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New Poll Shows a Drop in Americans Willing to Get Vaccine; Colleges Forced to Change Plans as Virus Cases Jump; University of Illinois Launches Rigorous Saliva-Based Testing Strategy; Kamala Harris, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama Headline DNC Night 3; More Students in Florida Forced to Quarantine Over COVID-19. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired August 19, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:09]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

This morning, outbreaks on college campuses nationwide has forced some schools to rethink and overhaul how they plan to resume classes. This comes as the World Health Organization says that young people are increasingly driving the spread of this virus. That's concerning. Notre Dame is the latest school to suspend classes. This just eight days after reopening there.

Schools are facing scrutiny and so is the president's handling of this pandemic. A new CNN poll shows Americans' approval of his handling of this crisis are now at an all-time low, 7 in 10 Americans are embarrassed of how the U.S. has handled this pandemic.

HARLOW: Something that Joe Biden, now the Democratic presidential nominee officially, will try to capitalize on tonight as Democrats kick off evening three of their convention. It is set to have a whole lot of big names making their addresses. Former president Obama, now vice presidential nominee pick, Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton, the headliners this evening.

We'll get to that in a minute. Let's begin, though, on the coronavirus, let's begin with our senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.

Good morning, Elizabeth. Let's start if we could --

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

HARLOW: -- with the new CNN polling showing a drop in the number of Americans willing to get a vaccine when it's available. And this is something we're all pretty worried about.

COHEN: For sure. I mean, I think the assumption on the part of government leaders was, we're going to come up with a vaccine, we're going to do it at warp speed and people will take it, maybe not so much.

Let's take a look at this poll. This is a poll that CNN did, polling people from August 12th through 15th, asking the question, would you try to get a coronavirus vaccine if it existed? 56 percent said yes. But 40 percent said no. It is going to be hard to get the kind of community immunity that we need with 40 percent of people not getting it.

Now, let's take a look, and this is even worse, actually. The same question we asked it in a poll back in May. And 66 percent said yes, we can get a vaccine. I mean, we would take a vaccine. But now only 56 percent. So that's a 10 percentage point drop just from May until now. That's a real problem.

And Poppy, we've talked on this show about how the anti-vaccine movement has been going full speed ahead, pedal to the metal, telling people don't get the coronavirus vaccine for months now. But we have yet to see any kind of a government communications program saying hey, this vaccine is going to be safe, let's talk about this. That hasn't happened yet.

Chelsea Clinton and I had a long conversation about this. She's a vaccine advocate. It is problematic that the anti-vaccine folks have been at this for months and the people encouraging the vaccine have not even really started.

SCIUTTO: It's also taken place as you have an attack on science in this country, right? Can't be separated from this. You know, the president questioning the experts, et cetera. Disinformation. It has an effect.

So let's talk about treatments here. What are we learning about a push to increase the supply of a COVID-19 antibody therapy? How new? How promising?

COHEN: Right. So these two things are actually kind of related. If the vaccine effort doesn't go well, it will be good if we have enough of these antibody treatments. There's a lot of enthusiasm for these antibody treatments. The hope is, is that they can be used both as a treatment for coronavirus and also to be used as prevention.

And so what we're hearing is that Regeneron, which is one of the leading manufacturers of the experimental antibody treatment for the COVID, it's still being studied, that they are teaming up with Roche, which of course is a pharmaceutical giant, to increase the manufacturing, to get as much of this out there as possible if and when it's approved.

SCIUTTO: Elizabeth Cohen, always good to have you on the news.

Now to college campuses --

COHEN: Thanks.

SCIUTTO: And the problem popping up as more and more coronavirus cases are confirmed on these campuses. HARLOW: Let's get to our colleague Bianna Golodryga. She's obviously

been covering education, very quickly -- very thoroughly, but now, could we have a quick rundown of some of the issues? I mean, it's like impossible to get it all in one, but we are seeing these coasts, coast to coast issues for universities.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes. And it is a big setback for so many thousands of students and their parents, hoping to return to some sort of normalcy. For a number of colleges now, we're already seeing that that's not going to happen. Notre Dame is just the latest university to suspend in-person classes for nearly 12,000 students after 147 positive cases were reported.

Now remember, Notre Dame was one of the first schools that announced back at the end of May that they were going to resume in-person classes. They started almost two weeks ago, so students are already on campus. What they're going to have them do is just stay on campus and learn remotely as they try to sort out what the next steps are going to be. Michigan State also out today, and they're calling off in- person instruction.

[09:05:04]

They're supposed to resume in-person classes in two weeks, so a big blow for families there. And North Carolina State now announcing that a number of their fraternity and sorority members have tested positive. Iowa State saying that 135 students that live on campus tested positive. Appalachian State, 11 students and four staff members associated with the football team tested positive.

