Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

WHO To Young People: You Are Not Invincible; Multiple Colleges Halt In-Person Classes Amid Spike In Cases; Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) Says, New York Gyms Can Reopen Monday, Many Delayed Until September. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired August 19, 2020 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: We'll see you back here this time tomorrow. So joins us tonight as well for the continuing coverage of the Democratic Convention.

Don't go anywhere, a busy news day, Anderson Cooper takes over right now. Have a good day.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: I'm Anderson Cooper. I want welcome viewers here in the U.S. and around the world.

The World Health Organization with an urgent message today for young people as the COVID-19pandemic continues to spread, you are not invincible and your life depends on the decision you make right now, that as we see new spikes in cases as the nation's colleges and universities forcing administrators to change course just days after welcoming students back on campus.

Notre Dame now suspending in-person classes two weeks while Michigan State will switch to remote learning for all graduate students and at North Carolina State, eight members of the school's fraternity and sorority community have tested positive.

The nation's top infection disease expert offering some guidelines on how these schools can keep students and faculty safe.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: You can test everybody before they come in. You can then do intermittent surveillance testing, and you need the capability of identifying, isolating and contact tracing. If you can do that, then you very well may be able to open up the college and the university. If you can't, it will be more problematic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Taking a look nationwide, 20 states and Washington, D.C. are all showing downward trends. And while the U.S. added just over 44,000 new cases Tuesday, the average remains below 50,000. That's down 8 percent from last week. We begin with breaking news. The New York Times is reporting coronavirus treatment that was about to be authorized by the FDA for emergency use is now on hold. It involves using blood plasma donated by people who survived the virus. Now, a number of health officials, including Dr. Fauci, pumped the brakes arguing emergency data on the treatment was too weak.

I want to bring in our medical analyst, Dr. Kent Sepkowitz, he's Deputy Physician and Chief of Quality and Safety at Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

Doctor, you've heard about this treatment. First of all, explain what it entails.

DR. KENT SEPKOWITZ, DEPUTY PHYSICIAN, MEMORIAL SLOAN-KETTERING CANCER CENTER, NYC: You know, the -- with any infection, our own body makes a lot of products that fight the infection, but one of interest here is antibody. What this does is look at -- it collects antibody from people who have survived the infection, skims it off and gives it to the next person. So it's taking my immune reaction, skimming it off and giving it to you, if you are infected. It's been around for 100 years.

COOPER: What are some concerns associated with the treatment?

SEPKOWITZ: The treatment itself is pretty straightforward. There's some side effects in some people who get some fever, with the infusion, but it's well tolerated if it's done correctly. You need a very high-tech blood bank-level 21st century lab to do this safely.

COOPER: So when the FDA is halting blood plasma trials because of a lack of data, what exactly does that mean? Why would they do that?

SEPKOWITZ: Yes. This is the same group that was very cautious with hydroxychloroquine. So we have to give them kudos for remaining true to the science. The data is not --

COOPER: They withdrew the emergency authorization for hydroxychloroquine.

SEPKOWITZ: Because the data wasn't there. They had hoped that it would be there but it was not. This is the same sort of thing. There's a lot of good signals here. There's a lot of good signals here but none of the studies that have been published are strong enough in their methods. There are no randomized controlled trials of the product, taking data from a series of patients who have received it, but they're not comparing it to those who have not received the product.

That creates the same old problem we had with hydroxychloroquine. It might look good at first blush but you can't control in anyway other than giving a placebo. You can't control for differences in the populations that we treat it in.

So that means we have a problem here. We have something that smells pretty good and looks pretty good but we're not ready for it and it's going to cause a backlash. COOPER: So just -- does that mean the idea of using plasma from somebody to somebody else, that it doesn't work or we just can't really test it properly at this point to enough?

SEPKOWITZ: No, we don't know enough yet. It looks good, as Dr. Arturo Casadevall, who's been the force behind this, infectious disease sites, at the start, he said it was, a maybe it would work. He's improved it to a possibly it would work. And right now, he's at the point of saying it probably wouldn't work. But he's not at the point of saying it certainly will work.

[13:05:00]

And for the safety of the public, we have to know that it certainly works.

It's a tough business though when there's a pandemic out there and we have something that might be effective. The worst we can do though is go down the same path we went with hydroxychloroquine and get behind something that finally doesn't work.

