Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Former FDA Official: New Cases May Already be Hitting 100K Per Day; Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick Criticizes Fauci as Cases Rise; Mayor John Giles (R-Mesa, AZ) Discusses Rising Cases in Arizona; Pfizer Reports Positive Early Data on COVID-19 Vaccine Candidate; Dr. Craig Spencer Discusses Infections Up over 50% in Most States Since June 1st & Dr. Peter Hotez Saying Take COVID Response Away from White House, Give to CDC; Source: White House Alerted to Potential Russian Bounty Plot in Early 2019. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired July 01, 2020 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan. And thank you very much for joining us for the next couple of hours.

The United States is going in the wrong direction at potentially the worst possible moment, right before a major holiday that is typically all about gathering and getting together.

Right now, 37 states are reporting a rise, a rising number of cases. There are only two, yes, two states heading in the right direction, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

So what does that trend really mean? Dr. Anthony Fauci put it in stark terms, saying, if things don't change, the country's current high of experiencing 40,000 new infections a day, it could jump to 100,000 cases a day, more than double the current record high.

One former top official and the former FDA commissioner also says Fauci's estimate could be too conservative.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. MARK MCCLELLAN, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: I think, Jim, we're already over 100,000 per day. Remember, a lot of cases are going undetected because not everybody can get testing. And according to the CDC, the total number of cases in the U.S. may be as much as 10 times as what we have actually been measuring.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: At least 19 states are either pausing or changing the reopening plans in the face of this. In California, many are closing beaches and canceling fireworks displays for the upcoming weekend.

But that may be just the beginning of it, as Governor Gavin Newsom says he's considering even more restrictions to stop the spread. Let's go there. CNN's Dan Simon is in the Pacific Palisades and

joining me right now.

Dan, what are you hearing?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we don't know what the governor is going to announce, but there's a sense that he has to do something dramatic to try to get the state back on track.

In L.A. County, all of the beaches will be closed over the Fourth of July weekend. No fireworks either. Could we see something more like that throughout the state or could it be something more significant in terms of closing down the economy once again?

Governor Newsom has likened it to a toggle switch, where things sort of go up and down. He is expected to have a press conference around noon time so we'll get a better sense of what he is expected to say.

But I can tell you that one of the leading doctors in the state, Dr. Robert Wachter, he is the chairperson of the UCSF Department of Medicine, he says that California's miracle is effectively over.

And that basically what happens around the Memorial Day weekend when the economy started to reopen, people got complacent and people stopped wearing their mask, and we saw the community spread, particularly among young people.

So what the governor plans to do today, we'll be watching it very closely -- Kate?

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. You and everyone in the state and the country. Let's see.

Dan, thanks.

Let's go to Texas now. The state reported its highest number of cases just yesterday, just under 7,000. Hospitals are reporting they're hitting capacity. The governor has rolled back some of the state's reopening plans, but is it enough?

CNN's Lucy Kafanov is live in Houston. She's tracking the latest developments there.

Lucy, what is the very latest?

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kate, the trend not looking good for Texas, 6,975 new cases. And that brings the total to nearly 160,000. That is massive.

We are in front of one of the testing facilities here where people have been lined up for miles since midnight in the early hours of the morning. A lot of people trying to stay safe and trying to get tested.

The governor had said in TV interviews this week that perhaps Texas pushed a little bit too hard on its aggressive, economic reopening. He has rolled back some of those steps, for example, shutting down bars, slashing restaurant capacity.

But there's disagreement at the top of leadership here in Texas.

Take a listen to the lieutenant governor, who was on FOX News, saying he doesn't need any advice from the nation's top infectious disease expert. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAN PATRICK, (R), TEXAS LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR: He doesn't know what he's talking about. We haven't skipped over anything. The only thing I'm skipping over is listening to him.

He has been wrong every time on every issue. I don't need his advice anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAFANOV: So he's referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who testified yesterday. He said there are certain measures, benchmarks that states need to meet -- and this is something that was set by the White House, quite frankly -- in order to do these economic reopenings.

And that is making sure that the number of cases are under control before each new phase is put into action, making sure there's enough testing capacity, making sure the hospitals can handle the load in Texas.

That's no something that we're seeing here in Texas. They did reopen. We are seeing hospital strain, especially here in Harris County, where I am. It's home to Houston. It's seen the largest number of cases compared to the other counties.