And staying in Iowa, Drake University, they asked 14 students to leave campus for two weeks for violating safety agreements, just to send a message that they are taking these things very seriously. And this comes on the heels of the big announcement yesterday from UNC that they were going to suspend in-person classes after 130 students tested positive.

This is a big setback for so many universities. No one doubted that there would be cases on campus. I think the big surprise is that there are already so many, so quick into the school year.

HARLOW: Absolutely. Just weeks in. Bianna, thank you for that reporting.

So the question is, right, how do campuses open safely? Well, yesterday, White House testing czar, Admiral Brett Giroir, says rapid saliva-based testing could be key. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADM, BRETT GIROIR, WHITE HOUSE TASK FORCE MEMBER: I just talked to University of Illinois yesterday. They're doing widespread surveillance at the U of I Champaign-Urbana using a saliva technique. It's just one good example of how it can be employed.

(END VIDEO CLIP) HARLOW: So with me now is the man leading the testing and safety efforts at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, Dr. Martin Burke, associate dean of research at Carl Illinois College of Medicine.

The minute, Doctor, that I heard Admiral Giroir say that, I said we've got to get someone from U of I on the show to talk about this. So let's talk about exactly what you're doing. We have some video we can show of students and taking the saliva test. Can you talk to us about how many tests you're doing right now? How quickly the results are coming back to you?

DR. MARTIN BURKE, ASSOCIATE DEAN OF RESEARCH, CARLE ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Great. Poppy, thanks for having me on. Absolutely. So we are now at a capacity for 10,000 tests per day.

And we are aiming to get up to 20,000 tests per day at full swing. The key we think is fast and frequent testing combined with wearing masks and social distancing. We are obviously fully aware of the tremendous challenges the pandemic represents. We're also emboldened by the power of science and technology so we're hoping that testing can make a difference.

HARLOW: How accurate is the test?

BURKE: Right, so we've have done studies that give us very high confidence that the test is accurate and effective. So about midsummer we had about a 1.5 percent positivity rate and we've been pilot testing our faculty and staff very frequently and we watched that rate fall down below 0.2 percent with fast and frequent testing. So we're quite hopeful this has a real chance of making a difference.

HARLOW: Does the level of infection, right, impact the results? Right, so if someone is more mildly ill with it, is it less likely to detect that they have COVID or is it across the board the same?

BURKE: Great. So we don't have data yet on exactly how it would relate to symptoms. But what this test does do is it gives you a quantitative readout on the viral load. So this is an extra angle of information that can be used to make smart decisions.

HARLOW: So you see if you have any of that viral load, that's your point?

BURKE: Correct. Well, it's not just binary.

HARLOW: Yes.

BURKE: It actually gives you a quantitative readout which can be very helpful.

HARLOW: Of course, it can. OK, so, many questions about the costs. I know it's free to students and your goal is, you know, to rest all 50,000 of them. But who's funding this at the university and how much does it cost per test? Because we heard that promising news out of Yale with the NBA saying these tests were like, you know, four bucks each.

BURKE: Great, yes, it's $10 per test at this point and it's being completely covered by our university. The vision of our chancellor, Robert Jones, put this in place at the beginning, Our Provost Cangellaris and Vice Chancellor Martinez, they pretty much told us, go make it happen. And the university is paying for it.

HARLOW: So my kid goes back to school, 4-year-old so not exactly college, but I would love it if this could happen at her school or any school, all schools across the country and universities. Why isn't it happening?

BURKE: Great, so we actually are really excited that what we have here could be helpful to others and so with our President Tim Killeen we've been working very hard now with our governor, and as mentioned, we've been speaking with Admiral Giroir, doing everything we can to try to figure out how to get the, you know, capacity that we've developed here hopefully available to everyone as quickly as possible.

HARLOW: Well, one of the issues with testing, there are many, but one of them has been a lack of sufficient supplies of reagents for some of the different tests, the swab test, et cetera. As I understand it and correct me if I'm wrong, this saliva-based test doesn't need a lot of those reagents, right? So you don't even run into that problem.

BURKE: That's right. That's the beauty. So my colleague, Paul Hergenrother, launched kind of a Manhattan Project style effort back in May and June to try to figure out a way to skip all of those supply chain limiting steps.

[09:10:03]

And with an extraordinary team of students here at the University of Illinois, we discovered a way to do it. So this is directly from saliva to the PCR test and it skips a lot of the challenging bottlenecks.

HARLOW: Anyone watching right now, presidents of universities, heads of schools, superintendents of public school districts across the country, if they want this and they have the funding to pay for it, what do they have to do?

BURKE: Great. So we are an all-out blitz to try to make this as available as possible. We have entities that have been stood up to try to expand this. And we're working very hard to figure out exactly how to do that. So it's a work in progress. But we are committed. We're a land grant institution charged with doing public good. And we love to innovate at Illinois and we love to share those innovations. So we're doing everything we to try to get it out there.

