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Interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci; President Trump Threatens to Withhold Funding From Democrat-Run Cities; COVID-19 Cases Rise in England and Israel with Schools to Reopen. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired September 03, 2020 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

SCIUTTO: OK. Another topic, the public has heard mixed and sometimes contradictory messages on key health questions regarding the outbreak, the seriousness of the outbreak and also treatments for the outbreak, you're aware of them: Disagreements over the usefulness of Hydroxychloroquine, questions over how useful exactly convalescent plasma is, and even now questions about CDC guidelines on who should be tested and when:

Let's go down those if we can: One, on convalescent plasma, is that a useful treatment for COVID-19?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NIAID: Right now the data do not indicate strongly one way or the other: It has an EUA that if people would like you could get it: We still are waiting for the definitive clinical trials to prove one way or the other whether it's safe and effective: It looks almost certainly that it's safe: The real question is, how effective is this?: And that will have to await the proper clinical trials.

SCIUTTO: OK, CDC guidelines, as you know has changed its guidelines on testing to say those who are asymptomatic need not get tested even if they have been exposed: The way the language is and you know this, but just for viewers who are watching and not know, you do not necessarily need a test unless you are a vulnerable individual or your healthcare providers recommends that you take one: Is that a smart change?

FAUCI: Yes: Well, you know, that sentence I think we all admit and the CDC has now clarified that, Jim, that sentence in a vacuum the way it read gave the impression, which was clearly open to misinterpretation that that means that they're not concerned about community spread and that they're not concerned about testing people who are without symptoms.

Let's clarify that, community spread is important: People without symptoms do spread the infection and we should be testing people under certain circumstances who are without symptoms, no doubt about that.

Unfortunately, there was that misunderstanding, but I believe the CDC has now clarified that.

SCIUTTO: Under certain circumstances or all people who are exposed, who are known to be exposed should be tested?

FAUCI: In general -- I mean -- right now it is certainly if you -- if you have an actionable situation where there is an exposure that's prolonged and consistent with someone who is infected and you are without symptoms you should get tested: That's what I recommend, no question about that.

SCIUTTO: Right: Fair enough: Listen to Dr. Fauci. I want to talk about schools here: This is a -- I'm a parent, I've got three kids largely being educated at home: I'm sure lots of lots of folks listening right now are going through the same thing:

You've consistently said that -- that in areas where communities have the outbreak under control, so-called green zones that meet certain metrics, for instance a positivity rate below a certain standard, that -- that it is safe for schools to -- to reopen for in-person instruction with mitigation: And yet, we've seen in many communities that have met those standards they're still doing only online learning: I wonder if you think that that's a mistake?

FAUCI: Well, I mean I don't to be -- be -- you know -- being pejorative in saying that people are making mistakes, but I stick by, Jim, what I said before, that I mean obviously it isn't all black and white, it isn't all yes or no:

But in general, if you're in a situation, in a green zone, where you have a very low level of infection and test positivity that in general you can open the schools with impunity as long as your head's up and you have a plan of knowing what to do when you see children who are infected:

When you get into the yellow zone and in the red zone it becomes different: You have to do certain mitigations when you're in the -- in the -- in the yellow zone: And then the red zone it does become problematic, because what we are seeing that many teachers and parents are really deciding by their feet: They're saying we're not going to send our children in if we have a red hot zone.

SCIUTTO: What's your message then to teachers I wonder, because I mean you see, for instance, in New York, that's a -- that's a place that has met these green zone standards here but -- but many teachers are saying, listen, I'm -- I'm too scared to go in: You know, some of them with preexisting conditions or that make them particularly vulnerable, others as well: What do -- what do you say to them to give them confidence that this can be an acceptable risk?

FAUCI: Well Jim, what I think you need to do is you need to separate people who have the underlying conditions and people who are otherwise healthy and young.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

FAUCI: I think you have to respect the concerns of people who have underlying conditions: I mean, you just have to respect that personal concern: And if someone really is concerned, you have to respect the fact that they may not want to be there: But, for others who are generally healthy and don't have underlying conditions, I would encourage them to go and begin the in-person teaching, because obviously even though I've given a lot of caveats over the last weeks and months, fundamentally we should do the best that we can to get the children back to school, because we know very well of the deleterious consequences upon the if we keep them out of school:

[10:35:00]

SCIUTTO: Understood, and I think a lot of families are seeing that: I want to talk about Labor Day weekend: The data has consistently shown on these holiday weekends of summer from Memorial Day for July 4th. Listen, people understandably they want to see friends, they want to travel, we see a spike in cases.

FAUCI: Right.

