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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Hazmat Cleanup Team Arrives at Quarantined Apartment; Interview with Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst; Ebola Fears; Protests Continue in Hong Kong

Aired October 03, 2014 - 16:00   ET

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

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: A warning has been issued that the world has less than a month to get its act together before Ebola is totally out of control.

I'm Jake Tapper. This is THE LEAD.

The national lead: He went to West Africa to expose the heartbreak, the confusion and the deadly dysfunction that the Ebola outbreak is causing. But now an American journalist is fighting to survive his own battle with the virus. I will ask his father about his condition next.

They are items you probably wouldn't go near without a full-on spacesuit, yet one family was stuck with the sheets and towels used by America's Ebola patient zero for days. Is this really the best we can do? I will ask the Texas lieutenant governor.

And the world lead, it may be nearing a breaking point in the battle for democracy, police and protesters clashing in Hong Kong with communist China watching.

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

We will begin with the national lead and a warning from those who have seen the worst of it up close. On behalf of 34 global aid organizations fighting Ebola in West Africa, the emergency field director of the International Rescue Committee says the number of patients infected by Ebola is doubling every three weeks and that the world has less than a month, until about October 30, to stop the spread of the virus before it gets out of control.

It's a frightening prediction, especially when you consider how many times U.S. health officials have tripped over themselves dealing with just one Ebola case right here on U.S. soil.

In just a few minutes, we're expecting an update from the White House on the nation's Ebola response. Meanwhile, more than 24 hours after the news broke on CNN that possibly contaminated sheets and towels from the first Ebola patient diagnosed in the U.S., Thomas Duncan, remained in the apartment where his girlfriend and four others, including their child, are quarantined, hazmat crews finally showed up today, presumably to collect that bedding.

Right now, we're also monitoring two other patients in the D.C. area, both with travel histories and symptoms that may, may indicate Ebola. One is being monitored at Howard University Hospital.

Our Erin McPike is there with the latest -- Erin.

ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jake, Howard University Hospital has admitted a patient who was exhibiting Ebola-like symptoms in the last day. That patient is currently in isolation and is being monitored and undergoing testing. All we know from the hospital is that that patient has recently returned from Nigeria, but they are not naming that patient.

Of course, I can tell you, though, that security around here especially has been very tense as we await those results. Just north of here at the Shady Grove Hospital, there is another patient who is admitting what the hospital said was flu-like symptoms. That patient also is still under isolation, but the testing came back negative.

All we know from the hospital is that particular patient has a travel history that would suggest that Ebola could be a risk. But they did not name the country that that individual traveled to.

In both of these cases, the hospitals say that they worked closely with the CDC to monitor those patients and are following very specific infection protocols -- Jake.

TAPPER: Erin McPike, thank you so much.

"How unpredictable and fraught with danger life can be." That's what American journalist Ashoka Mukpo posted on his Facebook just one month ago from Liberia. But just hours ago, the 33-year-old freelance cameraman for NBC News was diagnosed with the horrible Ebola virus.

He's set to return to the United States on Sunday, where his family is anxiously waiting and praying.

Joining us now is Ashoka's father, Dr. Mitchell Levy.

Dr. Levy, thank you so much for joining us.

I can't imagine what you're going through. But we're all praying for you. We're all thinking about your son. We have just received word, actually, from the Nebraska Medical Center that they're expecting an Ebola patient. Will they be treating your son?

DR. MITCHELL LEVY, FATHER OF EBOLA PATIENT: I'm not sure exactly when he will be arriving. But right now, we have been told that the air transport will arrive in Monrovia at 8:15 p.m. Sunday evening, Monrovia time.

TAPPER: We know that Ashoka was in close quarters with some Ebola patients. He'd obviously been working in that part of the world with NGOs and then as a journalist. Does your son know or have an idea of how he may have contracted the virus?

LEVY: Well, he's not certain.

As you just said, he was working and filming inside clinics and doing interviews because he was there as a photojournalist, both inside clinics and outside the clinics. And he does remember an incidence where he was helping spray chlorine and disinfectant on whether it was a chair or some vehicle that had been potentially exposed.

And he remembers getting some of it in his face.

TAPPER: It's just such a mystery because, as you know, a lot of the Americans who have contracted Ebola, like Nancy Writebol, who is, thank goodness, now fine are confused -- don't really know how they contracted it. So everyone's looking for any clue. I imagine, as a doctor, you are as well.

How are your son's spirits right now and how are his physical condition -- how is his physical condition?

LEVY: Well, his physical condition is stable. He's still in the early phases of the illness.

