Return to Transcripts main page

The Lead with Jake Tapper

Hydroxychloroquine Not Effective?; Interview With Savannah, Georgia, Mayor Van Johnson; Study: No Benefits, Higher Death Rate In Patients Taking Hydroxychloroquine For Coronavirus. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired April 21, 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: The White House suggested to states that, in order to reopen, there must be a decline in the number of new cases reported each day for 14 days straight, though this is just a suggestion to states , not an order.

But as you can see in these graphs, showing the new cases reported each day in those four states we mentioned, not one of them has met that White House standard as of now.

CNN's Erica Hill now reports, as governors make these moves, some mayors in those states are considering legal action to try to stop the reopening, at least right now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS (D), MAYOR OF ATLANTA, GEORGIA: I will continue to use a voice to encourage people to exercise common sense, listen to the science and stay home. We are not out of the woods.

ERICA HILL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Georgia's plan to reopen certain businesses this Friday taking local leaders by surprise.

KELLY GIRTZ (D), MAYOR OF ATHENS-CLARKE COUNTY, GEORGIA: It's like telling your quarterback, we don't have a helmet for you, we don't have pads, but get out there on the field and just try not to get sacked.

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: Hairdressers, tattoo parlors, you're less than six feet apart in all of those interactions. Many of these things actually are completely counter to some of the measures of mitigation that we have really been trying to deploy.

HILL: In South Carolina, beaches and some retail stores are open today, though some coastal communities, including Myrtle Beach, say their shores are closed.

JOSH OUTLAW HUGHES, FURNITURE STORE WORKER: Do I go back to work to try and make money and risk getting sick, or do I stay home and go broke?

HILL: Realtors, attorneys and construction workers now cleared in Vermont, though limited to two employees at a time, while New Jersey is opening a new field hospital today.

Florida's governor planning his next step, as cases there remain steady, neighboring Georgia seeing an uptick, along with Kentucky, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, and California.

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): Progress is being made. You are bending the curve. You're beginning to flatten the curve, but it is still, nonetheless, rising.

HILL: Hospitalizations, ICU admissions and intubations are down in New York, but the governor says the state will reopen on a regional basis.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): We operate as one state, but we also have to understand variations. And you do want to get this economy open as soon as possible.

HILL: Data will be the driving force for those decisions, much of it related to testing, as experts advise millions of tests will need to be performed each week to safely reopen the economy.

The FDA approving an at home swab test for emergency use. It would then be mailed to a lab. More than 38 million students will likely not return to school this year. The digital divide remains a major hurdle for distance learning. California announcing private companies are donating 70,000 devices to help bridge the gap.

And as the country records more than 42,000 deaths, a sobering reminder of the true toll. Skylar Herbert, the daughter of first responders in Detroit, died after two weeks on a ventilator.

EBBIE HERBERT, FATHER OF CORONAVIRUS VICTIM: This is a hurtful feeling that I don't want any other family to have to ever experience.

HILL: Skylar was five years old.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HILL: Detroit first responders, of course, have been especially hard- hit by the virus.

Skylar's mother's a police officer, her father a firefighter, Jake.

And just one other note from here in New York, we talk so much about what has changed, what is being canceled. The mayor noting that, when New York is ready, one of the first things they plan to do is hold a ticker tape parade for the health care workers who, in the words of the mayor, saved us.

He said it will also be a sign of the rebirth of this city.

TAPPER: Having a parade in New York City is one of the stupidest ideas I have ever heard.

Erica Hill, thank you so much.

(CROSSTALK) HILL: Well, not right now, let's be clear.

(LAUGHTER)

TAPPER: I hear you, but still.

Joining me now is the Democratic Mayor of Savannah, Georgia, Van Johnson.

Mayor Johnson, what was your reaction to Georgia Governor Kemp's announcement yesterday afternoon?

MAYOR VAN JOHNSON (D), SAVANNAH, GEORGIA: I was completely blindsided, extremely disappointed, very, very confused, and really disturbed at the fact that an announcement would be made at this point, this juncture.

We have not checked any of the boxes on the White House's playbook to gradually reopen states. And yet we're, you know, really reopening our cities.

Beyond that, the governor has a stay-at-home order that it extends until April the 30th, yet we're opening some businesses on the 24th and opening other businesses on the 27th.

TAPPER: So, Savannah is one of the biggest cities in the state of Georgia. He didn't talk to you before he made this announcement?

