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CNN: Trump Scraps Alabama Rally Plans Amid Rising Infections; Houston Mayor: City Is Currently Seeing A Surge In Cases; American Travelers Not Allowed In When E.U. Reopens Borders. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired June 30, 2020 - 12:30   ET

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

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KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Welcome back everybody.

CNN has just learned President Trump's reelection campaign has now scrapped plans for a rally to it was supposed to be held next weekend in Alabama. This is just as Alabama's governor announced today that she's putting a pause on the state's reopening plans because of the troubling trend of an increase in coronavirus cases there.

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CNN's Kaitlan Collins, she has this reporting. She's breaking this news. She's joining me right now. Kaitlan, what are you learning?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So the President had expected to go next weekend. That would have been just days ahead of that Senate race, of course between his former Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the former Auburn head coach, Tommy Tuberville.

And the campaign had been making plans for him to go down there, but we're told those plans have since been scrapped. And Kate, really what we're seeing with the campaign is they don't have any rallies right now on the horizon, though they do say they have people scoping them out for when they do decide to start holding rallies again.

But just to give you a sense of how this wasn't really how they had expected things to go. Before that first rally in Tulsa, that first returned to the campaign trail since these coronavirus restrictions had gone in place. The campaign was planning to announce several more rallies right after that and have the President back on the road, back to what a typical schedule would look like in an election year.

But now that has really changed as you were seeing these coronavirus cases surge across the United States but also hit home for the campaign since they had eight staffers test positive, two Secret Service agents who had been in Tulsa. And then the rest of the campaign staff that was there had to quarantine of course in the following days.

Now, it does come as some state officials had voiced concerns. You did see today that the Alabama Governor Kay Ivey amended that safer at home order to basically go through the end of next month. So clearly, they are also paying attention to this as Alabama is one of those 30 something states where they are seeing cases go up in recent days.

Now, of course, the question about the schedule, Kate, is does it resonate with the President because clearly what the campaign is learning is that the pandemic is now behind us. The question is, has the President himself realized that?

We reported in recent days, he has not attended a formal coronavirus task force meeting since the month of April. And as you've noticed from what he said publicly, that clearly has not been his focus in recent days as there are even still discussions going on about whether or not he should wear a mask and whether or not his officials are pushing for it.

And so that has really been the question inside the campaign, inside the White House, really just inside the President's orbit overall, is whether or not he's going to start taking this seriously and how much it might affect him with voters come November.

BOLDUAN: Thanks, Kaitlan.

This is also just into CNN, a week after the Kentucky primary. CNN is now projecting Amy McGrath as the winner of the Democratic Senate primary there. She'll now face off with Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in November. It was a closely watched primary race.

McGrath narrowly defeating State Representative Charles Booker who gained momentum late in the race in the midst of protests over police brutality and racial divides in the state.

Coming up for us, we're going to go to Texas where concerns are growing that a steady rise in new infections there could soon overwhelm hospitals throughout the state.

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BOLDUAN: Houston's mayor is sounding the alarm over a surge of coronavirus cases that is happening there right now in the city, some more than 1,300 cases over Sunday and Monday. That surge is contributing to the total number of confirmed cases of course in Houston and the surrounding County, which surpassed 30,000.

The death toll there has now passed 375 people. And those numbers are straining the hospital system. With me now is the president and CEO of one of the city's hospitals, Houston Methodist, Dr. Marc Boom. Dr. Boom, thank you so much for being here. Appreciate it.

The mayor told CNN just yesterday that --

DR. MARC BOOM, PRESIDENT AND CEO, HOUSTON METHODIST: Good morning.

BOLDUAN: -- Houston hospitals are in a very serious situation right now in terms of capacity. That's the way he put it in. And he also said that the number of people going into the hospitals is going up, the number of people going into the ICU is going up. What does that mean for your hospital? Where are you in terms of capacity? How far away are you from hitting it?

BOOM: So we're busy, let me be clear, in these days. Right now, our ICU across Houston Methodist, so we're about a 2,400 bed system, that 91 percent of our beds in ICU are full. And then literally minutes before this, as I checked that. Thirty-eight percent of those patients in ICU have COVID. So we've seen a very significant increase in COVID.

The fundamental issue is that it is spreading widely through the community of Houston and we are seeing testing rates go up. We are seeing positivity rates go up. And we're seeing our hospitalization numbers go up. To put that in perspective, on Memorial Day, we had 104 patients in house. We now have 480 in house, about 118 of those 480 our ICU.

So yes, it's a big increase. But only one and four are in the ICU. And what we're seeing is quite a lower percentage of patients meeting ICU, which is somewhat reassuring. And we've also seen lower length stay, lower death rate, et cetera. So we're so far able to modulate and able to take care of the citizens for Houston. But we will continue to ramp back on some other care and ramp up additional beds as need be.

Again, it's about you know, one in five of our beds or so right now, some somewhere around that and a little less than that are occupied by patients with COVID across our system.

BOLDUAN: As a CEO of the company but also as a doctor, you try I'm sure, you definitely try to not operate in fear because you need to take care of people who are depending on you. But the mayor is making very clear that he is worried. Are you with what you're seeing in Texas right now?

BOOM: What I'm really worried about what I see in the community, this virus is spreading rapidly. The time to act is now. We've been chanting as loudly as we possibly can. People need to stay home whenever they can stay home. They need to wear a mask. They need to socially distance. We're looking at the Fourth of July coming up in a couple of days.

[12:45:10]

And frankly, it scares me. We saw that, you know, when we started with Memorial Day, that really was the beginning of a lot of these numbers going up and imagine all those people together on the Fourth of July. So I'd love to see the mayor and others take action to make sure that people are not out and about on the Fourth of July.

