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Dr. Birx: Hundreds of Thousands of COVID Deaths Were Preventable; New Coronavirus Cases on the Rise in 27 States; World Health Organization to Release Report Tomorrow on Origins of Virus; Massive Cargo Ship 'Partially Refloated,' Still Stuck. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired March 29, 2021 - 06:00   ET

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

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Cases are starting to rise again in some states.

[05:59:06]

DR. ASHISH JHA, DEAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: A lot of the spread is happening among younger people, relaxed and getting infected.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Was there a moment, Dr. Fauci, when you said, OK, this is the big one?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Yes.

The decision to go all out and develop a vaccine may have been the best decision that I've ever made.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're continuing to see the fallout of this sweeping elections bill passed in the state of Georgia.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They're gaslighting these improvements and fearmongering.

SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA): I'm going to do everything I can so that we can expand on democracy rather than contract it.

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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 Monday, March 29, 6 a.m. here in New York. John is off, and John Avlon joins me. Great to have you.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST/ANCHOR: Great to be here.

CAMEROTA: A very busy news day, because we begin this morning with new revelations about the Trump administration's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. This is based on new interviews with the top health officials in the country. It aired last night in a CNN documentary.

Dr. Deborah Birx says hundreds of thousands of American deaths could have been mitigated if the White House had acted more aggressively and taken the threat more seriously.

The former CDC director, Robert Redfield, says he believes the virus that caused COVID-19 originated in a lab in Wuhan, but he cannot provide any evidence of that.

This morning, a WHO report on the origins of COVID-19 is about to be released. We have fresh details.

AVLON: And it all comes as health experts sound the alarm about a surge across the United States this morning. New cases are on the rise in 27 states.

In Michigan, they've seen an increase of more than 50 percent since last week alone. And the state's lead health officials says Michigan is in the throes of a new surge, and cases are increasing the most in young people.

So we begin with CNN's Miguel Marquez, live in Detroit with our top story -- Miguel.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning there, John.

Look, this is the -- the race between the variants and the vaccines. What they are concerned about is not only a more transmissible variant, which we're already seeing, but a more deadly one.

They are seeing cases rise here in Michigan and many other states, mostly among young people. Here in Michigan, it's the 10 to 19 cohort that they're seeing those cases rise the most. They say there is community spread, and they are trying everything they can to stop it.

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MARQUEZ (voice-over): Fears of another coronavirus surge growing across the country just as a new variant first identified in the U.K. is becoming the dominant strain here in the U.S.

FAUCI: When you're coming down from a big peak, and you reach a point and start to plateau, once you stay at that plateau, you're really in danger of a surge coming up, and unfortunately, that's what we're starting to see.

MARQUEZ: In Michigan new cases have been steadily rising all month. The chief medical executive for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, says that cases are rising among young people, and the state has identified more than 1,200 cases of the variant first seen in the U.K.

JHA: A lot of the spread is happening among younger people, 10 to 19 but also 20 to 29. That's the group that is moving around, you know, kind of relaxed and getting infected.

MARQUEZ: In Florida, spring breakers have flooded the state, and it's also seeing a concerning uptick of cases among young people in at least one county.

The state has reported a seven-day average of nearly 5,100 new infections a day, up 12 percent from two weeks earlier.

Florida has the most confirmed cases of the U.K. variant in the country.

FAUCI: What we're likely seeing is, because of things like spring break and pulling back on the mitigation methods that you've seen now. Several states have done that. I believe it's premature.

MARQUEZ: In a new CNN documentary, the former White House coronavirus coordinator, Dr. Deborah Birx, reflected on her time at the White House, admitting she feels many deaths after the first wave last spring could have been prevented.

DR. DEBORAH BIRX, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE COORDINATOR: There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially if we took the lessons we had learned from that moment. That's what bothers me every day.

MARQUEZ: Concerns of another surge come as the world awaits a report on the origins of the coronavirus from the World Health Organization. At the center of the debate: whether this virus spread in nature from animals to humans or if this virus originated from a lab. Former CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield does not dismiss that controversial lab theory, discounted by other public health experts.

DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, FORMER CDC DIRECTOR: I'm of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped.

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MARQUEZ: So why? Why are we seeing more cases in places like Florida and here in Michigan? Well, it's pretty simple. People are sick of the pandemic. There's a lot more people moving around. The economy is reopening. There's a lot more mobility. There are sports teams, and a lot of clubs starting to gather. That's one thing that they're sort of focusing on. There still is, in some cases.

