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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Should Schools Reopen?; President Trump Believes Coronavirus Pandemic Under Control; "It Is What It Is": Trump Responds To 156,000- Plus Americans Dying Of Virus; Health Minister: At Least 50 Dead, 2,750-Plus Injured In Beirut Blast; The Testing Crisis: What 20 Experts Say They Need From Federal Government. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired August 04, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:13]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Pamela Brown, in today for Jake Tapper.

And this afternoon, the United States' death toll crossed 156, 000. In response to the average deaths of around 1, 000 Americans a day, the president is saying in this new Axios interview, "It is what it is, " and claiming the government is doing all it can to combat the pandemic.

Last hour, the Coronavirus Task Force began meeting in the Situation Room at the White House, and top health officials are warning, the coronavirus is more widespread than ever before in the U.S, as CNN's Erica Hill reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERICA HILL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If you ask the president...

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think it's under control. I will tell you what.

JONATHAN SWAN, POLITICAL REPORTER, AXIOS: How? A thousand Americans are dying a day.

TRUMP: They are dying. That's true. And it is what it is. But that doesn't mean we aren't doing everything we can. It's under control, as much as you can control it.

HILL: Infectious disease experts disagree.

DR. JAY VARKEY, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE, EMORY UNIVERSITY: Our national response to this pandemic should be a national embarrassment. And, again, the data that actually comes from the White House Task Force backs up exactly what Dr. Birx said. There is uncontrolled spread in over 32 states in the country.

HILL: Adequate testing and tracing still lacking six months into the pandemic, states that were doing well seeing cases climb again, including New Jersey, which just scaled back indoor gatherings to 25 people, down from 100.

GOV. PHIL MURPHY (D-NJ): The actions of a few knuckleheads leave us no other course.

HILL: There are some bright spots. California's positivity rate is declining. And 14 states, including Arizona and Florida, are seeing a dip in new cases over the past week.

But of the 28 holding steady, many are plateauing at a very high level.

DR. AMY COMPTON-PHILLIPS, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: If you just look at the facts, the U.S. has about 4 percent of the world's population and about a quarter of the cases, 25 percent of the cases. We definitely have a problem here in the U.S.

HILL: Deaths, which lag by at least two to four weeks, are rising in 27 states, two teens in Florida among the more than 7, 400 COVID- related deaths there.

Arkansas, Georgia and West Virginia among the states seeing record hospitalizations, Atlanta's Georgia World Congress Center now a surge hospital again.

KEISHA LANCE BOTTOMS (D), MAYOR OF ATLANTA, GEORGIA: It saddens me that we are still heading in the wrong direction so many months after we had an opportunity to get on the other side of COVID-19.

HILL: Teachers in one Phoenix district calling on the governor to issue statewide safety mandates.

KELLEY FISHER, TEACHER: We don't want to endanger one student, one teacher, one support professional, one community member.

HILL: As Arizona's top education official warns it's unlikely any school in that state will be able to reopen safely for in-person or hybrid learning.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HILL: As states love to control the spread of this virus, the New York Tristate area, so New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, all adding the state of Rhode Island to that list of 35 states and territories. Travelers from those areas must quarantine for 14 days when entering any of these three states.

Delaware and Washington, D.C., though, have been removed from the list, Pamela.

BROWN: All right, Erica Hill, thanks for breaking it down for us across the country.

And joining me now is CNN Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta to dig a little bit deeper into all of this.

First off, Sanjay, it's great to see you. DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You too, Pamela.

BROWN: I want to get your reaction to what we heard the president say in this interview, that the virus is -- quote -- "under control, as much as you can control it."

GUPTA: Well, that's not true.

I mean we have real world evidence from many countries around the world of what a greater control of the virus will be. It is a very contagious virus. There's no question. And as you open things up, you will have increased spread.

But it's worth looking at the terms here. We're in what's called mitigation mode, right, Pamela? Means we're trying to slow down the spread of this virus, and we're not doing a very good job.

What control would mean from a public health standpoint is more containment mode. And that would mean roughly one in a million new cases to one in 100, 000 new cases per day. So, that would be roughly 350 new cases per day in the United States.

We're at close to 50, 000 new infections per day. So, strictly speaking, we're not in control. And I think even just more -- more sort of tangibly speaking, we're not in control.

BROWN: Right. And you look at the states, 34 states have a positivity rate of 5 percent or more. WHO recommends it should be less than 5.

So that gives you an idea. But there are so many numbers. And I think sometimes people might look at these numbers, it's confusing. And what is the story? Right now, six months into this pandemic, how would you tell the story of the pandemic in the United States?