COOPER: Yes. Dr. Kent Sepkowitz, I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

As we mentioned at the top of the broadcast, the World Health Organization issued a serious warning for young people today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARIA VAN KERKHOVE, WHO TECHNICAL LEAD FOR COVID-19: I think we just need to make sure that the messages that are getting out, particularly to young people, particularly to children and young adults, that you are not invincible to this virus.

We are seeing people, even young people who are ending up with severe disease. We are seeing young people who are ending up in ICU. We are seeing young people who are dying from this virus.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: In a separate briefing, WHO's regional director emphasized that young people are driving spread of the virus. It's not surprising when you look at pictures like this in the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. There is now social distancing, very few mask as people left this sorority house. The school has announced it's moving to online classes after a surge in coronavirus cases among student.

UNC is not alone. Colleges around the nation are reporting coronavirus clusters forcing many schools to shift to online learning.

CNN's Bianna Golodryga is covering the problems associated with in- person learning. Bianna, how bad is it?

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, Anderson, there are a lot of problems. And universities have anticipated that we would see clusters, that would see cases. I think what's a bit surprising is how quickly we are seeing them into this school year. Remember, they had said, unlike the K-12 schools, that they would be prepared with adequate testing, they would have PPE. And today, we hear that Notre Dame, just the latest university to suspend in-person classes for the 12,000 students on campus.

Remember, they were quite ambitious back in May when they said they would reopen for in-person classes. Well, now, they have 147 suspected cases, positive cases. So the students for at least now will be quarantined to their dorm rooms and they will be studying online as the university tries to assess what the next measures are. That's just one university.

Michigan State also said that they would be suspending in-person lessons and classes and they're supposed to start just two weeks from now. So you can imagine the headache for families as they're preparing to get their students and their children back into schools only to be told, no, stay home.

And then we've seen clusters throughout the country. North Carolina State announced some members of their fraternity and sorority community tested positive. Iowa State said they had 175 positive cases living on-campus. And a lot of these campuses now are turning into infirmaries, where students are isolated and set aside.

Drake University has actually told 14 students to go home for two weeks they were violating state agreements that they had signed going into the school year.

This is a big problem for schools. They're trying to figure out how to make it work, but students do need to heed the warning from the WHO. We've seen those pictures. We've seen kids wanting to party. We've all been in college. We understand what that life is like and this is a different situation for them. But for this to all work, they have to heed the warnings and they have to take this seriously.

COOPER: Yes, it's really complex. Bianna Golodryga, I appreciate it, good to see you.

After a week or so of moving in, students will officially begin their fall semester at University of Tennessee at Knoxville today. As they do this, the school is reporting at least 97 active COVID cases with more than 350 people in self-isolation.

Donde Plowman is the Chancellor of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Welcome, thanks so much for being with us.

A cluster of active COVID cases to an off-campus house party, can you walk us through the process? How did you identify the party?

DONDE PLOWMAN, CHANCELLOR, UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE AT KNOXVILLE: Well, thank you, Anderson, for having me.

We have a large group of contact tracer, and when we are notified, students fill out a self-isolation form or we hear from the county health department that they've tested positive. And the contact tracers immediately contact them and find out who they were in close contact with, and that means somebody that they were within six feet for more than ten minutes. And then we immediately contact those people.

And so that's how we found out about this first cluster. And they told us where it was. So we knew it was a party off-campus and that's the part that we're really having to stress with students that that behavior has to change.

COOPER: Yes. You said that there could be punishments for students who host parties that don't comply with COVID guidelines as well as students who don't comply with contact tracers throughout the semester. What would that look like?

PLOWMAN: Well, our student code of contact, it's not within the code of contact to do anything that endangers the health of anybody else in this community. And so during a pandemic, if you won't cooperate with contact tracers, and we had a little bit of that, or if you won't report to the self-isolation app on they have on their phone or if you host a party where other people's lives are in endangered, we consider that a violation of the code of conduct.

[13:10:05]

And we will use it. And I was clear about that yesterday in a live briefing I did.

So I think the word is getting out. I also yesterday walked through the area right near our campus where a lot of students live, upper classmen, and where the parties happen. And I was with city councilmen, with land homeowners, people who live there, as well as landlords, working together to try to figure out how we can stop this. Our police are with us.

So we're really pleading with our students. Think about what it means to be a volunteer. We are the Tennessee volunteers. And this is the time if we want to be here on campus, it's going to be a different kind of experience. We can do this but students have to step up and do their part.

