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The Lead with Jake Tapper

U.S. Facing 2,000 Daily Coronavirus Deaths; White House Task Force: Baltimore, Philadelphia and DC Next Coronavirus Hot Spots; Mayor Muriel Bowser of D.C. is Interviewed About the Coronavirus Pandemic Hitting Her City. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired April 09, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:00]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Just under three times that horrific figure from a week ago.

Yesterday, this nation saw its deadliest day yet again from coronavirus, nearly 2,000 lives in the U.S. lost in just one 24-hour period.

Almost half of those were in the state of New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo warned today, do not underestimate this virus. The governor ending his press conference on this note:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): How confident am I of federal responsibility and action? Not that confident.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: "Not that confident," the governor says.

As we near this Sunday, Easter Sunday, which is now projected to be the peak of the deadly deaths from -- daily deaths from coronavirus here in the U.S., with 60,000 total deaths projected by the end of August, right now, there are more than 450,000 people infected in the United States, 1.5 million cases reported globally.

As CNN's Erica Hill reports for us now, despite the revised model projections, deaths across the country are currently rising daily.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERICA HILL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Empty streets, shuttered businesses, lives on hold, signs of a long road ahead.

CUOMO: The flattening of the curve last night happened because of what we did yesterday. If we stop acting the way we're acting, you will see those numbers go up.

HILL: California's early efforts gaining praise for slowing the spread, as one northern county says sports are likely on hold through Thanksgiving.

In Chicago, more than 400 cases are linked to the Cook County Jail, making it one of the country's largest sources of infection, as the city opens up a 66,000-square-foot refrigerated warehouse to ease overcrowding at morgues.

Positive cases now confirmed aboard three aircraft carriers, and the National Guard deployed to two New Jersey veterans homes, with dozens of positive cases and at least 12 deaths.

Meantime, the city of Philadelphia pushing back on claims it's a potential new hot spot.

DR. THOMAS FARLEY, PHILADELPHIA HEALTH COMMISSIONER: We're not out of the woods by any means. But I'm hopeful that the social distancing steps we put in place a few weeks ago are showing some signs of working.

HILL: New Jersey tightening statewide measures, face coverings for all customers and employees at essential businesses like grocery stores and pharmacies, strict limits on capacity and gatherings.

Nevada limiting the size of religious gatherings, as Louisiana doubles down.

GOV. JOHN BEL EDWARDS (D-LA): There was no Easter exemption from the stay-at-home order. There was no Easter exemption from the 10-person limit.

HILL: The Kansas governor tried to do the same by executive order, only to be overruled by the state's Legislative Coordinating Council, which claimed it went too far by -- quote -- "singling out one entity" and limiting the free exercise of religion.

MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're calling on every American in every state first to listen to your state and local authorities, but, right after that, to avoid gatherings of more than 10 people and know that, in so doing, we will hasten the day, we will hasten the day that we put the coronavirus in the past and we reopen our country.

HILL: The White House task force already working on a plan for that reopening, possibly in a matter of weeks, as experts and those on the front lines urge caution.

DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, DEPARTMENT OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE CHAIRMAN, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY: I'm concerned that we're setting dates and not listening to the virus. The virus is going to tell us when it's safe to open up again.

SIMONE HANNAH-CLARK, ICU NURSE, MOUNT SINAI HOSPITAL: Everyone has to stay home and treat themselves like they are positive for COVID-19.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Jake, 799 people died as a result of coronavirus in New York state on Wednesday. That is the third day in a row that the state has set a somber new record for the highest single-day death toll.

And the governor also today saying he never would have imagined that he needed to bring in extra funeral directors to help with those who have passed. But that, Jake, is what he's needing to do now.

TAPPER: All right, Erica Hill in New York, thank you. Stay safe.

Joining me now, CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, so, data is showing the rate of new cases falling. So it's not picking up, but the number of new deaths, that number is increasing. And this is all coming as Johns Hopkins revised their analysis, saying that the U.S. outbreak is trending back up. Yesterday, they said it was heading down, but now it's back up.

How do we make sense of all this information, all this data?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the trending up, Jake, as you know, is sort of based on a five-day rolling average.

