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Pandemic Rages As One Out Of 100 Americans Has Been Infected; White House Attacks Doctors, Scientists, Facts As Pandemic Worsens; Source Close To Task Force Says, Schools Shouldn't Reopen If Community Has A Five-Day Increase In Community Spread. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired July 13, 2020 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:02]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: And thank you for joining us on this busy news day. Lots more to continue. Brianna Keilar picks up our coverage right now. Have a good afternoon.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: I'm Brianna Keilar, and I want to welcome viewers here in the U.S. and the around the world.

The U.S. is losing its battle against the coronavirus and the federal government is flailing. That is the consensus of medical experts. And now the people who are supposed to be in charge of the national response to the pandemic instead are escalating the attacks on doctors, scientists and facts, actively endangering the lives of Americans.

They're doing this as 60,000 Americans test positive for coronavirus newly each day. They're doing this even though they won't mandate the use of masks, which are proven to save lives. They're doing this as the president continues to make claims that the only reason the U.S. has a surge in cases is because of an increase in testing. That is total crap. The president is peddling in debunked illogical crap and tweeting instead of doing his job.

Instead the president is spending part of the morning re-tweeting a game show host who says the CDC and doctors are lying about a pandemic that has killed at least 135,000 of his fellow Americans and sickened 3 million.

And now the president and the White House are trying to discredit Anthony Fauci, Dr. Fauci whose presence on the White House coronavirus task force has had doctors and experts and science-minded people grasping to the hope that the magical thinking is countered by at least one stalwart scientific voice.

Fauci is the nation's top infectious disease expert and has served six presidents, Democrats and Republicans. He is in the crosshairs for publicly contradicting the president and also for getting good press, according to a person familiar with President Trump's thinking.

Now, despite that, a top official tells CNN that the president isn't looking to fire Dr. Fauci and probably could not. And while the president won't act, his surgeon general is now urging Americans to step in in the absence of federal leadership.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JEROME ADAMS, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: Yes, this, of course, (ph) is about two to three weeks. So just as we've seen cases skyrocket, we can turn this thing around in two to three weeks if we can get a critical mass of people wearing face coverings, practicing at least six feet of social distancing, doing the things that we know are effective.

And it's important for the American people to understand when we're talking about the fall, we have the ability to turn this around.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, looking at the trends across the country, just three states are showing declines in infections compared to a week ago.

Let's go to CNN's Tom Foreman because he is tracking some of these hotspots across the U.S. Take us through this, Tom. What are you seeing?

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: If you look at the number of hospitalizations, Brianna, it is just staggering. Look at this graphic and look at that big swoop there from when they were very high and they started to descend, what hit in there? June 1st, when so many states started saying, it's good enough, we can reopen. They were pushed by the White House. They tried to. And look, it's going up.

New cases just Sunday, look at these states here. Florida, we've heard so much about, they're leading the charge there, Texas, California, Arizona, Georgia. That's what's making that number just swoop up there in cases. These are people actually being hospitalized. Being hospitalized with this is a very dire step for many people. It's a big move in that direction.

And when you look at deaths, same thing, you can see that before June 1st, there was at least a hint of a trend downward and since everyone started reopening again, they're moving steadily up. You can see California and Texas and Arizona and Florida there, those numbers steadily working their way up there, and in the Sun Belt right now, which is really where this is just raging away.

Take a look at what has happened in South Carolina. They have doubled their cases in a month. So as I've said before, Brianna, all of us want this to get better. All of us want to hope for the best. Everyone would love to see schools open to make things work properly, businesses open. But these numbers are making an awful lot of that look simply prohibitive because there is no sign that this is under control or even close yet. Brianna?

KEILAR: All right. Tom, thank you for that.

Florida, as Tom said, is one of the nation's hotspots. Health officials reported a record number of new cases in a single day, more than 15,000 there. And despite the numbers, there is still no statewide mask mandate.

CNN Correspondent Rosa Flores is in Miami Beach for us. Rosa, you are there in one of the hardest hit areas. Tell us how hospitals are handling the surge in cases.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hospitals are getting tested, Brianna. At last count here in Florida, 35 ICU hospitals are at capacity.

[13:05:03]

That means that there are zero hospital beds available. Seven of those are right here in Miami-Dade County.

Look, this past week, Governor Ron DeSantis acknowledged a few other issues that the state is having when it comes to the response to COVID-19 and the pandemic, first of all, medical personnel. According to the governor's office, they're going to deploy about 1,000 nurses across the state, 100 will be sent here to Miami-Dade to the epicenter.

The other thing is a lag in testing results. It's taking too long for people to know if they have COVID-19 or not. According to the governor's office, starting this week, they're going to start new lanes at testing sites, so that symptomatic people can get the test results quickly.