[16:05:00]

GUPTA: It's a really good question.

The arc of the story keeps getting rewritten. I mean, I think we could have -- if this were a baseball game, I think we could have been closer to the eighth inning, maybe at this point, and, instead, we're closer to the second or third inning of this, because the numbers continue to grow.

So that's sort of the concerning thing. We didn't do enough testing initially. And, as a result, we weren't able to find people who were infected, isolate them, and trace their contacts and keep the numbers low.

There was a lot of just widespread infection during that time that was largely unchecked. And because people can be asymptomatic, not have any symptoms, and still spread it, that added a whole 'nother complicated dimension to this whole thing.

So when you look at the right side of the screen, you say, well, here's the number of people who have contracted the coronavirus in the United States, five million, it could be five to 10 times higher than that, Pamela. And we just haven't been able to test those people.

We're in a situation now where we don't know, and we don't know everything that we don't know at this point. We're not even sure where to look for some things at this point.

BROWN: So -- OK, so, given that, and then when you hear the president say, hey, it's under control as much as it can be, do you think the president just doesn't grasp how bad things are right now?

GUPTA: Yes, I don't know.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: It's hard to say, right, or is he just trying to -- is this just a sales job?

I mean, I don't know.

GUPTA: I mean, everybody wants to be hopeful, obviously.

But the thing is that we know that the Coronavirus Task Force members have been briefing the president, have been telling the president, showing the president these numbers.

And the thing is that this is a different sort of story, right, Pamela, in the sense that there's objective data here, right? You do have numbers and facts and figures, as opposed to theories and concepts and subjectivity.

So he is hearing the real data. And if one looks at the real data and says, hey, we're not even 5 percent of the world's population, and we have 20 to 25 percent of the world's infections and deaths, I think that would take anybody and make them say, hey, look, this is serious. We have to do something about it.

BROWN: And you're hearing his own public health experts, Dr. Fauci, saying that he agrees with Dr. Birx, calling this current widespread outbreak of the virus -- quote -- "insidious."

What does that mean, practically speaking?

GUPTA: I think what that really means is that we have never really had full eyes on the extent of this problem in the United States.

Again, I talk about testing all the time. I think it's going to be the thing that I look back on this time of my life and say, I talked about that more than anything else. But we didn't test. And I think there was a minimizing of the importance of testing.

So, now insidious means that this continues to spread, this virus continues to spread unchecked. The role of testing right now in this country is to identify hot spots in the country. The problem is, we don't know. Places that seem like they're OK right now, just fine, nothing to worry about here, you don't know, because there's not adequate testing in those places soon. And the problem is, if you start to get behind, if all of a sudden

there's an outbreak, a small outbreak, even, it can spiral into exponential growth very, very quickly. You can get -- the curve from get away from you very, very fast.

BROWN: So -- OK, so you say this. And now, as parents -- I know both of us are parents. We're weighing whether to send our children back.

As you're laying out this picture of, hey, this is an insidious pandemic, you don't know what's going to happen -- I should say, insidious virus. And Dr. Fauci is saying, hey, look, the default position should be to keep schools open, but the primary consideration should be safety.

What does that even mean?

GUPTA: Yes.

BROWN: Like, of course the schools should be safe, but given what you just laid out, how will you guarantee safety?

GUPTA: Yes, it's really -- it's tough.

And, I mean, I think Dr. Fauci is saying I think what we're all thinking. But, look, every parent really in America has to become an amateur epidemiologist right now to figure this out.

Let me show you some of the actual gating criteria. This came from the White House itself in terms of what we should look for before thinking about opening schools.

Now, just think about your own community. Have COVID cases been going down for 14 days in a row? Have hospital visits been going down 14 days in a row? You mentioned percent positive. Have they been going down for 14 days in a row? Are hospitals adequately staffed?

And then this bottom one, Pamela, I think is the big one. Do you have testing programs in place? Could you get your child tested? Could you get yourself tested? Could you get a rapid result quickly?

Because that's going to be the key, if you do open a school, to keeping it open. You have got to quickly -- there will be new infections, almost guaranteed, because it's a contagious virus. There will be people who become infected that otherwise wouldn't.

Can you identify them quickly enough to not let this spiral into exponential growth? If you don't have adequate testing in place, I just don't see how you do it. And most places in the country right now still don't have that so many months into this.

BROWN: Yes, and we're actually -- later on in the show, we're going to be doing a deeper dive into the testing issues that still exist right now.