JOHNSON: I haven't spoken with the governor since this began.

(CROSSTALK)

[16:05:02]

TAPPER: The governor says --

(CROSSTALK)

JOHNSON: -- from across the state.

TAPPER: The governor says that this order is statewide, and it cannot be overturned.

Are you going to try to fight it? Or are you going along with it? What is the reaction of Savannah?

JOHNSON: Well, obviously, again, we're very disappointed, because we were not asked here on the ground.

We're going to explore all the options. But I told our citizens this morning, they are the governors and they're the mayors of their own homes. They get to call the shots. And, certainly, they know the science is there, that they need to make sure they do the things that are necessary to keep them safe.

We are not safe here in this community yet, and these businesses should not be open.

I have also appealed to our local businesses. They know that it's not safe to open. Don't put themselves, don't put their employees, and don't put their customers at risk.

TAPPER: So, Mr. Mayor, there's obviously a lot of economic pain and desperation out there. I'm sure you're seeing it in Savannah.

What are you hearing from Savannah residents, Savannah business owners? What are they telling you? Are they ready to reopen? Do they want to reopen?

JOHNSON: I have heard from many businesses, Jake, all over our great community.

And, again, they're in pain. They're hurting. This has been a massive, massive loss of opportunity for them. But I have heard them overwhelmingly say they want to do it when it's safe. They don't want to put their employees at risk. They don't want to put their customers at risk, again, but they're confused by it all, because, on the other end of it, we have a stay-at-home order until April the 30th.

Yet they're being allowed to open on the 24th and the 27th. So, which order are you following, the stay-at-home order that's in place or the order that is saying you can open on the 24th or the 27th?

People are confused all over the place. And that's not a good thing for us in this time. We need to be able to speak with a very clear voice.

TAPPER: So, you say most of the people that you talk to in the community of Savannah are -- want to stay in the situation you're in.

What do you say to those who are in the minority, according to you, that talk to you about this who are struggling financially and say, look, I need to get back to work, I can't pay my rent, I can't put food on my table, you need to understand? What do you say to them.

JOHNSON: And, again, I'm very, very sensitive to our businesses here.

They have put their life's work into building something that has done well up until this point. What I have told them is this, is that, frankly, this is a national emergency.

You can be open all day long, but the fact is, if people are not coming, you're not going to do well either. We would rather you open when it's safe. We don't want someone to be victimized by coming into your place of business, being infected in your place of business or putting your business at a situation where you're closed for an extended period of time due to an outbreak in your business.

So, I think people get that. They understand that. These are unusual and extraordinary times. And I think people generally want to do the right thing.

I think, generally, across this city, and I -- from what I have heard from across the state, people want to open, but they want to open when it's safe. They don't want just open for the sake of opening.

In this case, people are more important than economics.

TAPPER: So, let me just ask you about your personal decisions, if you don't mind my asking.

I mean, I'm sure that you go to the gym. I'm sure that you go to restaurants. I'm sure you have been to the movies. When do you plan to start doing that? Are you going to take advantage of the governor lifting the restrictions? Or are you going to wait? What's your plan?

JOHNSON: Well, personally, you can tell my physique that I'm in the gym every single day.

(LAUGHTER)

JOHNSON: But the reality is, I'm not going anywhere until it is safe.

And I have asked the city of Savannah that we're not going to resume normal business operations until it's safe for our employees and safe for our citizens.

I'm doing the takeout thing. I'm learning how to cook. We have to be able to live in those types of things. And particularly when you look at hair salons and beauty shops, massage parlors, and tattoos, tattoo parlors, there is no way to maintain social distancing in those cases.

And just, to me, I think it's really a bad decision. It's not based on science. We have the 14th highest infection rate in the country, and yet the seventh lowest testing rate.

We have to do better here in Georgia, if we're expecting to reopen safely.

TAPPER: Mayor Van Johnson, God bless you. Thank you so much, and God bless the citizens of Savannah. We will be thinking about you.

JOHNSON: Thank you. Keep us in your prayers. Thank you so much.

TAPPER: Could you have been exposed to coronavirus and not even known it?

One doctor, our doctor, Sanjay Gupta, he himself took a new antibody test to find that out -- his experience and the results of that next.

[16:10:06]

Plus, we're watching Capitol Hill, where the Senate is about to vote on a deal for more funding, desperately needed, for small business loans.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome back. It's an unproven drug, often touted by President Trump as a possible

treatment for coronavirus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What do you have to lose? Take it.