COOPER: So if somebody does test positive, what happens to them? Do they stay on campus? Is it self-isolated?

PLOWMAN: So -- yes. If the student is living in one of our dorms, and we have 6,500 students in our dorms, we have capacity for over 8,000, but kept it lower in anticipating some of this. So if they test positive and they live in the dorms, we have -- we've got any number of isolation spaces.

And even if they are contacted and they're a close contact or suspected that they could have come close to someone who had tested -- who ended up being tested positive, we have spaces for them. So they self-isolate, take it in and they are immediately tested. And so we're managing that right now.

The majority of our students who have tested positive actually live off-campus. And so many of them are self-isolating either at home, if they live in this region or they're self-isolating in their room, in their apartment complex. COOPER: I mean, it's complex being a, you know, a chancellor during normal times. I cannot imagine trying to manage this, what this is like for you. I really appreciate you coming on and talking about it.

Donde Plowman, thank you so much. Best of luck.

PLOWMAN: Thank you. Thanks very much, Anderson.

COOPER: All right. When you look at the coronavirus numbers in the U.S., more than 5 million cases, close to 172,000 deaths now, it's a dismal picture. There's no doubt about it. The tally puts the nation well ahead of the rest of the world for coronavirus cases. It's appalling. Many Americans agree. A new CNN poll shows 58 percent disapprove of the president's handling of the pandemic. It's up ten percentage point since the start of the crisis in mid-March.

Our Political Director, David Chalian, is here.

So, David, the poll shows anger, embarrassment also over of the U.S. response. Talk about what the numbers are telling us.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: It does, Anderson. And, remember, this is a poll that shows President Trump's overall approval rating a little up a bit, but when it comes to all these things related to the coronavirus pandemic, it's just dismal, his standing.

Take a look whether or not he could be doing more or if he's doing everything he can. We asked what Americans thought about that. 62 percent of the country in this poll, 62 percent were saying the president could be doing more. That's up from when we asked that in April. So that's going in the wrong direction.

You mentioned embarrassed. Nearly seven in ten Americans in this poll, 68 percent say that they are embarrassed when they think about the United States response to the pandemic. And angry -- it's not just angry, it is very angry, a majority in this poll, 51 percent, say very angry. But if you add that variant somewhat together, you're at 78 percent, more than three quarters of respondents in this poll are somewhat or very angry at the way things are going in the country today.

And, finally, the notion of whether or not the worst is yet to come, we've seen for the first time since this all started an actual uptick. Every month, it had been going down. Now, we see an uptick overall. And look here, Anderson, you see it across every party.

Republicans are up thinking the worst is yet to come, Democrats are up and independents are up. It's across the board here and it's the first time each month that it had been ticking down, people thought things were not going to get worst or at least it was going in the right direction, and now, we're seeing this uptick that people think the worst is still yet to come.

COOPER: Yes. I mean, there's still such a stark difference between Republicans and Democrats in terms of the severity of it, but still see uptick in Republicans is interesting. David Chalian, I appreciate it. Thanks very much.

CHALIAN: Sure.

COOPER: As New York sets major restrictions on gyms reopening, I'll speak with two gym owners who are suing the state.

Plus, how countries run by women seem to be more successful in the fight against coronavirus.

And the president, who was supposedly against cancel culture, is now calling on Americans to cancel Goodyear tires.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:15:00]

COOPER: Starting Monday, gyms in New York will be able to open again. Governor Andrew Cuomo laying out strict standards, including limited capacity, a third of total occupancy, user contact information must be provided upon sign-in, masks have to be worn at all times, also cleaning, social distancing and inspection by local health officials.

Some areas reopening could be delayed. Governor Cuomo is leaving it up to local officials to make that decision. Many gyms have been closed since mid-March, including those owned by my next guests, Brent and Nikki Polos, three out of four of their gym locations are set to open Monday. Thanks so much for being with us.

You are, I know, suing the state over reopening action. You took this before Governor Cuomo gave the green light for gyms to open. Are you continuing with the lawsuits now?

NIKKI POLOS, GYM OWNER WHO'S SUING GOVERNOR CUOMO OVER CLOSURE: Yes, we are. And you are correct. We did not -- we started our lawsuit prior to the announcement on Monday with the guidelines towards reopening. If you look back at the histories of health clubs throughout these reopening phases, it was a very long and very painful and really unfair process.