And a lot of doctors here are worried that their ICU beds will reach capacity, that they don't have the resources they need to handle this trend if these numbers keep going up, as they do.

[11:05:04]

And it's really been put into the hands of local officials to get this under control. I can tell you, here in Harris County, they extended the disaster declaration to April 26th. That means that local businesses, for example, will have to mandate that their employees and patrons wear a mask.

But there's no statewide mandate. It is a patchwork, city by city, county by county approach to getting this public health crisis under control -- Kate?

BOLDUAN: The interesting thing is, from the local level in Texas, that's the problem that a lot of local officials are raising the alarm about, that it is city by city. But the governor is the one who took control of reopening. So now the cities are left to deal with the fallout, even though the governor was the one who ordered these reopening plans.

Good to see you, Lucy. Thank you so much.

Right now, Vice President Mike Pence is on his way to Arizona. The state is grappling with a devastating surge in cases.

The director of the CDC even called out, name-checked the state during congressional testimony yesterday, raising alarm that the daily death toll is now on the rise in Arizona.

The governor, who will be meeting with the vice president, is one of the state leaders -- one of the many state leaders across the country who is now reversing course on reopening plans, saying, very seriously, we are not going back to normal any time soon.

Joining me right now is the mayor of Mesa, Arizona, John Giles.

Mayor, thank you very much for coming in.

So I was looking at data out of Mesa, and their surge plans have been activated at the Banner Desert Medical Center in Mesa.

What is the status, first and foremost, of hospital capacity in your area? Are there enough beds? How is the staff doing? Is there enough protective equipment? We are back to the beginning with these important questions.

JOHN GILES, (R), MAYOR OF MESA, ARIZONA: Sure. Banner Desert Medical Hospital, which you described a moment ago, is the largest hospital in the state.

And I did have the opportunity to be at that hospital about a week ago and talking with the administrators, and their plans are -- they are at about 90 percent capacity.

As far as ICU beds go, their plan is to expand the ICU to other floors at the hospital. There are contingency plans beyond that, to activate closed hospitals and even convention centers and large other buildings and convert them to hospital use, much like you've seen in the surge plans in other communities. But absolutely.

And something to note, as you talked about in some of the others, in Texas and California,, much like those areas, we're seeing the surge in age groups that we haven't previously experienced.

A quarter of our hospitalizations are from the 22-to-42 category. We attribute that to much the same phenomenon you see in California and Texas. There's maybe a cavalier attending, particular among the younger part of the population, not strict adherence to social distancing guidelines.

And so we are, in our community and in the state of Arizona, rolling back some of those business openings that the governor, just a couple of days ago, closed bars and gyms and some of the other businesses that probably are more frequented by folks in that age group.

And we're trying to tie an end -- tie a knot on the end of our rope right now. BOLDUAN: Do you think that's enough? Do you think closing down bars,

nightclubs and gyms is enough to turn the tide in what you're seeing?

GILES: No. I mean, I think we will fully expect to continue to see the numbers to climb. And I think we're looking at every possible way at this point to mitigate the spread of the virus. But --

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: What more would you like to see right now?

GILES: I'm not sure what more we can do short of a total shutdown. We have -- about a week ago, the governor gave local jurisdictions and the mayors the ability to mandate masks and we've done that.

So we're -- we're doing everything we can to follow the CDC recommendations at this point in Arizona.

BOLDUAN: Are people complying? You put in place a face covering order, and I think it was just about a week ago.

GILES: Correct.

BOLDUAN: What has the response been from residents about this? Are people complying?

GILES: For the most part, yes. And I think there were some -- some growing pains that went through that. We had some pushback. And some of it was the unfortunate political pushback that you've seen in other areas of the country, as well.

It's always an adjustment to get used to wearing a mask. I've talked with friends and families and family members in other parts of the country that talk about how commonplace it is now in other parts of the country.

And Arizona is going through that growing curve right now and the learning curve. But I have seen that we fairly quickly adapted to it and it's become a part of our everyday lifestyle. But it wasn't without some discomfort.

[11:10:13]

BOLDUAN: It's interesting to hear because there has been a real steady stream of leaders from across the country and across the political spectrum, but for the purpose of the discussion, with the Republican president, a steady stream of Republicans now calling on the president of the United States to lead by example and be a better example and wear a mask himself.