[16:10:05] Really quick, I want to go to this study. It's a new "Lancet" study that is showing two major keys to reopening schools are successful testing, as you pointed out, also contact tracing.

Public health experts say that both aren't where they need to be in this country, as you know. So, just the bottom line here, Sanjay, as things stand today -- as we know, it's fluid, things change all the time -- but what would you advise parents weighing whether or not they should send their child to school?

GUPTA: I think those criteria for your own community are important.

If the numbers really have been going down 14 days in a row, as I laid out there, and you do feel very confident in testing, then perhaps, but the issue is going to be, what happens if you do have a significant number of people who test positive?

And you also got to remember, while it is true that children and young people are less likely to get sick from this, they can still transmit it. And you have faculty and teachers and staff in these schools, a third of which, according to some studies, would qualify as being vulnerable in some way because of their age or preexisting conditions.

So, that all has to be accounted for. It's going to be tough. We're -- this is a bad viral storm. You want to use a metaphor, this is like a bad hurricane, right? I mean, there's nothing good about it.

We all have to sort of hunker down here a bit, as it will pass. It's just going to take a long time. But it's going to be tough to do things where you're clustering people together inside, possibly with vulnerable people, and hope that it all goes right.

BROWN: Yes. I mean, that's the big difference, right? It's like a hurricane, but it's lasting a lot longer than a hurricane does.

GUPTA: That's right.

BROWN: Even though people have pandemic fatigue right now, it doesn't mean we're out of the woods or even close to it.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much.

GUPTA: You got it, Pamela. Thank you.

BROWN: Well, President Trump says, you can do too much testing for the virus.

That is not true -- this and his other questionable claims on a wide range of issues.

Plus: a massive explosion, a mushroom cloud and its effects felt 150 miles away. We are live with the latest on this mysterious deadly blast.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:16:33]

BROWN: Turning to our politics lead now, President Trump saying "it is what it is" that 156,000 Americans have died of coronavirus, one of the jaw-dropping moments during his interview with "Axios" on HBO. At one point, he suggested, quote, some people think you can test too much. But the president couldn't explain who those people are.

And as CNN's Kaitlan reports, his answers leave you wondering whether he understands just how bad the pandemic is.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Even though his own health experts are warning that the U.S. has entered a worrisome new phase of the pandemic, President Trump is insisting it's under control.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Here's one right here. United States, you take the number of cases, we're last, meaning we're first.

COLLINS: In a new interview with "Axios", the president is eager to declare victory and lean on the mortality is an indication that things are improving.

TRUMP: Death is way down from where it was.

COLLINS: Despite how more than a thousand Americans have died on average per day for the last week straight, the president stuck to his talking point.

TRUMP: Right here, United States is lowest in numerous categories. We're lower than the world, lower than Europe.

REPORTER: In what? In what?

TRUMP: Take a look. Right here, here's case death.

REPORTER: Oh, you're doing death as a proportion of cases. I'm talking about death as a proportion of population. That's where the U.S. is really bad, much worse than South Korea and Germany.

TRUMP: You can't -- you can't do that.

COLLINS: He also claimed once again that there are more cases in the U.S. because there is more testing. Though health officials say it's because the virus is spreading.

TRUMP: There are those that say you can test too much. You do know that.

REPORTER: Who says that?

TRUMP: Oh, just read the manuals, read the books.

REPORTER: Manuals? What manuals? TRUMP: Read the books. Read the books.

REPORTER: What books?

COLLINS: Trump also defended putting thousands of his supporters indoors without requiring masks or social distancing during his attempt to return to the campaign trail six weeks ago in Tulsa.

TRUMP: Well, because that area was a very good area at the time. It was an area that was pretty much over. After, after, a month later, it started going up. That's a month later.

COLLINS: Trump argued that he canceled another planned rally in New Hampshire out of concern for public health.

TRUMP: I canceled another one. I had to cancel --

REPORTER: Right.

TRUMP: We're going to have a great crowd in New Hampshire and I canceled it for the same reason.

COLLINS: But his own staff told reporters that it was only postponed because of bad weather and that it would be rescheduled. It never was.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: And, Pam, you'll remember the president's national security adviser who tested positive for COVID-19. He is now back at work at the White House. He was seen inside the West Wing today. Remember, on July 23rd, he left the White House. The White House confirmed three days later he had actually tested positive for coronavirus. But now he is back to work after testing negative, the White House says.

BROWN: All right. Kaitlan Collins, thank you so much for that report.

And turning now to breaking news in our world lead.

