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Providence College Goes Remote After 80 Plus Students Tests Positive; World Health Organization Warns Of "Very Serious" COVID-19 Situation Unfolding In Europe; Source: CDC Testing Guidance Sidestepped Normal Review Process; Trump, Biden Clash On Coronavirus, Health Care; Israeli Marks Jewish New Year With Second COVID-19 Shutdown. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired September 18, 2020 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: After more 80 students tested positive the school has now decided to move to remote learning only at least for the next week.

But the college president warns if it doesn't stop the spread that remote learning period he may be forced to shut down the school for the rest of the fall semester, all students living on campus will now be tested and they also cannot leave the campus, students living off campus are being told to stay put in their apartments.

Top of the hour now, I want to welcome our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm John King in Washington. Thank you so much for sharing another busy news day with us. There are troubling numbers in the Coronavirus fight nearly everywhere you look.

30 million cases, a new global Coronavirus milestone. That measures the scale of worldwide disruption. There's now a second national lockdown today in Israel on the eve of the big Jewish high holidays and the World Health Organization says Europe is battling a second Coronavirus wave and the case numbers there are rising faster than they did back in March.

The tide turning in the wrong direction here in the United States as well, the United States will soon record its 200,000th Coronavirus death. The nation's top infectious disease expert says it is possible to avoid what he calls a fall double whammy of Coronavirus and flu but COVID alone is again a growing problem.

44,000 plus new cases recorded in the United States on Thursday. 30 states are moving in the wrong direction, you see them in red and orange on the map there that means they're recording more cases this week than last week.

Today is a milestone moment in the 2020 election. Early voting in- person voting begins in four states. The pandemic and the president's response to it is the biggest factor in that election choice and it was the biggest dividing line as both contenders faced voters in town halls this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Does it make you think is there anything I could have done differently?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think we could have had 2 million deaths if we didn't close out the country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So you regret--

TRUMP: I think we did a great job.

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He knew it and did nothing is close to criminal. Imagine if he had said something, how many more people would be alive?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: CNN has also confirmed that highly criticized CDC testing guidance put out last month saying that asymptomatic people do not necessarily need to get a Coronavirus test; well that guidance was published without going through the normal scientific review process. It was also not written by CDC scientists.

Our Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now so Elizabeth, a highly unusual process politics taking precedence over the normal procedures and the CDC brand?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, John. This was reported by "The New York Times" and it was confirmed by our Dr. Sanjay Gupta that instead of the CDC writing this and putting it on their website the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington sent the direction to Atlanta, essentially saying, you will do this and that it did not receive the normal scientific review by the CDC.

And you and I talked about this right when this happened and it was very clear to many people that something was up here because it was so out of the blue, it didn't make any sense from a scientific standpoint and it was communicated pretty poorly, when you read it and it is still up there.

You have to kind of read it a few times to figure out what it is saying but to go over again what the change was, what they said was you know what? If you have had a close contact, an exposure to someone with COVID, you spent more than 15 minutes with them and you don't have symptoms, don't worry.

You don't necessarily need to get tested. That runs contrary to what experts will tell you. If you were exposed to someone with COVID you should get tested even if you don't have symptoms both for yourself and so that you won't spread it around. Now John, Dr. Robert Redfield the Head of CDC he says that it was reviewed properly. John?

KING: And Elizabeth, I'm about to go through some troubling numbers here in the United States. The World Health Organization also today saying Europe needs to lift its head, it has a problem again, right? COHEN: That's right. These numbers from Europe are not great. Things were very bad there in the spring and they got better. Now let's take look at what's happening now in two European countries and it is happening in other European countries, as well.

But let's focus on the UK and France. In the UK they saw 167 percent increase in positive cases this month and the number of hospitalizations doubles every eight days. In France, they saw 10,000 new cases reported on September 13th and a 25 percent increase in ICU patients this week.

You know John you don't need a PHD in Immunology to know that when you start relaxing some of the measures that have been put in place, when people get together if they don't wear masks, basically if you let your guard down, those numbers are going to go up. John?

KING: Elizabeth Cohen, I appreciate the important reporting on both fronts there. Let's take a closer look now at some of the trends here in the United States. If you go through the 50-state map there is nothing to say about this except troubling.

If you go back a week or two I have a very different map here heading in the right direction. This map heading in the wrong direction, 30 states you see them in orange and red 30 of the 50 states reporting more new infections this week than last week.

[12:05:00]

KING: As we come out of the summer and go into the fall 30 states right now reporting more infections this week than last week. 16 holding steady, only 4 states reporting fewer new infections this week compared to the data from last week.

The state death trend if cases are up, sadly deaths are up, as well. It takes a few weeks, but we have been through this for seven months we now have 23 states again orange and red. Some of them with 50 percent more deaths the deep red, 50 percent or more deaths this week compared to last week.