SCIUTTO: What do you say to folks as tomorrow folks are going to start hitting the road how to keep themselves safe or should they not be traveling at all?

FAUCI: Yes. Well, Jim, thank you for giving me the opportunity to make this plea to the American public because we don't want to see a repeat of the surges that we have seen following the holiday weekends.

That doesn't mean you have to lock yourself in a room and not enjoy what hopefully will be a nice weekend for people but there are certain fundamental things that you can do and still enjoy yourself.

And these are things that I've spoken about so often the wearing of the masks, the physical distancing, the avoiding crowds, trying to keep gatherings outside much, much, much more preferable than indoors.

We're seeing now in certain states, particularly states for example like Montana, the Dakotas, Michigan, Minnesota that there is an uptick in test positivity particularly among young people 19 to 25. That's predictive, Jim, that if there is -- and if they don't do the kinds of things we're talking about we're going to see a surge.

It's important for two reasons, we don't want to see a surge under any circumstances but particularly as we go on the other side of Labor Day and enter into the fall we want to go into that with a running start in the right direction. We don't want to go into that with another surge that we have to turn around again. So it really is an important weekend.

SCIUTTO: Understood. We will share that information widely and broadly. I want to ask you this because, listen, folks are used to hearing a lot of concern about this very understandably.

What is the best development, the best news that you've seen in recent weeks about the response to this that should give some people hope as we get into the -- we go into the seventh, eight month of this outbreak? FAUCI: I think there's good news in two areas, there's good news in the public health area. We see that when we have states and cities and counties and areas that do abide by the public health mandates that I'm speaking about now with you today that they do turn around the surges in fact blunt any surges.

That tells me that we can do it. We've proven that you can actually control the outbreak. To me, that's good news. Even though there are certain areas of the country that are hot we know that if we apply certain public health measures it'll work.

The other good news is vaccines. I mean we now have three vaccines in phase III trial. We're on the right track; things look like they're really going in the right direction.

SCIUTTO: That's good to hear, Dr. Fauci. You're always welcome on this program and the team and I wish you a swift recovery from our recent surgery.

FAUCI: Thank you, Jim. Nice being with you. Thank you for having me.

SCIUTTO: Take care.

[10:38:09]

Listen to Dr. Fauci, it's good advice going into this holiday weekend.

Well, President Trump threatens to pull funding from some of the nation's biggest and notably Democratic-led cities. Why? We'll answer.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Welcome back. The White House is now threatening to withhold federal funding from several notably democratic-led cities, all located in blue states, the president really not contesting in the November election. His justification for the move? He claims the leaders there are allowing anarchy, violence and destruction. Folks, I would just recommend visiting some of these cities to test the president's allegations.

CNN's John Harwood joins me with more.

So, John, Minneapolis -- Kenosha, Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Minnesota, of course, they were left off that list because those are crucial battleground states.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Exactly. What the president's trying to do is mobilize, especially in those battleground states, his core supporters who are white working-class voters. There are a lot of them in both Minneapolis and Wisconsin.

And if you live in those states and you're a white working-class Trump supporter, you don't want funds withheld from your state even if it's from cities that engage in protest. So what the president's doing is targeting places where he is -- has no shot of winning -- Portland, Seattle, Washington, D.C., New York City -- to try to show his supporters that he's fighting for them to try to control these protests.

And what he's finding -- and what we heard yesterday from Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, is that Democrats are fighting back.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK (via telephone): President Trump has actively been trying to kill New York City ever since he's been elected.

It really does speak volumes about him: changed his residence to go to Florida. Why? He can't come back to New York, he can't. He's going to walk down the street in New York? Forget bodyguards, he better have an army if he thinks he's going to walk down the street in New York.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

HARWOOD: Now, obviously, Governor Cuomo went too far there, suggesting the president might face harm in New York City. But that merely underscores the depth of this conflict between the president and these blue states that he's trying to make the punching bags for his campaign.

[10:45:03]

SCIUTTO: I know we're entering bizarre-world, as we often do in the White House, because the president encouraged people in North Carolina yesterday to vote twice, once by mail once in person, which is illegal, by the way. Kayleigh McEnany said you didn't hear what you heard the president said.

What's going on here?

HARWOOD: Well, what the president is trying to do in general is to raise doubts about mail-in voting, raise doubts about the legitimacy of an election that he is currently on track to lose, both in states like North Carolina and nationally.

He got some back-up yesterday from Bill Barr, his attorney general, who suggested that it might not even be illegal to try to vote twice. But he also said that states were playing with fire by encouraging heavy mail-in voting.