A massive blast rocking the Lebanese capital of Beirut, creating a massive mushroom cloud above the city which could be seen and felt from miles away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

(EXPLOSION)

[16:20:01]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What? What? What?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: At first, Lebanese officials blamed fair works but now they say it was confiscated high explosive materials.

CNN's Ben Wedeman is in Beirut. So, Ben, the blast was felt as far as the island -- far away as the island of Cyprus, 150 miles away. You were in CNN's Beirut bureau nearby when it happened.

What did you experience?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it was just after 6:00 p.m. in the evening, local time, about five hours ago, Pamela, when I felt what I thought was an earthquake. This is an earthquake zone.

But just moments later, the windows in our bureau and the window frames were just knocked out by the blast. The office is in shambles. But we were relatively lucky our cameraman was slightly injured when the blast blew him off his scooter. But we understand from the Lebanese health minister that at least 50 people were killed and more than 2,750 wounded.

And this is just initial reports. I spoke to someone who's in a neighborhood near the port who said that buildings have collapsed, that the neighborhoods are unrecognizable, that in the immediate aftermath of the blast, there were wounded people lying all over the streets. Shortly afterwards people were trying to provide first aid to some, providing CPR to others. The hospitals are overwhelmed.

We spoke to somebody at one of the main hospitals here who said that they were treating at least 400 injuries. And the Lebanese Red Cross, for example, has called on all its ambulances in the entire country to rush to Beirut as soon as possible.

As far as the cause of this blast, as you mentioned initially the official news agency said it was a warehouse full of fireworks. But now it appears there were some sort of confiscated high explosives which -- in that warehouse which might explain the size of that massive blast -- Pamela.

BROWN: All right, Ben Wedeman, we're glad you're okay, live for us in Beirut.

While President Trump claims the U.S. is testing too much and his testing chief says they're doing enough, CNN talked to more than 20 labs, health officials, and experts who say they're wrong. What they still need, up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:27:17]

BROWN: We are back with our health lead and a new CNN investigation into the continued coronavirus testing crisis in the U.S. six months into this pandemic.

The Trump administration testing czar told our Jake Tapper the federal government is doing enough with testing.

But our CNN Senior Investigative Correspondent, Drew Griffin talked to more than 20 experts who made it clear what the federal government is doing is not enough.

Here's what they said.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Why is coronavirus testing in the U.S. still a debacle? CNN spoke to state health officials, testing labs, test suppliers, hospitals, and industry insiders more than 20 testing experts, the overwhelming consensus, no federal plan.

HEATHER PIERCE, SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR SCIENCE POLICY & REGULATORY COUNSEL, ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN MEDICAL COLLEGES: We need to have a better national strategy to deal with testing.

GRIFFIN: But wait a minute. Wasn't there supposed to be a plan? A White House coronavirus task force and wasn't this man, Admiral Brett Giroir, tasked with fixing testing?

The answer to all three is yes. And according to Admiral Brett Giroir, the federal government is doing all it can.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: It's not enough.

ADM. BRETT GIROIR, TESTING CZAR: Of course, it's enough. Tell me one thing that we should be doing with any of these private labs that we're not doing or they're not doing on their own. And I'm happy to do it.

GRIFFIN: Well, here, Admiral Giroir, is what the federal government should be doing according to those experts. First, national coordination of supplies.

PIERCE: You have, whether intentionally or not, competition across states, across labs.

GRIFFIN: There is not enough of anything -- the swabs, pipettes, the chemicals needed to perform a test called reagents, which is leading to huge competition between states and labs.

KARISSA CULBREATH, PHD, TRICORE REFERENCE LABORATORIES: So if we had all of these supplies that we could use, we could perform around 10,000 tests per day. But we just don't have all of the supplies or all of the people.

GRIFFIN: Case in point, New Mexico's largest medical lab is running just 3,700 tests a day instead of the 10,000 it could handle, nowhere near its capacity.

CULBREATH: We need goals at a federal level and the support at the federal level for us to get to where we need to be for testing.

GRIFFIN (on camera): It sounds like a very polite way to say that if there is a national strategy, nobody in New Mexico knows about it.

CULBREATH: Probably, yes. (LAUGHTER) GRIFFIN (voice-over): One way to get more of those supplies is

increase use of the Defense Production Act or DPA. CNN previously reported how the administration isn't using the DPA as much as it could. A plan released by the Rockefeller Foundation said the government should immediately invoke the act, specifically to increase supplies for reagents and machinery to process testing.

DR. RAJIV SHAH, THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION PRESIDENT: What we have seen is that industry left to its own devices is not going to produce the types of tests and the scale of tests necessary.

[16:30:00]