And, Jake, I always hate talking about this in such clinical terms, because we are talking about real human lives here, but it is a five- day rolling average. So it's going to -- that's going to move around a little bit.

If confirmed infections are falling, even as the death rate is tragically going up, those two things could be actually happening at the same time, because the death rates falling, it takes some -- I'm sorry -- when people are getting confirmed, it takes some time before they would go to the hospital, and then some time more after they might die.

[16:05:11]

So we're seeing a lag time. So the cases falling now should mean death rates going down in about two or three weeks, as long as things stay the way that they are, Jake.

TAPPER: And make -- help us make sense of this. The U.S. now has about the same number of confirmed cases as do Spain, Italy and France combined.

Help us understand that.

GUPTA: Well, and keep in mind, we're about 325 million. If you combine the population of all three of those countries, it's about 175 million. So we are still bigger population-wise.

TAPPER: Right.

GUPTA: Some of this has to do with more testing, Jake, but it's not the entire picture.

I mean, Italy still tests more per capita, and that's significant, because it's a more significant sample size. That's what scientists are trying to determine. What is the sample size here? And how significant is that sample size? If you're testing more per capita, as Italy has, then that is significant.

So we're testing a lot, but still not more per capita than places like Italy.

Jake, I think what it has to do with a bit in terms of why there's more cases here is that, take Italy. I mean, they have had a tough road, obviously, everyone knows, but they also essentially locked down the country on March 9. First, they sort of created these red zones in Northern Italy, but then went into full lockdown pretty quickly.

And that helps. I mean, we started doing -- recommending that about a week later, Jake. So we will see if these numbers continue the way they are, but that could partially explain it.

TAPPER: Well, you talk about this on a per capita basis, which is helpful to understand.

But I have to ask you, the U.S. is about 4.25. percent of the world population, what we have, and yet we have disproportionately high percentages when it comes to coronavirus cases and coronavirus deaths.

Why? I mean, I get that people are skeptical of some of the numbers we're hearing from China or Iran or Russia. And maybe there's a lot more going on there that we don't know about. But, still, we have more coronavirus here than other countries.

GUPTA: Well I think that we acted late, Jake.

I mean, and this is -- there's going to be a plenty of time to sort of do the retrospective on this, but I think we did not test adequately. And as a result, in communities all across the country, Jake, when we were hearing maybe there's 50 or 60 cases in the country, for that period of time, the virus was circulating robustly in these communities.

And many people were getting infected. The problem is, it takes three weeks between the time of exposure and the time that someone might die from this. So we're now still seeing the ramifications of that, Jake.

Just because -- the per capita really does matter here, because we are doing a lot of tests here, but they're not uniformly distributed. And the bulk of this testing has come about recently. We talk about the number of total tests, whatever, close to two million, I believe, now. It changes every day.

But that was -- a bulk of that just happened over the last couple of weeks. You wanted that to have happened early and uniformly. And we didn't have that.

TAPPER: Dr. Fauci, who's helping to lead the pandemic response, said that normal summer vacations could possibly be on the table for those who can afford it.

For those of us who have young kids at home who are not in school, that sounds fantastic, potentially, but give us a reality check on that.

GUPTA: You know, I guess I'm a little surprised that he said it, only because, as you know, Jake, he's going to sort of be held to that now. And I think this is still very much a moving target.

And I take no joy in saying that. I'm not that confident yet that people should be looking forward to summer vacations in June. I don't know -- or even July. I'm not sure that we will be there yet. I think we're going to be in a much better place, probably.

Here's the problem. I think, when we hear stuff like that, for most people, they hear it, and they think, that's good, which it is, we can start relaxing a bit.

If you start relaxing a bit this weekend, which is a holiday weekend, I realize, for a lot of people across the country, the impact of that relaxation will be felt when? End of April, beginning of May, three, four weeks from now, perhaps.

And the numbers will do what? They will go up at that point, which will make us feel like we're going back to square one.

So, perhaps -- I'd like to obviously believe Dr. Fauci, and would look forward to that for America to be able to take summer vacations if they can. But I'm not sure that I would be comfortable saying that yet.

I'm a little surprised he did, but I know he's looking at lots of different factors to take into account.