I really think they should take it. Hydroxychloroquine, try it.

Hydroxychloroquine, which I think, as you know, it's a great malaria drug, it's worked unbelievably.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: What do you have to lose, President Trump asked.

Well, today, a new Veterans Health Administration study found no medical benefit to hydroxychloroquine when it comes to coronavirus patients and that it could actually be harming patients who take it.

Joining me now is CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, you know, this is crappy news. We all want something to work. Take us through the study.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. Yes, no doubt, we're all looking for a therapy and hydroxychloroquine has been getting a lot of attention. This is a study of some 368 patients, still a small study, Jake. We're going to get larger data studies, so we have to take all these studies with a little bit of a grain of salt. This one was not peer-reviewed, it was not randomized, meaning patients were put in one group versus the other, but in some random fashion.

But, nevertheless, exactly what you said, Jake, the patients who in this study got hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, that's the Z-Pak, the antibiotic, in this study, they did worse. They had a 22 percent death rate as compared to patients who didn't get those medications who had an 11.4 percent death rate.

So, it doesn't look very promising, you know? There was -- this is another study among a drumbeat of studies now, again, all of them pretty small, we're still waiting for the larger studies. But if you look at France, you look at Brazil, you look at Sweden, you're hearing similar things.

In France, they said they found a dose that was too toxic, it was actually causing heart arrhythmias. In Sweden, they gave guidance to all that nation's hospitals to stop administering the medication outside of a trial. So, you know, I think you framed it perfectly, we all want something that works, there's obviously a lot of enthusiasm around this particular one, but so far, the results have not been that impressive at all, Jake.

TAPPER: Let's talk about this study of antibody testing out of Los Angeles County that found the true number of coronavirus cases could be actually 55 times higher than traditional testing shows. In L.A. County, the study found 4.1 percent of adults are or have been infected.

It seems remarkable. What does it mean?

GUPTA: Well, it's interesting. This is the second. There was a Stanford study that sort of showed the same thing, that a thousand patients confirmed up there and showed that it could be actually as many as 80,000 people had been exposed to the virus, 40 times as many patients who were exposed versus those who were confirmed.

I mean, it's two things. It's like most things, Jake, there's some bad news and good news. The bad news is the virus has seemingly spread even more than we thought. We suspected this for some time. It's a contagious virus and we haven't been testing adequately.

So, now, we're starting to get a glimpse of just how far this has spread. But at the same time, many of the people who were exposed to this either had no symptoms or they had minimal symptoms, which in part is good news, because that brings down the overall fatality ratio. The fatality ratio is the number of people who died over the number of people who have confirmed infections. If there are more people who had the infections, then that's going to bring down the fatality ratio.

We still don't know what it is, it seems to be variable country to country, even regions of country to regions of country. But if there's a lot of people out there who aren't getting sick from this, it means it's widespread but not as deadly as the few confirmed infections that we have.

TAPPER: Sanjay, you got an antibody test. Tell us about it.

GUPTA: Yes, so, you know, this was an interesting process. And health care workers are starting to get these tests, because they're taking care of patients. I wanted to see it firsthand.

There's been so many questions about this, Jake, you and I have talked about it. I decided to chronicle the experience as well and really talk to the people who are creating this test to better understand it myself. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice-over): There are two different tests that we are all becoming familiar with. A diagnostic test that searches for the genetic markers of the coronavirus, and this one that tests for antibodies.

The first thing you'll notice is that the antibody test requires blood. For me, it was just a poke.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And we're all done.

GUPTA: But then look at all the steps that takes place after that. My blood is taken down to the lab and then spun down in a centrifuge. You're looking at my serum. That's the clear part that might contain antibodies if I have been previously exposed.

The way to find that out is fascinating. Just take some of my serum and put it in the same test tube as the virus and see what happens.

DR. JOHN ROBACK, MEDICAL DIRECTOR, EMORY UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL BLOOD BANK: If you have antibodies against that, they're going to bind and then we're going to be able to detect that.

[16:20:04]

GUPTA: Dr. John Roback is medical director of the blood bank at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta where I practice as a neurosurgeon. I was able to get this test because I'm still working as a doctor at Emory and health care workers are considered at high risk for COVID- 19.