[13:20:05]

Back in April, the federal guidelines of health clubs was part of phase one, which was fantastic, knowing all the health, mental and physical benefits that we provide. As soon as that was announced, I got to work and provided a detailed proposal. After 20 years, more than 20 years in the fitness industry, we had a lot of protocols in place prior to COVID.

So the protocols that I had put together, I put the proposal to the county, Onondaga County, and the State of New York on May 1st and then we implemented it them in our locations.

So we were ready to go. We were very disappointed to be excluded from phase one without any direction. You have to remember though, it wasn't, you're not in phase one, you get to open now. It was, you're not in phase one and we're not going to talk about you. Phase two was, in the State of New York, phase two was professional services. And we were once again excluded. And then phase three was personal care and we were once against excluded.

So that is when I looked for legal recourse. I talked to my local officials. Ryan McMahon, the county executive here in Onondaga County, was fantastic. And he communicated very well but he had no information and there was nothing that he could do besides talk to Governor Cuomo's office to help us get reopened.

So I did retain an attorney in phase three, but it wasn't until phase four when the official exclusion happened that we filed our lawsuit, back on June 29th.

COOPER: Financially, obviously, this has been devastating for gym owners, for bar owners, restaurant owners. I mean, it's -- it's, you know -- it's unimaginable.

N. POLOS: Exactly.

COOPER: The reopening, it's only allowed under very strict standards. Do you agree with the new standards?

N. POLOS: So, a lot of the standards were in the proposal I submitted back on May 1st. So we already had them in place. We could open. And I really wish that like other industries, he put the guidelines out let us reopen the next day. I believe it's because of the needed health inspections that we are forced to wait an additional week in order to reopen but we have two weeks after we open to get that health inspection.

So we really are ready to open. There are some things that I don't agree with, but we have to comply with. We owe it to our business. We owe it to our members and owe it to our employees to meet these standards so that they can have a safe and healthy place to work and exercise in the State of New York.

If you look at the (INAUDIBLE), there's very little industries that were forced to change air filters back when malls were announced to reopen in New York. They were the first industry, that that was a factor. And they were given the parameters of an M-11 to an M-13 filter. When that happened, I purchased M-11 filters for my facilities in the hopes that gyms were going to be next and we're going to be open if we had those correct filters.

When bowling alleys were announced to be open, they didn't have any filter requirements. So I was curious what Cuomo did. But he did put a higher restriction on health clubs than any other industry that was announced.

COOPER: Brent, how hard has this just financially been?

BRENT POLOS, GYM OWNER WHO'S SUING GOVERNOR CUOMO OVER CLOSURE: This has been tough. So, shut down was March 16th. We are about $400,000 behind on rent. We have lost $25,000 a month on our EFT bill. And we have lost countless future customers and current customers. We've lost countless employees that just won't come back. Part of the problem is it's not -- we're not like any other industry. We are -- the government of New York has said that gyms are technically bad or they're just a high probability of getting infected. It has scared a lot of people. It has scared our employees. It has scared our members. In the gym business, you're trying to ramp things up. Pre-sale is ramp-up. Now, we are basically starting over with full overhead.

Our rent in his building is $3,700 a month, that's per month.

N. POLOS: One location.

B. POLOS: So we're asking for anything other than the rest of the community got. We're asking for guidelines, which we now have. We agreed with 99 percent of the guidelines. We'll do anything, just let us open. Let us manage the process and we promise we'll make it safe for our members.

COOPER: Yes.

N. POLOS: And we've been investing (ph).

COOPER: Yes. Well, I know in New York City, the mayor here has said, it may be even longer because they don't have a lot of health inspectors. They're going to focused on schools. I got to tell you, I have never realized how much I miss gyms as I have now. So I am like wasting away here. I hope you get to open soon and I hope you're able to, you know, to recoup some of the loss. Brent and Nikki Polos, I appreciate your time.

N. POLOS: Thank you.

B. POLOS: Thank you, Anderson.

COOPER: All right. Researchers create a reusable mask made of silicone that works like an N95. We'll talk about that ahead.

Plus, California dealing with multiple crises from the pandemic and wildfires and the plague.

[13:25:02]

And as the president sues another state over mail-in voting, his campaign releases a video showing him voting by mail.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:30:00]