What do you think would be the impact if President Trump would put on a face covering?

GILES: That would be a very positive step. I've been pleased earlier this week to see the vice president and other Republican leaders. When the president was in Arizona a week ago, Governor Ducey and Senator McSally both wore masks throughout the visit with the president. And like I say, I've seen the vice president has been more proactive in that in the last week.

So I think that's -- modeling good behavior I think would help us and help people get over this perception that there's some sort of a political statement attached to wearing a mask.

BOLDUAN: Yes. You agree with it. A lot of folks agree with it. It seems that the president, he does not agree with that that modeling actually matters here. But we'll see.

Mayor, good luck. Thank you. We'll check back in.

Coming up for us, what has happened in the last month? It is OK if you are wondering that right now when it comes to the fight against COVID. What went wrong in so many cases, as we talked about with the mayor in one Arizona city, and what must be done now to stop it?

Plus, there's new reporting on when the White House was first alerted that the Russians could be offering bounties on U.S. troops.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:16:10]

BOLDUAN: This just into CNN. Pharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, is reporting some encouraging early data on a coronavirus vaccine candidate it is working on.

CNN's Elizabeth Cohen is tracking this information that's coming in.

Elizabeth, what is Pfizer reporting? And how much stock are folks putting this early data?

DR. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Kate, I think that people should be very careful about this early data because, one, it's in a very small number of people. Two, it was not published in a medical journal. Pfizer basically put it out on the Internet. They posted their study.

And for all of those reasons, as well as many others, we should be very careful. It doesn't mean these people were protected against COVID. It just means they saw certain immunological markers in their blood.

Let's try to get down to the details here. What Pfizer did was they vaccinated 36 subjects with their COVID-19, just 36, and, on average they did receive an immune response ask that immune response was best after two doses.

Now here's another reason why we should be careful. They gave doses of varying sizes. And after two medium-sized dozes, 75 percent of the study subjects experienced fever. More than 80 percent had other side effects, such as headache or fatigue. It was transient, the fever went away within a day, but still that's something you want to keep an eye on.

You can easily make an argument saying -- and you can buy this argument -- that a day of fever is not such a big deal. What you're getting in return is a vaccine that might help control this virus.

But you have to ask, will the public accept, will they agree to get a vaccine that has a relatively high incidence of fever.

Now we don't know what the final vaccine will do. Will it give 75 percent of people fever? But still, you have to ask that question -- Kate?

BOLDUAN: And of course, what impact -- what advocacy and what safety it has in terms of all of the different age groups of people that would need to be getting this vaccine, as well.

Thank you, Elizabeth. Great to see you.

So today is July 1st. Take a look at where the two snap shots of where the country is and was. You can see on the maps we'll show you a very stark difference.

A sea of green, which means good, across the country on June 1st. And today, only two states are in that green zone, obviously, small northeastern states. The green zone meaning a downward trend in cases, where the country wants to be. The majority of states heading in the wrong direction now.

Here's another perspective on it, another visual representation of what's happened in one month. Look at that. That is a sea of red. Most of the country experiencing infections and experiencing infections that have jumped by more than 50 percent in a month.

Joining me right now is Dr. Craig Spencer. He's director of global health and E.R. medicine at Columbia University Medical Center.

Thank you for being here. I appreciate it.

When you look at the trends and what we're seeing and what we are hearing, the real data of hospitalizations jumping, cases jumping and death counts jumping, can you articulate, from your perspective, the full extent of how dangerous, or bad the situation is right now, Doctor?

DR. CRAIG SPENCER, DIRECTOR OF GLOBAL HEALTH & E.R. MEDICINE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: Absolutely. I was on the front lines of the apocalyptic surge of cases in New York City and saw so many people stream through the doors and so many people die of COVID.

So I know what this increase in case counts across the country portends and what it will bring to many cases that have not been as hit by this virus as we were in New York City.

As you pointed out, a month ago, it didn't look so bad. And I think there's a lot of reason to not be so optimistic right now. A month ago, around this time, we were diagnosing around 22,000 cases per day. And yesterday, we diagnosed more than double that.

