BERMAN: I'm sorry, I'm almost at a loss for words to hear you say this now and speak in these terms, Dr. Hotez. Barring stay-at-home orders or new lockdowns, because those may be politically unpalatable or undoable for some states, is there anything that can be done to slow this down?

HOTEZ: Well, you know, once you get above a certain level, once this thing really starts to snowball and once hospital staffs get exhausted and -- or become overwhelmed -- and this is now starting to happen in multiple metro areas in multiple states -- this is when you see the mortality rates really start to skyrocket.

This is what happened in Italy. It's what happened in New York during the early part of the epidemic. It's what's going to happen here. And now you're going to start seeing an increase in deaths. We're already seeing the first piece of that now over the last few days, and this is where it's going to start to rise.

So eventually, I think, the administration will have no choice but to act, but let's do it now while we -- while there's still some time.

CAMEROTA: Dr. Peter Hotez, we appreciate your warning this morning, as we do every morning. It has been a very bad week here in the United States. Thank you very much.

HOTEZ: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Also this morning, Brazil is approaching 70,000 coronavirus deaths. The country is now second in fatalities, just behind the United States. In Hong Kong, all schools are being closed amid a recent surge in cases.

CNN has reporters around the world for you with the latest headlines.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL WEIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Bill Weir in the capital of Brazil, where another day brought another 40,000 positive COVID-19 tests and over 1,100 new fatalities, pushing the country's total here close to 70,000 now.

President Bolsonaro continues to take his hydroxychloroquine, continues to tell his countrymen to go back to work, even as Congress tried to propose a bill that would protect some 900,000 indigenous Brazilians, tribes in the Amazon and beyond, guaranteeing them fresh water, hospital beds, and disinfectant. President Bolsonaro vetoed most of those provisions.

And Facebook and Instagram removed dozens of accounts they say were putting out false information about Brazilian politics and the pandemic, and they tied most of them back to President Bolsonaro's two sons.

WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Will Ripley in Hong Kong, a city scrambling right now to try to contain this third wave of COVID-19 before it starts spreading out of control.

The numbers are still relatively small right now. You're talking about dozens of cases being reported every day, but Hong Kong just saw its record daily high of locally-transmitted infections. And they've identified three clusters: restaurants and nightclubs; taxis; and senior care centers.

More restrictive social distancing measures and increased testing are now in place. But will it be enough to stop the spread of this illness? Some of the cases they can't trace, which means people are walking around Hong Kong right now, perhaps unknowingly spreading the virus.

DELIA GALLAGHER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Delia Gallagher in Italy.

The hospital that was at the heart of this country's COVID outbreak is reporting its first day without any new COVID patients. This is Pope John XIII hospital in Bergamo. Bergamo part of the region of Lombardi, the hardest hit in Italy. Bergamo had the highest number of COVID cases in all of Europe. And this hospital was the first to admit COVID-19 patients back on February 23.

So it is an important marker, not only for Bergamo but for the rest of Italy that, for the first time since that date, they are able to report no new COVID patients.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CAMEROTA: Our thanks to all of our correspondents around the globe.

Meanwhile, Roger Stone is set to report to prison this month, but President Trump is signaling he may intervene. Details next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP (via phone): Roger Stone was treated very unfairly, unbelievably unfairly, and I watched that and I thought it was incredible the way that man was treated.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: He's about to go -- Have you thought about pardons or commutations at all?

TRUMP: I am always thinking. I am always thinking. So you'll be watching like everybody else in this case.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That's President Trump implying that he may grant clemency to his long-time friend, Roger Stone. Stone was found guilty of seven counts related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, including lying to Congress. Stone was sentenced to more than three years in prison. He's been ordered to report to prison by the end of this month.

Joining us now is CNN's chief legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin.

Well, that would be swampy, if he granted clemency to a good friend of his.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, even William Barr, the attorney general, who is usually very deferential to the president, has said he thinks it was an appropriate prosecution.

[06:30:00]