There's not a lot of testing, as well. Testing is down by about half from what it was just a couple of months ago. So they need more testing to figure out where this virus is. In schools, for instance. If you play sports, it's now mandatory testing in Michigan. And they're doing a lot more testing in schools to try to get a handle on who's getting virus and where those outbreaks are -- John.

AVLON: Ominous reminder that we are not out of the woods yet. Thank you very much, Miguel. Now a World Health Organization report on the origins of the coronavirus in China is expected to be released tomorrow. Will it answer that question about the Wuhan lab?

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh live in London with details on what CNN has learned about to date -- Nick.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John. Unfortunately, the WHO reports after a year of an investigation won't give a definitive answer, but it will, according to a panel member we've spoken to, Peter Daszak, suggest that this may have emerged from the wildlife trade inside of China. That's not a new theory.

And it may also suggest that, in fact, how the virus got into humans wasn't directly from transmission from a bat where scientists think it may originally have been created, or formed. It may, in fact, have gone from a bat to what they call an intermediary animal. That's another animal, possibly traded in the wildlife trade and then, through human contact, passed on to humans.

That will be, essentially, the main focus of the report released tomorrow in Geneva by the WHO panel. Some agencies say they've seen a draft or finished quotes from that report, suggesting this intermediary animal theory will be key. They will play down what China's been pushing, the idea that perhaps it was transmitted through frozen food sent around the world, globally. There's very little evidence to support that.

It will also play down what we've heard from U.S. officials that maybe this was to do with a laboratory leak. Also, very little evidence around that.

They will essentially focus in on what, from the start, has been the more likely way this virus got into humans, and that's from this intermediary animal, a phrase you're going to hear in the days ahead.

But importantly, too, as we've been reporting on CNN in the weeks previously, they want further investigation. They want to look at blood samples stored inside China for the months and years preceding the pandemic's outbreak. That will provide good clues.

They want to look at patient zero, the December the 8th case, first reported or recorded by the Chinese authorities, to see where his parents went, where he went. They want to look at so much more.

And the key thing, I think, here is exactly what these hundreds of pages of documentation, a lot of detail we're going to see is what it will, in fact, reveal. And also, too, what China's response will be. Remember, they have slow-rolled this whole thing from the very beginning. They were slow letting in the team initially. They've been criticized for pushing an investigation in certain directions. They've been criticized, too, for being the ones who gave the panel the data to look at in the first place.

So the key question is can the panel get back in to continue their inquiries? And are there any solid data points in here that China can immediately help with?

CAMEROTA: Absolutely. Will China give more access and more information? There are still so many questions. Nick, thank you very much for bringing us a preview of what we might expect in the WHO report.

Joining us now is Nikolai Petrovsky. He's an expert in vaccines and part of a group of scientists calling for a new investigation into the origins of coronavirus. Also with us, CNN political analyst Josh Rogan, who has done a lot of reporting on the pandemic's origins.

Gentlemen, let me just start by saying, what a remarkable documentary that was last night. I mean -- one more thing I should say. Josh, you're the author of the new book, "Chaos Under Heaven: America, China and the Battle for the 21st Century."

So this documentary last night, I mean, I think that, Nikolai, it's so rare. It's so soon after a catastrophe, or in this case, in the middle of an ongoing catastrophe. You get access to the top six government health officials who are yearning to talk. I mean there was a feeling of them sort of pulling off their muzzles now, being out of the administration, and wanting to tell the story of what had happened.

And Sanjay Gupta just asked the most incisive questions. It was riveting to hear from them. And so I just want to recap. Dr. Deborah Birx, I mean, said something that has garnered so much attention, which is, yes, the first 100,000 American deaths, when we didn't know what was happening, didn't know what this novel coronavirus was doing, those were always going to be a tragedy.

But after that, her feeling is the losses that we now see on the right side of your screen didn't have to happen. So here she is saying it again.

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BIRX: I look at it this way. The first time we have an excuse. There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially if we took the lessons we had learned from that moment. That's what bothers me every day.

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CAMEROTA: Nikolai, what were your thoughts listening to that?

NIKOLAI PETROVSKY, CORONAVIRUS VACCINE DEVELOPER: Look, I couldn't agree more. I mean, in Australia, we similarly had an early surge with just under 1,000 deaths. We learned the lessons, you know. We closed borders. We started testing on an enormous scale, and we've not really had any deaths since in the last six months. You know, we kept it at that first 1,000 during those first few months.

