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Florida Breaks Single-Day Record with 8,942 New Cases; Dr. Amesh Adalja Discusses COVID-19 Surges Across the U.S., Trump Dismissing Coronavirus Testing, Fauci Suggesting New Test Approach; Dr. Rany Condos Discusses Her Comparison of Long-Term Health Effects of COVID-19 to Long-Term Health Effects of 9/11; Trump Administrations Asks Supreme Court to Strike Down Obamacare Amid Pandemic. Aired 11- 11:30a ET

Aired June 26, 2020 - 11:00   ET

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

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[11:00:45]

JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everybody. I'm John King in Washington. Thanks so much for sharing your day with us.

And a very important day it is. "Something is not working." Those ominous words today from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert.

They come as the White House Coronavirus Task Force holds a public briefing next hour for the first time in two months.

And it comes at a new pandemic crisis point, the crisis the White House has been ignoring at the president's demand but can ignore no more.

And 37,000 new confirmed coronavirus infections in the United States on Thursday. That's yesterday. A new single-day high. Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Nevada, all reporting record single-day case totals.

Texas reopened early and is now one of eight states to press pause on unwinding coronavirus restrictions.

The governor there today says bars have to close their doors again to patrons. Takeout and delivery can't stay open. Restaurants can stay open, too, but they cannot go above 50 percent capacity.

Listen to the mayor of the state's capital city. He says a pause is just not good enough.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEVE ADLER, (D), MAYOR OF AUSTIN, TEXAS: A pause will not make things better. The trajectory we're on right now has our hospitals overwhelmed, probably about mid-July. The status quo and the path we're on right now is a path that, right now, has us in danger. (END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The nation is now adding 33,000 new cases per day on average over the last week. That is faster than at any point during the pandemic. Worth repeating, that is faster than at any point during the pandemic, a pandemic the president keeps telling you is fading and dying out.

Dr. Fauci says just the opposite. And he suggests one urgent step might be to abandon the current testing approach. Pool testing, Fauci says, would test more people at once and allow public health officials to more quickly identify hot spots.

We learned the other day the president hasn't spoken with his top experts in weeks. Imagine that, in the middle of a pandemic.

Listen closely to this. Four full months into this crisis, more than 124,000 Americans dead, and the president of the United States sounds like a man with no clue about testing and how this virus is spreading among people who show mild symptoms or no symptoms at all.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So we have more cases because we do the greatest testing. If we didn't do testing, we'd have no cases. Other countries, they don't test millions.

So up to almost 30 million tests. So when you have 30 million, you'll have a kid with the sniffles and they will say it's the coronavirus, whatever you want to call it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Whatever you want to call it.

The breaking news, despite what the president says, some stunning new case numbers out of Florida just moments ago.

Let's get straight to CNN's Rosa Flores in Miami.

Rosa, wow.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, John, Florida shattering its numbers once again. The numbers just released by the Florida of Department of Health, 8,942 cases in the state of Florida, again shattering the record after two consecutive days of more than 5,000 cases. This brings Florida's total to 122,960 coronavirus cases to date.

Let me tell you, experts here on the ground, in what's considered the epicenter here in Florida, here in Miami-Dade County, are very frustrated because of the mixed messaging that they have seen from the federal and the state levels.

Here on the ground, local officials, mayors, are doing what they can to make sure that they can encourage, enforce the basic rules, like wearing a mask, washing your hands, the social distancing.

The city of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez was on our air earlier today talking about the increase in hospitalizations and the increase in need for ventilators here in Miami.

And he was asked the obvious questions, because these numbers continue to grow and the surge continues, would he consider reinstating a stay- at-home order.

Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Will you consider a stay-at-home order in Miami again?

FRANCIS SUAREZ, (R), MIAMI MAYOR: Alisyn, all options have to be on table. You know, when we see our hospitalizations go up, our ICU beds go up, our ventilators are going up, still with sufficient capacity but going up, it's worrisome.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:05:07]

FLORES: Now I should mention that we have heard very similar things from the mayor here in Miami Beach as well.

Again, many local mayors that are very close on the ground to the people in their communities that are infected, they know the communities very well. They are sending very clear messages. They are requiring masks. The city of Miami-Dade County requiring masks.

As of yesterday, effective immediately, there was an emergency order issued by the city of Miami that now allows city officials there to issues fines for anyone out in public not wearing a mask.

John, there's a lot of concern. And, again, the breaking news out of Florida is that Florida once again is shattering its record with 8,942 cases in just one day -- John?