TAPPER: A lot of things we hear from our leaders who want to encourage us to get through this, of course, in a lot of respects is aspirational or hopeful.

GUPTA: Yes.

TAPPER: We heard from President Trump a theory that he repeated that had been posited by experts that perhaps the virus would subside when the warmer weather came along, April.

Now, officially, we have news from the National Academy of Science -- Sciences that, no, that's not going to happen. There's no evidence that it subsides in warmer weather.

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GUPTA: Yes, that was something that we heard a lot, that this would have a true sort of seasonal component to it.

And so I think what we can say is that the higher temperatures, the higher humidity may have an impact on the virus. But there's two bits of information that have sort of now come out.

One is that, in China, despite having higher temperatures and higher humidity, you still had exponential growth. And I think that was a big factor that the National Academy of Science took into account when writing this letter.

The other thing is that we don't have immunity to this virus. If there's no immunity sort of globally or in large populations, then the virus is still out there. Even if it's circulating less, less robustly, it's still out there and circulating in a population of people who are not immunized.

That's another thing that the Academy took into account. So putting those two things together, they said it doesn't look likely that this is going to decrease much with the warmer weather.

TAPPER: All right, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, always great to see you. I will see you tomorrow morning.

GUPTA: You got it, Jake.

TAPPER: And you can see Sanjay tonight co-hosting CNN's global town hall, "Coronavirus: Facts and Fears," along with Anderson Cooper, the special guest this evening, NBA great Magic Johnson. That's at 8:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.

Coming up next, I'm going to speak with the mayor of an emerging hot spot in the United States, where she predicts one in seven residents might get coronavirus.

Plus, President Trump expected to announce another task force, its focus and potential members -- ahead.

Stay with us.

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TAPPER: Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. could be the new hot spots in the United States for coronavirus, according to the White House task force.

In the nation's capital, more than 1,500 people have tested positive for coronavirus and 32 have died because of it.

Joining us now, Washington, D.C. mayor, Muriel Bowser.

Mayor Bowser, thank you so much for joining us.

Let me ask you, if Washingtonians are taking the appropriate measures, staying in home, social and physical distancing, why do you think the numbers of cases are going up?

MAYOR MURIEL BOWSER (D), DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA: Well, we know that we've been on a posture of strict social distancing. We're coming up on a -- on a month this coming Monday, and Washingtonians are doing what we've asked, they're staying home. They're only going out for essential services and we are very hopeful that we are dampening the impact that this infection will have on our city. But we know and we've seen in other places around our country, that

the virus can spread and has spread and can caused major surges in our hospital capacity, and that's exactly what we're planning for.

TAPPER: Are Washingtonians supposed to be wearing masks when we go outside? Because my wife and I do when we walk our dogs. And I have to say, the mask thing doesn't seem to be sweeping the city.

BOWSER: Well, we -- I have issued a mayor's order today, Jake, around wearing mask when you're going into essential businesses, especially our grocery stores. We know our grocery workers are on the front lines.

And we're asking first and foremost all Washingtonians stay at home and only go out for essential work, exercise, food, well-planned grocery trips and medicine, because we know wearing masks is not a replacement for limiting our travel. So, I want to remind everyone of that.

And we also want people to use homemade masks or scarves or other face coverings so the N95 masks that our medical workers need are being reserved for them.

TAPPER: How are you going to enforce the requirement that people who go into grocery stores wear mask, and why are grocery store employees not being asked to wear masks?

BOWSER: Well, we are asking every person to accept their individual responsibility for sure. There's no way that we're going to be able to send the police to every location and watch every person who enters a grocery store.

We're putting the requirement on our business owners. And our grocers have stepped to the plate to stay open, to operate their businesses safely and we're asking them to have an added element of advising their patrons of how they should enter stores and how they should even go around their stores, going down one-ways aisles, maintaining six feet social distancing, bagging your own groceries. And so, those are all of the things that we're asking our residents, as well as our business owners.

TAPPER: And what about people who work at grocery stores? How come they're not being asked? And I agree with you, they're heroes, I mean, the people who are doing that.

(CROSSTALK)

BOWSER: But let me be clear -- let me be clear --

TAPPER: Yes.