Right now, his symptoms are mainly he's feverish, he's got some chills. He has some muscle aches and pains. And he's very weak and tired. Those are all part of the early phase of the illness. He hasn't progressed to any of the other more worrisome signs and symptoms.

His spirits, I noticed this morning, were much better than they were yesterday. And I think a lot of that was once he realized he was going to come home and that it was really a certainty that he was leaving Liberia and he was going to be air-evacuated. I thought this morning his spirits were much better.

TAPPER: And in fact he's going to be at one of the four American hospitals ready for an outbreak such as that, as he's going to Nebraska.

We have seen the cases of people like Nancy Writebol, who I just mentioned, and also Kent Brantly, who contracted Ebola in Africa, they were treated in the United States. They're now doing fine. That must give you and your family some encouragement.

LEVY: Yes, very much so.

In fact, I have talked to a number of people today at the CDC, and just in general I have talked with people. And I have a fairly optimistic outlook on his prognosis. A lot of the reasons that people are dying from Ebola is from dehydration because of the intense fluid loss, especially in an area where they're under-resourced, and they don't really have the option to give a lot of intravenous fluids, which is for us here in the United States and in developed countries is just a common resource that we take for granted.

And in cultures that are under-resourced, that's a rare commodity. So the fact that when people are airlifted back, that's so readily available and you can give them and replace the fluid they're losing, that seems to be associated with a very good outcome.

TAPPER: Your son has said that he was aware of the risks. He wanted to go to Western Africa to as a journalist expose what was going on, tell the world what was going on. What did he tell you about the conditions and the care there in Western Africa, where this epidemic is wreaking such havoc?

LEVY: Well, he sent us some footage actually that he was filming and with some narration that he wrote. And it's really distressing.

You realize the degree to which the health care system in Liberia is completely overwhelmed, people outside clinics with no room to get in, outside makeshift tents with no access to intravenous fluids and literally dying on the streets.

And Ashoka, for the two or three weeks that he was there, when I would talk with him, would tell us with heartbreaking poignancy watching people just die in the streets because they couldn't get fluids. And I think that is what his hope was in going, was to really shed light on that and the plight the Liberian people are experiencing, both socially and culturally through the Ebola epidemic.

TAPPER: Dr. Mitchell Levy, thank you so much. And once again, our prayers and our thoughts are with your son and with your family.

LEVY: Thank you, Jake.

TAPPER: Some breaking news now. We have just learned the family that came into contact with that Dallas Ebola patient is finally being moved from the apartment where they have been quarantined for days.

Let's go live now to Wilfred Smallwood. Wilfred Smallwood is Thomas Duncan's half-brother. And his son Oliver has been inside that quarantined apartment holed up.

Wilfred, thanks for joining us. Have you spoken to your son? Do you know when he and the others in that apartment are being moved?

WILFRED SMALLWOOD, HALF-BROTHER OF THOMAS ERIC DUNCAN: Well, thank you.

When I spoke to my son just a few minutes ago, he told me that the CDC were in the building cleaning up and they were also in the building cleaning up too -- I mean also the building and washing, CDC cleaning the place.

But he said that the information they have is that they may move somewhere different. I think so. That is what they're taking them, to move them to a new location.

TAPPER: OK. For those watching, you can see live pictures from outside the apartment in Dallas right now.

Wilfred, tell us, how is Oliver doing, how is his health, how's he dealing with all of this?

SMALLWOOD: Well, actually, has a condition -- his voice sounds very clear and wonderful, the same way I know my son to be. He sounded very clear and OK. And I said, do you see anybody feeling a little bit sick in the home?

He said nobody's feeling really sick. Do you drink water? He said, yes, we drink a lot of water. We eat a lot of food. Was it OK? Yes. Yes. We're OK. He said, I'm fine.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Yes. Just to remind our viewers, your half-brother is Thomas Duncan, the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States.

He was staying in that apartment after he went to the hospital in Dallas and they sent him back with antibiotics. He spent a couple days in that apartment getting sicker and sicker and people who were in that apartment during that time are quarantined. It now looks as though your son who was one of those people and your half brother's girlfriend, Louise, and others who are there are being moved.

How worried are you about your son's safety and how concerned are you that hospital officials and medical authorities haven't really dealt with this the way that a lot of people say it should have been dealt with?

SMALLWOOD: Well, I think that goes to the problem, because the public is actually the criticizing of the CDC, just hear in the news, because going to the hospital for the first time, this man going to the hospital send him back that he was OK.

And then when (INAUDIBLE) Ebola for the second time, they no say Ebola. And then the medical -- and not moving into that building fast enough to help the people there and instead quarantining them, that worry me too a lot too myself, even after -- even if they can find a new location for them, they still worry me until maybe longer period of time, after I see that it's OK, maybe after two, three months, four months.