KING: Rosa, any indication -- you mentioned the mayors there. We've seen Governor Abbott in Texas, like Governor DeSantis, went early, pushing reopening, Governor Abbott is saying these numbers need to tell me I need to hit pause. Is there any indication that the governor of Florida will pull back any?

FLORES: Not as of yet. He had a press conference yesterday. Reporters keep on asking that same questions: Would he consider rolling back some of the restrictions and would he consider issuing or mandating masks to be worn statewide? And the answer is no.

He says that this is up to Floridians. It's individual decisions. And that he allows local leaders and mayors in cities and counties across the state to make their own decisions. Now, his rationale is that most of the spread is being done in metro

areas. But, John, his rationale falls flat when we have mayors here in Miami-Dade saying that there's an outbreak in south Miami-Dade in a rural area.

So, again, the mixed messaging is what concerns so many experts hear because they hear different messages from the federal and state levels. And then locally mayors are very concerned, and they keep on pushing for these rules to be followed -- John?

KING: Rosa Flores, grateful again. You are there in the middle of this with the breaking news for us every day. Keeping tracking it. Thanks so much there.

And Florida, it's a giant factor and hardly alone pushing the case count to the new records and pushing our national tracking map deep into the red.

Let's take a look.

Let's begin with the new record yesterday in the case count. You bring it up, 40,000 cases. If you go back through March 16th, that's when the White House announced the initial slow-the-spread measures.

You see, in April, South Carolina was among the first to start to reopen. April 24th, way back to April 24th, the previous one-day high in cases.

And then we see -- and we knew this was inevitable. As the reopenings happen, we knew the case count would go up. Question is, this much, this far out, and is it manageable.

You look at that a new single-day record here in January. This is a month ago. Look at this picture one month ago. Look at the green on this map. Green is going down. It included Texas. Florida was stable at the time, right?

A month ago, 20 states going down and 13 states steady and 23 going up. That's the orange. Remember this map. This is a month ago.

This is where we are now. Look at all that orange and all that red. You have 32 states heading up in the wrong direct, 11 holding steady. Only seven states now going down.

We knew the case count would go up. The question is in the deep red states. You see Florida, Texas, a lot of the west and Michigan, 50 percent higher cases this week than last week. We knew the reopening would bring up cases. Would it go like this?

One of the reasons you see this, eight states just this week have paused their reopening, including giant Texas, in Arizona, because the governors are seeing the data that they don't like. Eight states pausing the reopening because of this state trend map. And 32 states now heading up.

Let's bring our Dr. Amesh Adalja, from the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security to share his expertise and insight with us.

Doctor, we knew the case count would go up. That's inevitable. But the pace of this, when you see so many states going up dramatically, several governors deciding to hit the pause.

Is that when we anticipate pedestrian, or is this worse?

DR. AMESH ADALJA, SENIOR SCHOLAR, JOHNS HOPKINS CENTER FOR HEALTH SECURITY: This is worse than we anticipated.

Many of us thought that with this economic shutdown being lifted and stay-at-home being lifted, the states would have put in place contact tracing teams that would be able to deal with the numbers they get so they wouldn't spiral out of control and we wouldn't get raising percent positivity -- rising percent positivity rates on tests.

And it seems to be the case that many states did not take that time to have adequate contact tracing. But this is how you manage the number of cases that you're going to get. And it doesn't seem that we're in that place in many states in the country.

KING: And so you have Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx today talking about abandoning the way we're currently testing and going to something called pool testing.

Explain to our viewers what pool testing is, and whether you believe it would be helpful?

ADALJA: So pool testing is when, instead of taking an individual blood and nasal sample from somebody, you take a whole bunch of them and put them together and run a test on that whole batch. And if it's negative, all those are clear. And if it's positive, you go back and individually test those samples to see who is positive.

[11:10:12]

And there may be the way to put this through and test more people and help communities understand how much prevalence they have of the virus in their populations.

This is a way to maybe improve the way we do testing now, which is very individual based. And we're still under counting. We're still missing because not everybody is coming for a test. And there's still some logistical difficulties getting a test.

We've done this, for example, with HIV before. And this is something we need to try. And clearly, what we're doing now is not working in many states.

KING: Well, if it's been done before and it's proven to be effective, and we knew that testing was an issue way back at the beginning months ago, why wasn't this done months ago? Why are they just deciding now?

ADALJA: This is a great question. This was something that people had debated. Should we move to pool test? And there were individuals thinking about it for congregate settings,

jails, for sports teams, for sports teams, and people traveling together that that might be one way to do it.