[11:20:01]

This is also concerning because many states, eight states yesterday posted single-day records and test positivity, as you indicated, especially in cases like Arizona, Texas, Florida and Nevada.

So we know that this is not due to increased testing. This is due to more community spread of this virus.

This is concerning because we know we don't have the measures in place to stop this. A lot of places and a lot of politicians aren't taking this seriously.

And I'm worried because I know what comes next. I know what happens when you have a huge increase in cases. People continue to stream through the E.R. doors, into the ICUs and will, unfortunately, die until we take this seriously.

BOLDUAN: And when they run out beds and they run out of space and they run out of the care that you -- the things that can keep you alive while your body is fighting this virus, that is when all these needless deaths continue to pile up.

Dr. Peter Hotez, he told my colleagues at CNN this morning that, at this point, from what he sees, the entire response to COVID should be taken out of the hands of the White House and handed over to the CDC to lead the response, to be the public face. Do you agree?

SPENCER: I do. Look, the problem -- we've seen the response from this administration from the White House Coronavirus Task Force. It has failed.

We are an outlier. The European Union opened up travel to many countries in and we are not allowed in because we have cases surging all across this country. It is not just one hot spot. It is multiple hot spots throughout the U.S. in multiple, different states.

We need to do something different. This administration has tried and it has failed. We need professionals in charge of this response.

Politicians masquerading as public health professionals results in this horrible pandemic in the U.S. It results in politicians making public health statements that don't make much sense and don't help, and the result of politicians being responsible for setting precedent around things like masks.

The end result is that this country has failed. The pandemic response has failed. We need new leadership and we need it now. Otherwise, more Americans will continue to be infected and die in the next months and my in the next couple of years.

BOLDUAN: Texas is one of the hot spots. It's hard to say one of the hotspots because it is -- not one of the only places that are hot spots. I want to show folks, this is a graph of the hospitalization rate in

Texas right now. This graphic is particularly scary, I think, when you see how high, how quickly, how fast it is going up right now. I know -- forget me, I know it scares people working in Texas hospitals. It scares local officials there that I've interviewed.

Do you think, when you see this, this is what the rest of the country is going to look like?

SPENCER: If we don't take it seriously and take a public health approach to this, absolutely.

But you see a lot of people saying, sure, cases are increasing but it's because of more testing, and that's partly true, but we know there's more spread because the positivity percentage is increasing.

I've heard people in the past couple of weeks say, well, hospitalizations haven't increased. We are seeing that they are now all across the country.

The other retort I hear is, well, deaths are still down. True, they are now, which is really, really wonderful. Maybe it's because we're getting better treating this disease. We do have some medications, like Dexamethasone, that have been proven to reduce mortality.

The greatest likelihood is that death is a lagging indicator, the time from when you get infected, go to the hospital, get really severe, get put on a breathing tube and die, it's quite long, two to four weeks, as we were seeing in New York City. I suspect that will increase as well soon.

Soon, what we'll be having is all of these indicators, these really bad indicators, hospitalizations, test percentage, new cases, and deaths will be increasing as we hit the summer months, the same time that we should be reducing cases so, in the fall and winter, we can try to get back to some type of normal life, thinking about reopening schools safety in places we can.

If we don't get this under control now, we will not be able to do that safely then.

BOLDUAN: Just reality is denying it isn't going to do anything to help anyone or stop it or slow it or get the economy back open again. That's what seems to be so confounding. And you can see that in what you're saying and Dr. Anthony Fauci. Denying it gets you absolutely nowhere, which is where we seem to be in so many places right now.

Dr. Spencer, thank you.

SPENCER: Thank you.

[11:24:23]

Coming up for us, the White House is struggling to explain what the president knew about Russian bounties on U.S. troops and what he is doing or isn't, quite frankly, about it. As CNN has learned, the intel came in more than a year ago.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: Top members of Congress, known as the Gang of Eight, will be getting a briefing tomorrow on the intelligence that Russia was offering bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. servicemembers in Afghanistan. There have been so many moving parts to this extremely serious story.

CNN has some fresh reporting on who knew what and when within the Trump administration, as the president continues to declare that he wasn't briefed, he didn't know, and now declaring in several tweets this morning that the intelligence is a hoax created by journalists.

[11:30:06]

CNN's Kylie Atwood is at the State Department. She's joining me. As well as John Harwood. He's at the White House.