Now, this particular test, approved under FDA emergency authorization at Emory, was developed by Roback and his colleagues. Right now, they test up to 300 people a day. By mid-June, they expect to be processing thousands a day.

It's far more sophisticated than the tests you may have heard of recently.

(on camera): What do you make of these at-home tests for antibodies?

ROBACK: I don't think they can achieve the sorts of performance characteristics we can with these tests that we've in our clinical laboratory. We have a lot better control over the testing conditions, over the sample that was collected.

GUPTA (voice-over): Here's what happens in your body when you're infected. The blue line, that's how long the virus typically lives inside of you.

Take a look at the green line. Early on, IGM antibodies appear. But they disappear shortly after.

And then the red line. That's the IGG antibody. That's the one that appears after the infection is cleared and might provide immunity.

For just how long, how strong? That we don't know yet.

We do know that for other coronaviruses like SARS, antibodies lasted two to three years. MERS, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome had antibody presence of about three years. But with this new coronavirus, it's still too early to tell.

And in order to answer the question, researchers are going to focus on this term, neutralizing activity. You see, it doesn't necessarily matter how many antibodies you have. It only matters how well they work at keeping the virus from entering the human cell. And that can vary from person to person. ROBACK: It's fascinating that not everybody that has high levels of

antibodies on the tests we're doing now actually have very much neutralizing activity. Those antibodies might still be helping. It, you know, causes us to pause a little bit before we just categorically say if you have high antibodies, you're immune.

GUPTA (on camera): What is the real value of having the test?

ROBACK: I think if you have -- if you're positive on this test, it indicates you've been exposed. That can give you a little peace of mind, I think, that, you know, the cough I had two weeks ago, that was really covid-19. It could indicate that some of your close contacts should be tested.

GUPTA (voice-over): But perhaps most importantly, Dr. Roback told me something I hadn't really considered before, that if you test positive for the antibodies, that means you've dealt with this infection and you beat it. And chances are that if you're exposed to it again, you'll beat it again.

As for me, that part is still an open question mark. I tested negative.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Sanjay, what are your big takeaways after undergoing this antibody test?

GUPTA: I was trying to understand the justification. Everybody says get the antibody test to find out if you're essentially immune to this. We can't say that yet, those studies still need to be done.

So is there any merit to getting it done? And I think what that last thing that really sort of struck me, if you do have antibodies, you may not have even known that you had the infection or maybe had some cold-like symptoms earlier. The fact that you beat it already, even if you're not immune to it, means that if you're exposed to it again, you could beat it again. I think that was the point he was making.

You know, it's peace of mind, Jake, at this point. Hopefully we get studies that prove you have immunity. But in the meantime, there could still be some merit.

TAPPER: Yes, let's caution people at home, go with the FDA-approved tests, there's a lot of junkie tests out there. I think there are four that are FDA-approved.

Sanjay, before you go, I want to ask you, your governor, Governor Kemp of Georgia, is starting to lift restrictions in Georgia, even though Georgia has not met the guidelines that president Trump and the White House have put out of a 14-day decline of new coronavirus cases.

You think this is a public health mistake, yes?

GUPTA: This is a public health mistake. I mea, there's no question about it. I mean, look, I think it's reasonable to say this is a tough call for the governor because I'm sure he has a lot of pressure on him. But this is not a tough call from a public health standpoint at all.

You know, the more I think about it, Jake, the more realize this is almost all risk and no reward, because even if you do open things up, you know, you talk to people around here, Jake, I live here. You talk to people not just in the health care community, but people are going to be very understandably nervous about going to these places.

Has that doorknob been sterilized? Has the person who is about to give me a haircut, have they been tested? Has this building been disinfected in some way?

[16:25:02]

What about the ventilation? If I sit in a restaurant, I'm there for over an hour, that's prolonged contact with people.

You know, I'm not trying to alarm people but how do you justify potential putting people at risk without truly getting the rewards from reopening businesses? I don't think you do.

TAPPER: Well, I hope it's not a mistake but I certainly understand your concerns.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much.

Be sure to tune in for a special CNN global town hall hosted by Sanjay Gupta and Anderson Cooper. Their guest this evening, Grammy Award winner Alicia Keys who has a special surprise.

That's Thursday night -- I'm sorry, it's not tonight -- it's Thursday night at 8:00 p.m., right here on CNN, Thursday night.

President Trump is right now scheduled to meet with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo at the White House. What we know about their conversation, that's next. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)