But it is something we should have considered earlier, because we still have issues with capturing all these cases or we wouldn't have the types of spread we're seeing in Texas and Arizona and Florida.

So I think we really need to rethink how we approach this virus in the future.

KING: I don't like dragging the doctors into politics, but I think at times it's vital because a lot of people listen to the president of the United States and a lot of them follow his lead.

When you hear him, as he said last night, you know, they are doing all the testing and they come up with somebody that has the sniffles and they call it coronavirus, essentially, being dismissive of testing and, essentially, saying in recent weeks we're doing too much testing and that's why the number on the screen is going up, not because we're doing enough to control the spread of the virus?

What does through your mind and what signals does that send to people?

ADALJA: This is just widespread evasion from the highest levels of government. And that's been characteristic the entire time of this pandemic. That we need to do testing and need to do as much testing as possible, that it isn't something that we should be looking at as a score.

And the fact is, maybe people get sniffles from it and that transmits the infection. And that's what happening is younger people are getting infected and transmitting it to individuals who need hospitalization.

This isn't something, even though it just might cause a sniffle, might be laughed off or evaded.

I think the fact is, this pandemic, when you look at the administration's response, has really been disappointing on all levels.

And it didn't have to be that way. We squandered time in January, February and March when we could have done like what countries in Taiwan did. But we didn't. And now we're faced with this pandemic that will be out of control again if we don't take action quickly.

KING: Next hour, we'll get the first public briefing by the Coronavirus Task Force of the White House in two months. So they finally got the message that they need to do something, they need to show the public that they are trying to get back on top of this.

Dr. Fauci saying this to the "Washington Post" today: "Something is not working. I mean, you can do all the diagramming you want, but something is not working. What you need to do is find the penetration of infected people in your society. And the only way you know that is by casting a broad net." What, sir, in your view, is not working? And what can this task force

do today to make it better?

ADALJA: What isn't working today is the fact that we're letting cases go by. They are not being diagnosed. That's the way we'd only get the rising percent of positivity, meaning that this virus is spreading faster than our testing and that there are cases going undetected and starting chains of transmission landing people in the hospital.

What we need to do is understand who is infected. We're still having the basic problem of understanding who is infected in the community and who isn't. And that those people that are infected need not to be associated with other people for a period of time.

Because that's what happening. We're not breaking the chain of transmission. So we have to try things differently in order to stop this, because the virus isn't going anywhere until there's a vaccine.

And we can't have open and shut, keep doing it. That's going to be very disruptive to the business and to the economy. We have to get this right.

And many states did get it right. But I think, clearly, not all of them did. And I think we have to rethink this whole approach in those states.

KING: Doctor Adalja, I'm grateful for your insights and expertise today, as always. Thank you, sir, very much.

ADALJA: Thank you.

[11:14:09]

KING: Thank you.

Up next for us, even as we worry about the current case count, many doctors are worried about the long-term effects for those we know haven't had coronavirus.

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KING: This breaking news from the NBA. The league says 16 players have tested positive for coronavirus. The news coming in a statement issued moments ago. And 302 NBA players were tested in total, the league says.

It's unclear how or if these positive tests will impact the NBA's plan to resume the season on July 30th in Florida, of all places.

The spike in daily case count is an urgent count at the moment. But so, too, are the issues faced by coronavirus patients who were added to that count weeks or months ago.

Yes, most recover. But doctors say that term could be misleading. There could be serious long-term effect for some patients, including permanent damage, particularly to the heart and lungs. Dr. Rany Condos is head of the lung and heart disease program at NYU

Medical Center.

Doctor, thank you so much for being with us.

You liken this to the World Trade Center. Nineteen years after --

DR RANY CONDOS, DIRECTOR, ADVANCED LUNG DISEASE PROGRAM, NYU LANGONE MEDICAL CENTER: Yes.

KING: Nineteen years after 9/11, we're still dealing with the legacy health effects on many of the people, the frontline, police, fire, other first responders, others in the building. Why do you make that comparison with the coronavirus?

CONDOS: I think because we're seeing a lot of long-term events. Even though we've seen a lot of virus for months, we're seeing that a lot of patients, even after they've recovered from the virus they are still having symptoMs. Even those that didn't come into the hospital.

Many are still short of breath and still having chest pain. And a lot of them, even though X-rays are normal and they look like they are back to normal, they still can't do what they were doing before. And that's just focusing on the ones in the hospital.