But let's be honest, everybody needs a timely result when it comes to the numbers, Florida, over the weekend, breaking its daily record with more than 15,000 new cases. Today, the new numbers were a little lower but no good news here. There were more than 12,600 cases.

And here in Miami-Dade County, the epicenter of this crisis, the number of hospitalizations continue to go up. If you look at the past 14 days, hospitalizations have gone up 65 percent, ICU beds 67 percent and ventilators 129 percent.

And, Brianna, just to give you a sense of actual numbers, back in June 29th, the number of people on ventilators was 90. On July 12th, that's 206. That just gives you an idea. That's why so many local leaders, both the mayor, Dan Gelber of Miami Beach and Francis Suarez in the City of Miami, are very concerned about the hospital situation right here in the epicenter of this crisis in the State of Florida. Brianna?

KEILAR: Rosa, thank you for that report from Miami Beach for us.

135,000 Americans losing their lives, zero plans to contain the pandemic in America and now the federal response just hit a new level of stupid. Instead of listening to doctors and scientists, the president would like you to listen to this guy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHUCK WOOLERY, GAME SHOW HOST: Welcome to the show. There are more than 60 million single Americans in the United States. So here on Love Connection, we've got a new way for singles to meet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Chuck Woolery, a game show host from the 1980s, notable credits from his resume, Love Connection and Scrabble. And Woolery says, without any proof, examples of, frankly, rational thought, that the CDC and doctors are lying to Americans. That's right, doctors who are spending their days saving lives and being unable to save lives. He says they're lying too.

Why? Because he says they don't want the president to be re-elected. They don't want the economy to reopen. Well, who doesn't want the economy to reopen? Isn't that what everyone wants? So why do we give a rip what Chuck Woolery thinks? Well, we don't.

But now we have to pay attention to him because the president is re- tweeting this conspiracy theory drivel that accuses the president's own administration, mind you, the CDC falls under him, of lying to the American people. This is crazy. This is stupid. It's not presidential. It's not even humane.

I want to bring in Dr. Peter Hotez to give us the real deal here. He is a Professor and the Dean of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and he is in the race right now for a vaccine.

First, Doctor, what is the damage of suggesting, of having the president suggest that the CDC is lying to people and that doctors are lying to people?

DR. PETER HOTEZ, PROFESSOR AND DEAN OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Yes. I don't know what the president's end game is here. I mean, this is an unabashed embrace of anti-intellectualism. That's a denial of human rights. It's certainly a total absence of intellectual curiosity. This is terrible for the country at a time when we urgently need leadership.

Our epidemic is now spiraling out of control, especially in the southern half of the United States. And we heard about the rise in the hospital admissions and ICU admissions. Hospital staffs are exhausted and they're getting sick across the country. That's why we're having to fly-in of hospital staff.

That's a very bad sign, because when we saw that happen in Italy and Spain and New York, that's when the mortality rates really started to go up. So they're already on the rise and we might anticipate and see even a steeper acceleration because of this exhaustion on the part of hospital staffs.

So we are in a full-blown public health crisis and the president is just not engaged. This is a terrible and ominous sign.

KEILAR: So how do we as a country, in the absence of leadership and accurate messaging from the top level, navigate this situation?

HOTEZ: So this is the question we're -- as scientists, we are all starting to ask, who's going to provide the leadership? [13:10:05]

It's been more or less left to the states. And some cases the states have abdicated this and left it to the mayors and municipal authorities. And it's not a workable solution. We need a roadmap and a charted plan in order to accurately create intervention strategies and assess what that impact is going to be. This is why we have federal leadership. This is why we have the Centers for Disease Control. And if they're knocked out of commission, we have to look for other substitutes.

And, increasingly, we are getting this picture where we just can't rely on the executive branch of the government and what do we do. And I'm starting to ask, could U.S. Congress step in at this point. Are there levers that they can pull and push because we are running out of choices and we're running out time as this spirals out of control.

And the tragedy, of course, is this is doable. We can now bring the entire nation down to containment levels. That's sometimes defined as one new case per million residents per day. There are other definitions in which we can now then perform the adequate public health measures that need to be done and do the contact tracing and everything else.

We certainly can't do it now, but it's doable. If we act now, we can possibly do this over the next six weeks, then really open up schools and colleges by early October and have a very meaningful summer. But not now, not with this freefall.

So I'm looking for someone to really take leadership, saying what I can and making recommendations but it needs some type of federal authority to lead this.

KEILAR: Yes. Even -- look, Congress, I don't know, the vantage point from here in Washington is there's no will for that to happen in any unified way. That's what we've seen here.