Then I will know that he's OK. But for now, I'm a little bit worried about my family and all of them in that building, or in that building later on.

TAPPER: Wilfred, what do you know about the condition of your half- brother, and if you have talked to him or texted him, has he responded at all to the Liberian authorities suggesting that they might prosecute him for not being fully forthcoming on the health forms before he left Liberia?

SMALLWOOD: Well, the hospital has not allowed any of us to talk to him in the hospital yet.

I have not been able to talk to my brother since they took him to the hospital since he's been in that place. Up to now, I have not talked to him or hear his voice, how he sounds. So, I don't know his condition at all.

But what the government issue, the government of Liberia, the government of Liberia knew very well the entire population (INAUDIBLE) country, so everybody wants to leave out of that place and whatsoever. So, what it's saying there, I think they may have some other thing else to say. But I don't think that would be appropriate for the government to even think of prosecuting him, because there are so many people, millions of people dying in that country from Ebola, from that disease.

TAPPER: Yes.

Wilfred Smallwood, thank you so much. Our thoughts and prayers are with your family, especially with your son, Oliver, and your half- brother, Thomas, of course. Good luck to you, sir.

SMALLWOOD: Thank you. Thank you very much.

TAPPER: They're the guys who call to clean up a crime scene. Crews finally show up to dispose of the Dallas Ebola patient's sheets, clothes, towels, with the definite of hazmat suits that the people stuck inside the home do not have.

Why did it take so long and what happens next for this family?

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TAPPER: Welcome back to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

More now on our national lead -- experts concur that the U.S. is much better prepared to contain the Ebola outbreak than the hardest-hit nations in West Africa. But it also seems inexplicable that it took three days for hazmat crews to pick up possibly contaminated sheets and towels from the Ebola patient's apartment in Dallas.

This is the image we expected to see on Wednesday, when it was revealed that Thomas Duncan became the first diagnosed with the virus on U.S. soil. But the guys in those hazmat suits didn't show up at the apartment where four people had been quarantined until just a few hours ago.

Before today, the family was told to keep Duncan's dirty clothes and towel in a bag.

CNN national correspondent Martin Savidge is live in Dallas and he has this report for us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is the epicenter for Ebola in America. And for the first time, it looked like it. As Dallas Fire and Rescue hazmat trucks and personnel showed up, along with members of a private cleaning company. It is the apartment complex where Liberian national Thomas Duncan was staying when he became ill with Ebola. That was over a week ago. Since Wednesday, four people Duncan was living with have remained quarantined in a second-floor unit, under orders not to leave and under guard.

Speaking exclusively to Anderson Cooper, Duncan's partner stunned many people when she said towels, sheets, even the mattress the infected man used, were still in the apartment with them. LOUISE, DUNCAN'S PARTNER: No. Only the towel in the plastic bags.

The rest of his stuff stayed the same, on the bed, the bed sheet, everything is on the bed.

SAVIDGE: Officials quickly said they were on that problem. This is the mayor of Dallas speaking to Erin Burnett last night.

MIKE RAWLINGS, MAYOR OF DALLAS: Within the hour, the company to remove that waste is going to be there.

SAVIDGE: But it was easier said than done. Some private contractors initially turned down the job.

When one finally showed Thursday night, they were turned away because they didn't have the proper permission to transport the waste.

DR. TOM FRIEDEN, DIRECTOR, CDC: That situation, I'm confident, will be resolved today.

SAVIDGE: It was one more fumble in the handling of America's first domestically diagnosed case of the deadly disease. It began with a mistake at a Dallas hospital that sent Duncan back into the public, even though a hospital nurse had been told he'd recently arrived from Liberia, an Ebola hot zone, and was clearly showing symptoms of the illness.

MARK LESTER, EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, TEXAS HEALTH RSOURCES: Regretfully, that information was not fully communicated.

SAVIDGE: And many Dallas residents have wondered why officials have kept the four people who had been closest to Duncan quarantined in a crowded apartment complex rather than isolating them in a medical facility.

Another potential misstep: communicating important information to the community at the heart of concern. Authorities have been informing the public in English and in Spanish, while most in the neighborhood speak neither, coming instead from Africa and Asia.

CHANDRA TAHAL, RESIDENT: They don't know English. They don't open the computers. If they don't know English, they don't open English channels like CNN, ABC, other news.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SAVIDGE: And so as you've probably heard from the half brother you were just talking to there, Jake, there is a plan to move the four that have been in quarantine. However, authorities haven't said exactly when. It doesn't appear to be imminent. They also haven't said to where and under what conditions they will continue to carry out that quarantine. We do expect them to be moved, though, today, Jake.