[06:10:05]

So it's really unfortunate to see other countries that we thought would do better, obviously, you know, not achieve that. And we have to ask why and what could be done better next time.

AVLON: Josh, you've done a lot of reporting on the Wuhan lab. And Dr. Redfield told Sanjay Gupta from CNN that -- that he really does believe by instinct, if not direct evidence, that the Wuhan lab could be the logical place this began.

Now, the WHO report that's going to be released yesterday [SIC] as you heard Nick Paton Walsh just say, seems to say that is not likely at all. Now, what is your degree of skepticism about that conclusion, apparently, from the upcoming WHO report?

JOSH ROGAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: I have a lot of skepticism about the WHO report, but it's not just me. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN's Dana Bash yesterday on "STATE OF THE UNION" that the U.S. government, the Biden administration has real concerns about the WHO investigation's process and methodology, in part because apparently, the Chinese government helped to write the report. That's not me. That's Secretary of State Antony Blinken. OK, so that's one thing.

The other thing is that, you know, these scientists, some of the investigators, already ruled out the lab accident theory before they even started the investigation. That reveals their bias.

And by the way, they also have direct conflicts of interest, because they work directly with the WIV scientists for years and years and years, and funded their projects. And also, they didn't actually investigate the lab accident theory. And now they're concluding, Oh, well, we shouldn't look at it any more.

So I think if all we have to do is listen to Robert Redfield, who is not just talking on his instinct. He has seen the intelligence. He can't tell us what he's seen; he's not allowed to disclose it, but he's seen it. OK? That means it exists. That means the Biden administration should release what they know.

And what Robert Redfield is saying very clearly here is there is a lot of evidence pointing to more investigation. Not that we know, not that there's proof, but that we need investigation of all the theories, including the lab accident theory, including the natural spillover theory. And we just can't rely on the WHO investigation. It's sad, but it's true.

CAMEROTA: Let's play that one more time, what Dr. Redfield said last night.

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REDFIELD: I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan from the laboratory. You know, it escaped. Other people don't believe that, that's fine. Scientists will eventually figure it out.

I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human and, at that moment in time the virus came to the human became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission.

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CAMEROTA: Nikolai, he points out he doesn't have evidence to present at the moment but that it stands to reason. And he had a whole -- I mean, this is what he does, much like you. He has a whole set of -- list of circumstantial reasons that he thinks it.

For instance, not unusual, he said, for a pathogen to infect a lab worker. I mean, it has happened. We've seen that in the past.

PETROVSKY: Absolutely. Look, when people talk about no evidence, you know, you could argue there's no evidence on either side. That, you know, there's a lot of talk about intermediate hosts and Peter Daszak, you know, obviously, has really been pushing that very hard.

There is no intermediate host. No one has found a single animal that would qualify as an intermediate host, despite desperately looking for those animals.

So I think on the side of the lab leak hypothesis, there is considerable data that suggests, as well to mention this virus is quite unusual for a pandemic virus. And our own research show that, really, it was perfectly adapted to infect and transmit between humans from the very first case. And that is not normally a feature of a pandemic virus.

Normally, it takes a while for them to learn the tricks of -- of how to get around and how to spread between -- inside a new human host.

So, you know, there is evidence of unusual features about this virus. Of course, you know, no single piece of evidence can identify where it came from. But I think there's as much evidence for the potential lab leak hypothesis as there currently is for a natural, you know, animal crossover event. So I think you have to be fair and say it's a completely open question.

And good science is not always good politics. If we want to keep the Chinese happy, then we have to actually ignore one possibility and only investigate the other. That makes it very difficult to do good science.

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AVLON: One of the things that is clear is that China's lack of transparency at the outset confounded this global health crisis. I want to play a sound from Dr. Fauci from last night and, Josh, come to you.

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GUPTA: How much did you -- did you trust the information coming out of China initially?

FAUCI: I always had skepticism about it because of what we went through with SARS. You know, people forget, but in SARS, the Chinese said, Oh, it's flu, it's flu. And then the next thing you know that SARS was all over the world. In Canada, in Australia, all over the place. So they are not very transparent in the past. It wasn't outright lying. They just didn't give you all the information.

GUPTA: How big a difference would it have been if our own investigators had been on the ground in China?

FAUCI: I think it would have been a big -- a significant difference.

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AVLON: Now Josh, your book delves deeply into the lack of transparency with regards to China. As we look forward to the release of this report, it looks like a lot of the emphasis is being put on this intermediate animal. Sort of the blaming the pangolin theory.