I want to talk though about Dr. Fauci because he has been this bright spot in the federal response. You have known him for decades and now we're seeing the president and the White House actively trying to discredit him at worse, minimize him at the best case, I guess, and even pushing out oppo research against him. What are your concerns there?

HOTEZ: Well, it's part of the continuum of their misinformation campaign. You know, first you heard it, 99 percent of cases are harmless, there are no deaths, we know all of those things are not true. Then they deflected, it was communist Chinese conspiracy theories and the blaming the communist party, and then was blaming the World Health Organization.

And I wrote an article back in May saying just a matter of time before the deflection extends to starting to blame the scientists and discredit the scientists and now right on cue, there it goes. And that's not good for the country and it's tough now to be a scientist in the federal government to speak out and to do the right thing. And this is one of the reasons why I'm out there in order to say what's actually happening across the country because we will not get a straight story out of the federal government.

KEILAR: Yes, and we'll keep talking to you, Dr. Hotez. You do tell it straight and we appreciate you joining us. Thank you so much.

Dr. Fauci will be speaking live in just moments. Stand by for that.

Also, an inflection point in the debate over whether to reopen schools, hear what a source close to the task force says needs to happen before schools reopen.

And three teachers infected with coronavirus after sharing a classroom this summer. And they were using best practices, mind you. One of them -- one of the three has died. I'll be speaking with their principal.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:15:00]

KEILAR: There are a lot of questions right now about whether children should go back to classrooms this fall. What is the plan and what is the risk to them, to their teachers and their families?

A source close to the White House Coronavirus Task Force tells CNN that while there are no hard and fast rules, if a particular community has had a five-day sustained increase in community spread, they probably should not be opening schools until they pass through the basic gating criteria of a 14-day downward trajectory. That guidance has not changed.

But in an interview with CNN's Dana Bash, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos offered little reassurance about how teachers and students would be protected.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: You are asking students to go back. So why do you not have guidance on what a school should do just weeks before you want those schools to reopen and what happens if it faces an outbreak?

BETSY DEVOS, EDUCATION SECRETARY: You know, there's really good examples that have been utilized in the private sector and elsewhere, also with frontline workers and hospitals. And all of that data and all of that information and all of those examples can be referenced by school leaders who have --

BASH: I'm not hearing from the Department of Education. Do you have a plan for what students and what schools should do?

DEVOS: So, schools should do what's right on the ground at that time for their students and for their situation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now, Arizona is one of the states that has been seeing a surge in coronavirus cases infections across Arizona, topping 122,000, even as schools there try to figure out what to do this fall.

Teacher Kimberley Byrd died of the coronavirus just a few weeks ago after sharing a classroom with two other teachers as they taught summer school online in a small rural community in Arizona. All three teachers wore masks and gloves. They used hand sanitizer.

[13:20:00]

They socially distanced. But they all still got sick with the virus in June.

Pamela Gonzalez is the principal of Leonor Hambly K-8, where Kimberly Byrd taught, and she's joining us now.

And, Pamela, I'm so sorry for you and your entire school community as well as Kimberly's family. This is a terrible loss. I know this is a teacher who has been an integral part of your community. Tell us what this means to your school and your community to lose her.

PAMELA GONZALEZ, PRINCIPAL OF SCHOOL WHERE THREE TEACHERS GOT COVID: Well, you know, it's been -- thank you, first of all, and it's been very hard. Kim was a master teacher. She went above and beyond for her students. She offered words of wisdom from her years of experience to her colleagues. She was a woman of strong faith and very proud of her family. And her passing is mourned by many who had the privilege of knowing her.

And it has sparked concern in our teaching, in our education staff of how things will look in the fall when we move forward after this, keeping ourselves and our students safe.

KEILAR: And, of course, it has. Because -- tell us -- they were wearing masks and gloves and being careful and you just had three teachers in one room and this is what happened, right? Tell us about that and tell us about what you are hearing now from other teachers and maybe parents about reopening and how this gives them pause.

GONZALEZ: Yes. We were -- we are a small school in Arizona, and after the closure in -- from March to May, we offered a two-week virtual summer school program for our K-8 students. And I had ten teachers that worked during those two weeks to teach summer school. They taught on campus but they were the only ones in the classrooms.

Kim and two of her colleagues, Ms. Skillings and Mrs. Martinez, and since that (ph), worked together and they chose that to support each other, you know, to do this new way of virtual teaching that was different than in person. So that's what they -- they worked together in their classroom.

Like you said, they wore masks, they used hand sanitizer, washed the hands frequently, social distanced and they were still one week into summer school after the fourth day, that weekend Miss Byrd fell ill. She was admitted to the hospital on a Saturday. She was on a ventilator by that next day. And then on Monday, after that, we had every -- all staff on campus tested and two more of our teachers, which happened to be the two teaching in that classroom together with her, became positive for COVID.