[11:20:05]

If we then look at a group of patients who ended up on ventilators, who had prolonged hospitalizations, we're seeing significant abnormalities in many areas, in the heart, in the lungs, neurologically. There's evidence of blood clots.

(CROSSTALK)

CONDOS: There's a lot of damage that's been done by this virus that's unprecedented. And we really don't understand why or how long it's going to last.

And that's why we're comparing it to the World Trade Center because that's something that happened that took us years to understand what that true impact was.

(CROSSTALK)

KING: I'm sorry to interrupt, Doctor.

Some of the things you're seeing, symptoms persisting three months after recovery, shortness of breath, chest pain, fatigue and mental fog, blood abnormalities, kidney and neurological issues, anxiety and PTSD, heart disease and vascular events.

Is this across the board. Is it a particular type of patient, a demographic group, or are you seeing it in everybody?

CONDOS: I think right now most of the patient severely affected were those that were ventilator-dependent or who had prolonged hospitalizations.

But certainly there are patients who were not in the hospital who are having anxiety and who are complaining about the mental fog and who are having signs of prolonged debility related to their COVID infection. And we don't understand what that is.

And part of what we're doing here, in creating clinics that are multi- disciplinary and trying to do research and evaluate these patients, is trying to answer those questions.

What is it about one patient that makes them likely to recover easily and quickly? And what is it about the other patients that makes them more likely to develop prolonged side effects and prolonged difficulties.

And my concern, moving forward, is we have a large group of patients who are still not well. We're dealing with all of those issues. And yet, the pandemic continues to rage on.

So the health system, in addition to taking care of all these chronically affected patients, needs to be ready and able to deal with the potential surge that may be coming.

KING: It's complicated to say the least.

Dr. Condos, really appreciate your insights. Circle back to us as you learn more and keep us informed.

CONDOS: Thanks, John.

KING: Thank you so much. Appreciate, it.

Coming up for us, in the middle of the pandemic, the Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to abolish Obamacare.

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[11:27:20]

KING: The president is taking a giant political risk at a moment of giant political weakness. The administration, in a new filing, asked the Supreme Court to abolish Obamacare, the health care program on which over 20 million Americans depend, and a program in even more demand right now because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying, "President Trump and the Republicans' campaign to rip away the protections and benefits of the Affordable Care Act in the middle of the coronavirus crisis is an act of unfathomable cruelty."

Whatever you think of Obamacare, this is a giant risk for Republicans. Pelosi is speaker of the House because of the role health care played

in the 2018 midterms.

President Trump making this move the same week polling in nine different battleground states, nine different battleground states shows him trailing Democrat Joe Biden.

With me know to discusses, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, of the "New York Times," CNN's Vivian Salama.

Julie, it's -- doing this is risky anyway. If you look at the president's poll numbers in the battleground states, it adds to the risk.

Just a few numbers. Obamacare enrollment is up 46 percent January to May 2020 in the middle of pandemic compared to '19. More people are relying on this program as they are stressed in health care because of the pandemic.

And if you ask voters, favorable or unfavorable on Obamacare, 56 percent have a favorable opinion right now. That's nearly six in 10 Americans have a favorable opinion.

And when you ask people, make minor changes or get rid of it, 58 percent of support the idea of keeping and fixing it.

The president is taking a giant gamble here a couple months before an election.

JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: He is. And if you look at some of the numbers, I mean, as you said, Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, is popular. People, by and large, do want to keep it and change what may not be working so well for some of them.

But the problem for Republicans and for President Trump is that they haven't really made a case for what they are doing instead. And that's part of the issue here.

Nancy Pelosi is going to bring up a bill next week to expand the Affordable Care Act and they will tell voters exactly what they would do to improve the law as it is now.

And Republicans, though they have talked about repealing and replacing it, really haven't put anything forward as to what they would do.

And the contrast is going to be quite stark, given that the administration is pushing forward on this so close to an election.

And as you said, there are many vulnerable Republicans who are going to have to answer for that in their own campaigns.

KING: And so, Vivian, the president was asked that question flatly lost night, what's your top priority in the second term. And he didn't have a good answer. He said he'd have more experience if he got a second term.

Listen, in contrast, the former Vice President Joe Biden, said, elect me president and I'll fix your health care.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

[11:29:56] JOE BIDEN, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES & DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: By guaranteeing that no American ever has to spend 8.5 percent of their income on health insurance. And that number will be lower for lower-income people.

We're also going to further reduce costs by making it less expensive for Americans to choose plans with lower deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses.

(END VIDEO CLIP)