What are you going to be looking for? You heard Nick Paton Walsh say that one of the things that may be discussed is this idea that it was passed along on frozen food. Is there any evidence for that kind of a transmission as a credible explanation for how this spread worldwide?

ROGAN: Right. If you set aside the origin question, it's obvious and clear, as Fauci has said, that Chinese government actions, including the hiding of information and the suppression of science and journalism in those early days, cost lives. Lots of lives.

And it wasn't the only thing, and as Sanjay Gupta laid out, there are several failures that caused us to get to the situation we're in. But the Chinese government continues to cover up that science and to withhold that data, and that's an ongoing problem.

Now, the WHO investigation, if they want to go to Norway and look from frozen fish packages to try to find the virus, they're welcome to do that. OK, and if they find it, and then mea culpa. Good for them. OK?

But meanwhile, someone should investigate this la accident theory for real, OK? And they're not going to do it. So they can go look for the frozen food packages. Someone else has got to go look for this lab accident theory. And, guess what? The Chinese government is not going to like that.

CAMEROTA: Josh Rogan, Nikolai Petrovsky, thank you both very much for all of your expertise.

Overnight, major progress in the effort to refloat that massive container ship blocking the Suez Canal for the past week. A live report from Egypt next.

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AVLON: Developing right now, you're looking at live pictures of that massive skyscraper-sized cargo ship blocking the Suez Canal. And this morning, it is partially refloated, but the ship is still blocking traffic.

CNN's Ben Wedeman live in Cairo with the latest developments -- Ben.

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, John. As you can see from the live pictures, the ship, the Ever Given, is no longer straddling the Suez Canal, but it's still essentially stuck. We heard from a CEO of a Dutch dredging company that's taking part in this effort, saying that the bow is still stuck in clay on the opposite shore.

Now, they have been dredging continuously since basically early Tuesday when the ship was first stuck; and also they have received more and more high-powered tug boats to try to nudge this ship out of the way.

At this point, there are more than 360 other ships that are waiting either in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, or within the canal to move along.

We have heard optimistic statements from Egyptian officials that perhaps today, navigation will resume in the canal, but it's fair to say that sometimes wishful thinking obscures reality in this case.

And when you look at the number of ships, you can make a very easy calculation. You are talking about $80 billion worth of cargo that has been blocked from reaching its destination since early Tuesday morning. We know that the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, is expected on the scene sometime today. I think the wishful thinking is he will be on the scene when the ship is finally broken free -- John.

AVLON: Ben Wedeman, live for us from the Suez Canal and stunning statistics. Thank you very much, Ben.

All right. President Biden is pushing forward with his plans to sell an expansive infrastructure proposal even as he faces growing pressure to act on issues like voting rights and gun control. So can Congress juggle it all? We'll dig into that, next.

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[06:28:24]

REP. BARBARA LEE (D-CA): When you see what is taking place throughout the country, now, especially in Georgia, we have got to protect our democracy and protect the right to vote. This is a defining moment for our democracy, and we have to do everything at once.

REP. JAMAAL BOWMAN (D-NY): We need to pass HR-1, and we need to pass HR-4, which is the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. The only way to do that in the Senate, or one of the ways to absolutely to do in the Senate is to end the filibuster.

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AVLON: Democratic lawmakers vowing to fight against Georgia's new law limiting voting rights. It comes as the Biden administration launches its next legislative priority, an infrastructure plan expected to top $3 trillion.

Joining us now is CNN political analyst Toluse Olorunnipa. He is the national politics reporter for "The Washington Post." And Rachael Bade, reporter for Politico and co-author of "Politico Playbook." It's great to see you both.

Toluse, let's start with you. Jen Psaki, White House press secretary, confirmed this weekend that this big infrastructure bill the Biden administration's going to put forward is going to be split into two pieces. What is the significance of that strategically and in terms of hopes for its passage?

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That is pretty significant, John. This is a huge package. Three trillion dollars is a lot of money, and trying to put it all into one broad package is going to be a very difficult legislative undertaking.

So they're deciding to break it up into two packages, or two parts to this overall package, which includes your traditional infrastructure, things that people are normally aware of when you talk about infrastructure -- roads, bridges, digital infrastructure. Making sure that we are up to date in the 21st Century as a country.

That's something that might get some level of bipartisan support, even if it doesn't get bipartisan votes in Congress. Then Republicans can also talk about fixing the nation's roads and bridges.