BOWSER: -- we certainly have asked all of the grocers to maintain that supply for their workers.

What we are unable to do is to say from the city's very limited supply that we are maintaining for our first responders, medical personnel and hospital workers, we are gathering and procuring locally those very needed supplies. And we want all of the grocers to do the same.

What's really, really important here, Jake, is that we maintain our food supply.

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So, from grocers to take-out restaurants, to all of our food markets, we're asking them to modify their operations, but to continue the flow of food in our city.

We -- we also announced today some additional measures that we're taking locally to keep food moving in our vulnerable communities, among people who have been medically quarantined and among people who are unable to get out safely to go get groceries and essential items.

So, there's a lot that we must do locally as this response to this pandemic continues to make sure that the flow of food is safe both for workers and for our residents.

TAPPER: So, California was the first state to implement a statewide stay-at-home order. San Francisco is the first city to do so. There is evidence that suggests that this early intervention by the mayor of San Francisco, by the governor of California and by the residents of that state and that city helped keep a coronavirus surge at bay. They've seen a 1.9 percent drop of people going to the intensive care unit.

You issued a stay at home order for Washington, D.C., on March 30th. The first known case in the district was 23 days before that, March 7th. Do you have any concerns that maybe the Washington, D.C. stay at home order came too late?

BOWSER: Oh, what we've done to keep people at home actually started on March the 13th. On March the 13th, we closed our public schools, we modified our government operations, keeping more than 50 percent of our workers at home. The following week, we closed restaurants and bars, and limited large gatherings in our city. We also closed essential businesses the week after that.

So, all of our stay at home directives began on March 13th. And we believe that that will keep more D.C. residents safe and help us bend the curve.

TAPPER: And, lastly, Mayor Bowser -- and we do appreciate your time today -- what is the city doing to prevent the spread of coronavirus in institutions serving the -- you know, people who I think, it's fair to say, are particularly vulnerable to this virus? Prisoners in the D.C. jail, many of them, of course, as you know, are waiting trial, had not been found guilty of anything, patients at St. Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital -- what's being done to protect them?

BOWSER: Oh, well, we have implemented a number of protocols across all of our vulnerable populations. And next week, actually, as part of our public briefings, we plan to tell D.C. residents exactly what's happening at each of those (INAUDIBLE). But to give you an example at our jail, working with our D.C. courts,

the U.S. attorney, the Metropolitan Police Department, we started early on to see if there were ways that we could direct people out of the jail before any decisions were made, for example, on charging decisions.

And so, those things have been pretty effective in helping us keep the jail population down. Even since we have been responding to this pandemic, we've seen the population in our jail decrease by hundreds of people, which we think is a good thing, because it allows us to implement more spacing. We've also limited people coming into the jail from workers, to vendors, to visitors, to try to prevent the spread.

But we have a serious protocol where if we have a worker or an inmate tests positive. And we have the luxury of having a lot of space in our jail so that we can spread people out more. But we have other vulnerable populations that you've mentioned, from the people we serve at our St. Elizabeth's Hospital, and similarly, we have protocols to quarantine anybody that is found to be positive and to quarantine people that have been exposed to them.

TAPPER: All right. Mayor Bowser, thank you so much. Stay in touch with us. Let us know if there's anything you need you're not getting that we can shine a light on. We appreciate it and good luck.

BOWSER: Thank you, Jake.

TAPPER: Coming up next, a CNN investigation, a look at how the federal government left up road blocks that prevented more coronavirus testing in the critical time early on in the pandemics.

Stay with us.

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TAPPER: Shocking new details on the rollout of coronavirus testing. CNN has learned that some private labs were eager to develop testing as early as January, anticipating the inevitable outbreak, but as CNN's Drew Griffin reports for us now, the federal government blocked those tests from being produced and made available to the American public.

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DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As coronavirus was racing around the world in late January and February, the federal government failed to use the massive arsenal of hundreds of laboratories across the United States for emergency testing, it actually left road blocks in place to prevent non-government labs from assisting.

That is according to documents obtained by CNN and interviews with more than a dozen scientists and physicians involved in coronavirus testing.