HARLOW: Some pretty important things for this country came from that university. That's for sure.

Dr. Burke, thank you so much. Good luck.

BURKE: Thanks for having me on. HARLOW: That was encouraging.

(LAUGHTER)

HARLOW: Still to come, a blockbuster night ahead for day three of the Democratic convention. We'll have the latest for you.

SCIUTTO: Plus, new polls out this morning show that most Americans, a large number, are embarrassed by the United States' response to the coronavirus outbreak. We're going to break down the numbers next.

And after facing intense public pressure, the postmaster general is delaying some of his proposed changes to mail procedures ahead of this election. At least 20 states are suing the Trump administration over those changes and getting those that have already happened to be reversed. We're going to speak to the attorney general of one of those states just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

HARLOW: Well, Joe Biden is now officially the Democratic presidential nominee, and tonight, day three of the convention has some big-name headliners.

SCIUTTO: Yes, we're going to hear from President Obama, former nominee, Hillary Clinton and vice presidential nominee, Kamala Harris. Lots of big names there before Joe Biden takes the stage on Thursday. Joining us now, CNN political analyst John Avlon and Yahoo News national politics reporter Brittany Shepherd. We might have a little technical glitch with John, we're going to get him there. But Brittany, let me be up -- there's John --

HARLOW: Oh, there he is --

SCIUTTO: Hey, John, welcome, good morning. All right --

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Don't worry --

SCIUTTO: It strikes me listening to the convention last night that big tent is really part of the Democrat's message --

HARLOW: Yes --

SCIUTTO: Here, right? A variety of voices including Republicans, Kasich, Colin Powell, running the gamut right to AOC. But even that roll call vote going around the country, different kinds of people, average Americans, et cetera, that that's really the message here, right? Trying to expand the tent of the Democratic Party, this cycle.

BRITTANY SHEPHERD, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, YAHOO NEWS: Well, certainly, the Biden campaign has been trying to push that they are the best coalition builders. That's why you're seeing posthumously remarks about John McCain and Joe Biden, and speaking time given to Colin Powell and of course, we saw that really poignant roll call vote.

Though, you know, progressives were a bit chiding of the DNC even before the year-marks began, I mean, AOC was only given 60 seconds, Stacey Abrams also given I believe not more than a minute and half speaking time.

So as much as the Democrats want to be home, they are a coalition party of everyone is welcome. I think that there's a lot that's going to be called into question I think going forward. And tonight is going to be poignant to see if that is going to stick going forward.

HARLOW: John Avlon, nice to see you, my friend. Let's talk about tonight, right, because Brittany just brought up tonight. We're going to see Senator Kamala Harris on the stage tonight, and they've given one joint interview so far to "People Magazine", and people asked some interesting question like, is she going to correct you when she thinks you're wrong, Mr. Biden?

And let me read you this quote from her. "We already have that understanding, I'm going to be the last one in the room and they're to give him honest feedback. Being vice president to Joe Biden means me supporting his agenda and supporting him in every way."

I think back to how President Obama talked about Joe Biden in that Medal of Freedom Ceremony, remember that? And he said there has not been a single moment that I have doubted the decision and the wisdom of that decision to choose Joe Biden. How much of that will we hear from Senator Harris on the stage tonight and what will we see from her that maybe many American people haven't seen yet?

AVLON: Well, look, Kamala Harris' pick has been an energize boost for the Biden campaign. It was a smart pick on a lot of levels, bridging gaps in age and diversity and gender. But there's a constancy in their political philosophy even if they don't overlap entirely.

And what's so significant of course is that Joe Biden having being vice president has a totally different understanding and appreciation of the importance of that pick. So, I think you're seeing a sign that's engaging the base, but doubling down on a center-left vision of the Democratic Party while adding crucial diversity and energy, and that's what Biden needs.

So tonight, we'll be in for many folks, their introduction to Kamala Harris in a deep way, and her biography and her philosophy. But already you're seeing how that's bridged divisions inside the Democratic Party and provided a boost to the Biden campaign big time.

HARLOW: Yes --

SCIUTTO: It struck me, Brittany to have Jill Biden in a classroom, you know, where she taught, you know, personalizing her getting voters to know a bit more about her, but also on the issue of opening schools is kind of interesting, because that question has been portrayed purely as a kind of Republican-Democrat one. But here you have the wife of the Democratic nominee saying that are circumstances under which schools can be reopened. I thought that was an interesting strategic point to make there.

SHEPHERD: Yes, especially as Jill Biden as second lady, she was always championing education while she was in the White House. I mean, honestly the Biden campaign is laser-focused on trying to appeal to Republicans right now.

[09:20:00]

And I think putting Jill Biden square in the classroom that she used to teach in Wilmington was a really smart way of being able to reach out to mothers and parents and single fathers. And you know, folks who are just trying to figure out what to do and that it's not absolute.