TAPPER: Martin Savidge, thank you so much.

If it took this long just to get one apartment cleaned, many are wondering, what would happen if we had a true outbreak on our hands?

Joining me now live is Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst.

Lieutenant Governor, thanks so much for joining us.

We were told yesterday that plans were in the works to move this family out of the apartment where they had been quarantined. We're hearing now that crews were on the scene to take them away.

Do you know -- are they leaving today and why has it taken so long to make this move happen?

LT. GOV. DAVID DEWHURST, TEXAS: Well, Jake, a couple of things. First of all, just from a global perspective, the state of Texas is working with the county. The county has a responsibility to handle these details. We're providing resources. We're providing resources with the state health department and Dr. Lakey. We're working with the CDC.

But it's the county's -- is the main party on this. And we want to provide all the resources. We're trying to be as aggressive as we can because our goal is absolutely to keep this disease curtailed, to stop it. And that's exactly what we're going to do.

As a result, it's my --

TAPPER: But with all due respect, Lieutenant Governor -- with due respect, watching this, it doesn't seem like the state of Texas or the county or whoever is in charge is dealing with this as aggressively as needs to happen. You have the patient turned away from the hospital initially. And then once he went back and was diagnosed with Ebola, it doesn't seem like it was a rush to contain it. You had the sheets and towels that may be contaminated in that apartment until today.

Can you explain that?

DEWHURST: Jake, I understand that. But let's go back and just examine a couple of things which you just got through saying.

On the 26th when he first went to the hospital, the nurse asked him his travel history and he said he'd been in West Africa. That was put on the electronic record. And that electronic record when the examining physicians got it, that screen didn't pop up, of all the bad luck. That screen didn't pop up. That's been changed.

All I'm saying is we're going to do everything we can and make sure that we curtail, that we contain this disease. And in doing that, we're going to be aggressive. And we want to be as transparent as we can because it's very likely there will be other cases of Ebola in the United States. We want Texas hospitals to understand exactly what the best protocol is and other hospitals around the country.

TAPPER: Right.

DEWHURST: Now, as far as the dirty linens and things, you have the same information which I do because we're working through the county. They were told to put all those in a separate room, close the door, from everything I've been told. And now, they're in the process of being moved.

TAPPER: Well, it's hardly reassuring. In addition to that, we also learned today that there's a 13-year-old, one of those who had been in isolation after coming into contact with Thomas Duncan, that 13-year- old went to school even after being asked to stay home.

How did something like that happen? Was the faculty at the school not informed that this student, that there was a risk of this disease spreading further if this student had come to class?

DEWHURST: Well, as you know as well as I do, none -- an individual is not contagious with Ebola unless they're manifesting the symptoms, either fever, headaches, diarrhea, vomiting or blood. And in that case --

TAPPER: Well, presumably, there's a reason why the student's being isolated. He's quarantined now, right?

DEWHURST: And that's to monitor him.

As far as I know, the number of 100 has been reduced down to 50, Jake. And all of those people are being monitored. Of those, there are 10 that are high risk. The four in the family and six more including the ambulance drivers.

None of those, none of the 50, none of the 10 have manifested, as far as I know, any symptoms of Ebola.

TAPPER: One of our reporters, Martin Savidge, just reported about concerns because important information about this case is being communicated in that neighborhood, in that apartment in English and in Spanish, but most of the people in the neighborhood where this complex is located, they come from Africa and Asia, they don't speak English. They don't speak Spanish.

Is anything being done to address this language barrier?

DEWHURST: Jake, I just heard that just like you did just a moment ago. When I get off, as soon as we finish this show, I'm going to call the director of the state health department and see -- and make sure that we get communication going out to all the people in that apartment building so that they know what's happening. And they know that that family is in the process of being moved with all precautions taken.

Now, yes, some things have happened, the sheriff's department went over there without protective clothing the first time. So, we're -- although we've trained for this, our hospitals have trained for it, now we're coordinating, we're dealing with sheriff's departments and, again, we're going to err on the sake of being aggressive, sending people out, making sure that this family knows they cannot leave, even though we're going to have to monitor the sheriff's deputies that went to the apartment. We want to do everything we can to make sure that we're cordoning off and not having additional cases. TAPPER: Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, thank you so much. Good

luck to the state of Texas handling this crisis.

We are now awaiting an Ebola briefing from the White House. When it happens, we will bring it to you live. So, stay tuned for that.

Coming up, we know how Ebola got into the United States. Was it a crime, though? The Liberian government seems to think so. Its ambassador to the United States will join me next.

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