We are sending out messages through our hospital system, stay home, celebrate with your household unit only. Do not celebrate outside of your household unit. We don't want this virus to spread. One of the complexities now is we're trying to care for people without COVID at the same time as COVID. And that tends to make the numbers look a little higher. The reason for that is the last time we went through this surge, and this is the second surge we've been through, when we talked to a lot of those patients who had been delayed, we saw that there was a lot of unintentional harm and anxiety and stress and pain and many other things that were the result of that, we saw emergency rooms being avoided and people harmed because of that.

So we're very significantly trying to care for everybody for as long as we possibly can. So we will gradually bring down some of the non- COVID care to allow more COVID care to happen. That is our responsibility to the citizens of Houston so that everybody has a hospital bed available. And so we will continue to do that going forward.

BOLDUAN: Now, I talked to the Dallas County judge who's wrote ahead, written a letter to the governor saying that all the medical experts that he's depending on and talking to are telling him that even though Governor Abbott has done taking some measures, closing down bars, and things like that, we're seeing the spike that much more needs to be done from the state level.

And as the judge put it to me, the person who got us into this needs to help us get out of this right now. And that's the governor. Do you agree that you would be helped -- your hospital would be helped if you had some mandates or stricter regulations right now from the State level?

BOOM: Well, you know, what frustrates me is that not enough people seem to be getting the message. So we're seeing on the frontlines. A lot of this is because family groups getting together and others. So we'd really like to see more come in place. We need the Fourth of July is a major thing. Of course, I do think there are exercise facilities, there are many other things like that, we'd like to see some additional restrictions to help us.

But most of all, we'd like all of our politicians on both ends of the aisle to lock arms and get consistent messaging to the people that this is real and that we have a very significant issue with COVID spreading in our community. We all need to be in it together each and every one.

BOLDUAN: You know, being in this together is actually the exact message that we heard from Dr. Anthony Fauci this morning. We can't get out of this. We can't slow the spread unless we do it together. You can't do it alone. It's not someone else's responsibility. It's everyone's responsibility.

And I wanted to get your reaction because Dr. Fauci also said he is so worried about what he's saying -- seeing in terms of the surge, including in Texas, when he said that if things do not change, like you're also asking for, that he could see the daily new case rate, jump up to 100,000 a day.

BOOM: Now that would be obviously very frightening. I say a big amen to what he said in terms of everybody needs to do something about this. I mean, unless we all rally together and do this, it will get out of control, and we need it not to get out of control. You know, we're looking at numbers that have been going up on the testing side, and therefore the people getting admitted at a concerning rate right now.

We can handle it for some period of time and continue to adjust to get there. But of course, we can't handle that indefinitely. And we've been ringing the bell for three weeks now saying, the numbers are going up too much change behaviors. And we've been doing that, you know, repeatedly. We need to continue to do that. But it's going to take more. We're going to all need to get together. And if we don't all do something together, I am -- I shared with Dr. Fauci that we could be in out of control in the future.

And that's something we all want to avoid. When that happens, obviously, thousands of people get sick. People die and we don't of course want that to happen. And frankly, it destroys small businesses. The economy goes into shambles, et cetera. We've got to get together to protect all of those aspects of society right now.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Dr. Boom, thank you for your time. Thank you for what you're doing.

BOOM: Thank you. Thank you.

[12:49:29]

BOLDUAN: Still ahead for us, the European Union is opening its borders to international travelers starting tomorrow. But the U.S., United States did not make the cut, did not make the list, that's ahead.

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BOLDUAN: American travelers will not be allowed to visit the European Union when it reopens its borders, the E.U. making it official today releasing as you see here, a list of 15 countries that will be permitted. China is on the list so as a neighbor to -- our neighbor to the north, Canada.

Frederik Pleitgen, joining me now from Brussels. Fred, what are you hearing about what went in, to who got on the list, who's not on the list? What are you hearing?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi Kate. Well, the list is really interesting. If you look at some of the countries that are on the list, a lot of them are significantly less wealthy than the U.S. and certainly have healthcare systems that are significantly less funded than the one in the U.S. as well.

You look at countries for instance, like Algeria, making the list, Montenegro, Rwanda, Serbia, the European Union is essentially saying they believe that these countries have been more efficient at beating back the coronavirus pandemic than the Trump administration. Essentially what the E.U. is saying is that all of this is down to scientific and medical criteria.

They say in order for country citizens to be allowed back into the European Union, they need to see a significant decline in new coronavirus infections over a certain period of time. But if we look at the graphs for instance of the development of coronavirus cases in the European Union and in the U.S., we can see that they are going in very opposite directions.

[12:55:04]

And that's one of the main reasons why the European Union is saying at this point in time, it's simply impossible and unsafe for them to allow travelers from the U.S. into the European Union, meaning that Americans are essentially in the same categories as travelers from Brazil and Russia and will not be allowed into the European Union anytime soon, Kate.

BOLDUAN: I mean, keep that graphic up, that you're just talking about there, when you see the line of where the European Union is headed and the United States that is so startling. How -- what are you hearing about how often the E.U. is going to review this list?

PLEITGEN: Yes. That's what we're asking about that as well. The E.U. says it's going to review which countries can come in and which countries can't come in about every two weeks. So about 14 days from now, 15 days from now, there is going to be the next review.

But I mean, looking at the graphs right now, it's going to be very, very difficult for the U.S. to make the cut at that point, as well, Kate?

BOLDUAN: That seems almost a certainty. Great to see you, Fred, thank you very much.

Coming up for us, a very clear warning coming from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the United States could see 100,000 new coronavirus cases per day if things don't change. A level the country hasn't come close to seeing yet. We'll be right back.

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