That it can't just be feast or famine. The Biden campaign and Joe Biden himself has come out again and again to try to say like, look, I don't have the answers to everything, but trust me that I'm going to try to both, you know, get your kids back in school, have everyone be safe and get everyone back into work.

So, I think having Jill Biden out there as a messenger was a little bit feat to that. Right, I also want to jump on to what John just said before that not only is Kamala Harris the keynote speaker for tonight, but a lot of women are going to be speaking tonight that are important. Elizabeth Warren --

HARLOW: Yes --

SHEPHERD: Nancy Pelosi, and it's historic that it's women, Afro- Latino women, sorry -- Afro-Caribbean women speaking tonight, and I think that idea of the importance of a woman will also be highlighted this evening.

SCIUTTO: For sure, we'll be watching. Well, other story we're following this morning, so please stay with us, Brittany and John. And new numbers -- CNN poll showing that most Americans embarrassed -- that's the word, embarrassed by the U.S. response to the pandemic. According to a CNN poll, 7 in 10 people -- nearly 7 in 10 feel embarrassed by how the U.S. has handled the crisis so far, not a good number, Poppy, for the president.

HARLOW: It's not and just 38 percent of those polled approved of how the president has handled it. That's his lowest number to date. John Avlon, what also was striking to me was when you divide it by party. So if you look at Democrats, 93 percent are embarrassed at how he has handled this crisis, 33 percent of Republicans when this virus does not have a political persuasion.

AVLON: So exactly right. Let's break those two things out. First of all, embarrassed. America meets great challenges. I can't think of a single time we've been faced with a great challenge and have walked away embarrassed by our response. That says a lot about the leadership and the self-conception of the country right now, that anger.

That partisan divide also shows how deeply dumb hyper-partisanship is. How it really -- this war on science has created a gap on something that knows no political persuasion. A pandemic is not political, and yet we are seeing a Pavlovian political response, and that speaks to a deeper sickness in our society which we're going to have to deal with.

HARLOW: Yes --

SCIUTTO: Yes, I mean, the independent numbers there too notable, right? Because the vast majority of independents also embarrassed. But Brittany, there's another number that caught my attention here, which is, are we as a country through the worst of this so far of the outbreak, and that shows again, a deep difference between Democrats and Republicans.

I mean, the thing is, this is not an issue of opinion because the data shows that when you speak to the epidemiologists, et cetera, that the cases are going to increase as you get into the Fall, et cetera. So, it shows, does it not, that, you know, the partisanship doesn't just affect your view of the president's handling, but the very facts --

AVLON: OK --

SCIUTTO: Of the outbreak itself.

SHEPHERD: Right, exactly. And you're going to see what these voters, Republican-Democrat voters are getting their information, how that's packaged is very important. If you're having, you know, doctors and scientists that constantly tell you that, we're not -- the first wave is on its way out and second wave is coming, then those voters are going to be more cautious.

They're going to be more resilient. I think it's a bit kind of shocking to see such a partisan difference, and frankly, I think that it will play out in November too. You know, this is a big election year, and you're going to see in these really important purple states are vulnerable -- Democrats going to even feel comfortable coming out to the ballots. So, I think that's a key place to see where this might actually run to the ground.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I mean, you're seeing it too, party differences in whether you can take a coronavirus vaccine. I mean, there are health consequences to this kind of politicization of health data. Well, John Avlon, Brittany Shepherd, thanks to both of you --

AVLON: Take care --

SCIUTTO: And be sure to watch day three of the Democratic National Convention, tonight, Senator Kamala Harris, she will make history as she accepts the nomination for vice president. Plus, you'll hear from former President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, special coverage continues tonight starting at 7 O'clock Eastern Time live on CNN.

HARLOW: Ahead for us, more students in the state of Florida forced to quarantine over COVID-19. This as the state's teachers union and the Governor Ron DeSantis are heading back to court over this fight over reopening. We'll have an update from there next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:25:00]

HARLOW: Welcome back. Well, they are back in court today, a lawsuit filed by the Florida Teachers Union against Governor Ron DeSantis over his plan to reopen schools there, mediation, it fell apart last night. Our Rosa Flores joins me from Florida with the latest. And this is Rosa, pretty much up to the wire, right? They're supposed to like open the doors soon and they have already in some districts.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You're absolutely right. But more about what's going on in court right now, Poppy. This is a temporary injunction hearing.

We've heard from the attorneys who are representing the teachers, and these attorneys argue that the emergency order issued by the state of Florida that requires schools to reopen for in-person instruction is unconstitutional because it is unsafe for teachers and students to do so. And they specifically say that this emergency order does not include safety protocols for students and teachers to return to classes.

Now, the attorneys for the governor's office have also spoken.