Of course, the reason for that is that people are fearful of getting sick and dying by going out in person to vote during this coronavirus pandemic.

Now just a few minutes ago, the president unleashed a series of tweets in which he reiterated what he said yesterday, said if you mail -- do a mail-in vote, absentee vote, mail it in early, go to the polling place. If they've already counted the -- or registered the receipt of the ballot, you'll not be able to vote. If they haven't, go ahead and vote. Again, states do have security procedures for crossing people off the

voter rolls. If their vote has been tabulated one way, they're not allowed to vote another way. And suggesting that people try to do it twice is against the law and certainly not what elections officials want them to do.

SCIUTTO: John, the president's tweets here, for weeks he's been saying mail-in voting leads to fraud. His attorney general was on this broadcast, this network yesterday saying it's rife with fraud. The president just tweeted, vote by mail for me, early. What the heck is going on?

HARWOOD: Well, what the president wants of course is votes for him and not votes for the other side. He's raising doubts --

SCIUTTO: Right, I mean --

HARWOOD: -- about states that are trying to go all-mail-in, which several states have done in recent decades, well in advance of the pandemic.

He got some blow-back from Republican political consultants, who said --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARWOOD: -- you're discouraging our people from casting mail-in votes, we need those to win. So the president's trying to, in effect, play both sides, tell his supporters to go ahead and vote that way, show up at the polls, try to vote again in case your vote isn't counted. While discouraging confidence in the legitimacy of the election overall.

SCIUTTO: It exposes it in plain sight. Mail-in votes for me are fine --

HARWOOD: Oh, yes.

SCIUTTO: -- mail-in votes for the other guy are fraudulent.

(CROSSTALK)

SCIUTTO: John Harwood, it's good to have you break it down. Thank you.

[10:47:50]

Well, school is back in session across England, but masks are not required in every classroom. We're going to take a look.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: Students in England, they're back to school for the first time in months, but not everyone will have to wear masks to go along with their school supplies. Scott McLean joins me now from Waterlooville, England. Scott, so what steps are they taking? Why not masks? It just seems

like that's -- kind of goes without saying in so many places.

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Sure, Jim. So you know, after more than five months away for a lot of students, there were a lot of first-day jitters for many of them about new classmates, new teachers but not so much about the coronavirus. The British prime minister, Boris Johnson, said that it was the government's moral duty to get kids back in school despite the fact that in the U.K., coronavirus infection rate is trending upward as it is across the U.K.

For the parents that we met though, that doesn't seem to be a big concern for them, though it may be a different story in Scotland, where the number of coronavirus-related absences has more than tripled over just the past week or two.

At this school, they have staggered start times, there is hand sanitizer everywhere, classes are kept separate from one another when they're inside the building and when they're outside as well. They're even keeping the windows and doors open to help with ventilation.

As you mentioned, what you will not see at this school, Jim, are masks. First off, they're not recommended for kids under the age of 12. But even for the older kids, the British government has decided to let every school -- with some exceptions -- basically make their own policy when it comes to masks. The idea is if you have enough other mitigating factors, masks shouldn't be necessary -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: It's interesting to see the people handing out food, not wearing masks there too. Scott McLean, thanks very much.

Let's go to CNN's Oren Liebermann, he's in Jerusalem as Israel sets a one-day record with more than 3,000 new coronavirus cases. Oren, you know, Israel had it under control, they opened schools sort of widely, then they had a spike. What's happening now and what's working there?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well right now, the sudden surge in cases is seen largely from ultra-Orthodox cities and Arab cities, according to the Ministry of Health Data.

What's troubling about this is that most of the cases recently had been confined to what are called "red zones." Now according to the latest data, new infections are breaking out of those red zones. As you pointed out, 3,074 new cases on Wednesday according to the Ministry of Health, one-day record smashing the old record, set just one day earlier, of 2,183.

Take a look at the seven-day moving average, you can see how quickly it's rising. And just two days ago, school reopened. That's too recent to be a factor in this sudden surge, but over the course of the next couple weeks, it certainly raises the possibility that these numbers could keep on rising. That would make a bad situation even worse.

In terms of total numbers, according to the Ministry of Health, again, there are more than 122,000 cases at this point in Israel. It is a low mortality rate, less than one percent, although nearing a thousand deaths in the country.

[10:55:10]

Jim, another worrying problem? The High Holidays are coming up in a couple of weeks, and those are large family and religious gatherings, another chance for the virus to spread.

SCIUTTO: No question. Oren Liebermann, thanks so much, there in Jerusalem.

And thanks so much to all of you for joining us today. I'm Jim Sciutto. NEWSROOM with John King will start right after a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:00:00]