So, you know, since then, we have -- the teachers, of course, have impacted the community. We are a small close-knit community. Miss Byrd was such a -- you know, a beautiful person, a caring teacher. So it really impacted her students, the families in the community, fellow educators. And so it's been really hard and it's been really concerning moving forward, you know?

Seeing the cases in Arizona increasing instead of decreasing, it's really concerning talking about opening up again for in-person schooling.

KEILAR: Certainly. It's raising concerns as it should in your community. And we are hearing from the World Health Organization that they don't know much about how kids transmit coronavirus. And listen to what Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told CNN about this yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DEVOS: There is nothing in the data that would suggest that kids being back in school is dangerous to them. And, in fact, it's more a matter of their health and well-being that they be back in school.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: So, she says there's nothing in the data, but at the same time, the World Health Organization is essentially saying there is a lack of data, right, about how this works. And you have now experienced the loss of a teacher.

So in the face of this lack of data, you know, what do you say when it comes to your concerns about reopening?

GONZALEZ: Well, I -- first of all, I would like to say that myself along with a lot of my colleagues, we too want to our students.

[13:25:10]

We want them to be back in schools. We want -- we haven't seen them since March but we want to do that when it is safe, you know? It's our responsibility to keep them safe. And I think it's our responsibility to -- and our duty to, you know, listen to the health experts, to look at the data that shows, you know, when there is an increase of cases instead of a decrease, to follow areas, like Arizona, who is a hotspot right now, and to know that this just is not the right time.

We can educate. We can educate virtually where it is safer. It is not ideal and it is not our first choice but we are -- our district, for example, has taken measures to -- this summer to work with -- in professional development and training for us to be able to offer a better quality virtual online instruction.

In the meantime, where we know that would be the safest to do. So that's what I would say to that.

KEILAR: Yes. No, look, the reality has hit hard there where you are and you are balancing all of these priorities. You clearly care so much about your teachers and your kids. And, again, we are very sorry about Mrs. Byrd but we certainly appreciate you coming on to talk about what you are dealing with, mourning her and just trying to get things back to some semblance of normal. Thank you so much, Pamela.

GONZALEZ: Thank you.

KEILAR: We have some breaking news. Just after NBA players arrived in the Orlando bubble to restart their season, one of the league's biggest stars revealed he tested positive for coronavirus.

Plus, positive cases among people who crowded into a July 4th lake party in Michigan.

And some issues in the first 48 hours of Disney World's reopening, including the consequence if you do not wear a mask.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

REPORTER: Can you share what evidence he is using to draw that conclusion? And what is the administration going to do differently in the next two to four weeks to stop the spread?

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: So the one thing I would note is that when you look at the mortality rate, we are seeing that our efforts here at the federal government have been working. And to give you an example of that, when you look at New York and New Jersey, there were 21 deaths for every 1,000 cases, 20 deaths for every 1,000 cases in the case of New Jersey. Those were the ratios we were seeing just a few months ago.

Now, New York and New Jersey are down 1.7 per 1,000 and 1.8 per 1,000 respectively. And moving beyond New York and New Jersey, we're seeing in Florida, for example, though they have 12 cases for every 1,000, it is 0.2 mortality for every 1,000 cases, in Arizona, 0.3 deaths for every 1,000 cases.

So we are seeing that our therapeutics are working, that dexamethasone and convalescent plasma and remdesivir are working. And that's something good and that something that the president takes note of.

REPORTER: But two to four weeks is such a short time period. I mean, what specifically are you doing to stop this spread?

MCENANY: There's a lot. And I'm very glad that you asked that because it is worth highlighting the work that we are doing each and every day.

For one, we're surging personnel to Arizona, Texas, California, we already have people working in Florida, surging remdesivir to states that are seeing rise in case numbers. We're also surging testing supplies to decrease turnaround time. These are several action items that Dr. Birx briefed me on before coming out here.

And the White House going to several states this week, Dr. Birx in particular, to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina. We've sent 19 HHS teams to metroplexes, eight more coming this week. So we are aggressively on the ground reacting to the virus and we're encouraged to see the declining mortality compared to a few months ago.

Jim, I haven't seen you in a few weeks. Glad you're back.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Thanks.

Kayleigh, why is the White House trashing Dr. Fauci and setting out opposition research like memos to reporters? The president has gone off on anonymous sources in the past. Why not have the guts to trash Dr. Fauci with your own names?

[13:30:03]

MCENANY: So President Trump -- I'll refer you back. There's no opposition research being dumped to reporters.