But overall, 23 states reporting more deaths, 13 steady, 14 states reporting fewer deaths this week than last week. And here's the trend in cases. This is the peak of the summer surge, down to about 20,000 new infections a day coming into the summer got up close to 70,000 new infections a day at the peak of the summer surge.

And then started to come down, down below 40,000 and a little bit over the past week and now heading back up Thursday 44,360 cases, don't invest in one day's data but you see the trend line starting to head back up. The question is, can you stop that or post-Labor Day heading into the fall will are we going to start to go back up another hill?

Something nobody wants. If you look at the death trend at the moment it has come down but across July into August, we were losing a 1,000 Americans a day to the Coronavirus. We had dipped that down a little bit 870 on Thursday as the number starts to trend back up a little bit. Let's hope it doesn't but we have seen this before when the case count goes up the death couple of week lag tends to follow. Here's one of the issues here when you look at the percentage of new tests in the past week that are positive, you want to be as light as possible on this map.

You see a lot of deep blue; deep blue is double digit positivity. 15 percent South Dakota, 11 percent in Nebraska, 15 percent in Kansas that means 15 percent of people who get tested are coming back positive. That high of a percentage positive you get more cases because they infect other people.

The states over 10 percent now, these are states with the positivity rate over 10 percent, a lot of states are going up those that are above 10 percent, that's a big problem. And you see big state like Florida that was the big part of the summer surge is this temporary or we're going to have another spike across the southeast out into the heart heartland? You need to keep an eye on that.

If you look at states up over 10 percent over the last week, we had 11 states with positivity above 10 percent. We have 12 states now that doesn't seem like a big jump but if you look beneath that data a number of other states below 10 percent still heading in the wrong direction.

In the wrong direction at the wrong time, although, listen here, Dr. Anthony Fauci says there's some hope because of the Coronavirus precautions that when you have the collision everyone is worried about, Coronavirus and flu this fall, maybe not so bad.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: They almost as they call it had an absent flu season. They're not sure why this is the case but the evidence strongly suggests that all the precautions that they were taking to avoid COVID during their winter, mainly masks, physical separation, avoiding crowds, washing hands, very well may have averted a flu season.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Dr. Fauci talking there about Australia. Joining us now for more insight is Dr. Leana Wen. She is an Emergency Room Physician at George Washington University as well as a CNN Medical Analyst. Dr. Wen, I just want to start with the - when I look at the data every day, 44,000 plus yesterday new infections.

And then you look at the positivity rate out in the states. We were hoping even though 30,000 would be too high the idea a week or so ago was maybe we could push that baseline from 40,000 down to 30,000 and then keep going.

If you look at the last few days, not just new infections but then you go state by state through positivity and we know what that brings in days or so, it looks to me like it's taken a bad turn for the worse. DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Yes, it does appear that we're tending in the wrong direction and part of that is driven by the fact that we just don't have enough testing. You and I have been talking about this for months now, but we still don't have a policy even of testing asymptomatic individuals.

And we need to be doing a lot more of that kind of surveillance testing because otherwise without those types of data we are flying blind. We are not even able to see where we are in order to stop these clusters from becoming outbreaks from becoming epidemics.

KING: We had talked about this before and you had written extensive about it in the columns you write for "The Washington Post" about we need to be able to trust. We need to be able to trust the institutions of government while we're going through a pandemic. We need to be able to trust that the scientists are telling us the best data, the best science and not being influenced by politics.

You just heard Elizabeth Cohen, Dr. Sanjay Gupta confirming reporting first broken by "The New York Times" that those CDC guidelines that we've have talked about several times, that confused us because why would all of a sudden you suggest asymptomatic people who come in contact with somebody is COVID positive maybe don't need to be tested?

We talked about how they were confusing. Now we know it was political influence. What is the impact of that?

DR. WEN: Well, at least it clarifies the confusion because we were talking for so long about what happened here? Was there a new research that was done and somehow, we just don't know? And that's why these guidelines were changed?

[12:10:00]

DR. WEN: I mean it now makes sense except its really dangerous because we know that asymptomatic transmission is what's driving this pandemic. And so, if we aren't able to detect asymptomatic cases we're not able to rein in COVID-19. So that's dangerous for this pandemic.

But we also have to talk about the trust for CDC and FDA and our premier scientific institutions. These are seen as some of the top public health intuitions in the world, that people from all over come to get their training for example at the CDC.

These scientists are some of the best in the world who are known for their scientific expertise, their rigor and their integrity. And all of that is being undermined by political interference and that could have lasting damage on public health, both in the U.S. and around the world and surely the worst time for this to happen is in the middle of a pandemic.

KING: Right, because to your point it leaves when you get a Dr. Fauci on your program you want to ask him about where are we? What is going well? What's not going well? What do we need to do?

Instead, listen to Dr. Fauci he is on MSNBC last night and the question are more than legitimate because of all this suspicion. The question to Dr. Fauci was if there's a vaccine approved, and you think it is being rushed because of the political purposes essentially will you throw yourself on the sword?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you assure all of us that if the corners have been cut, if there is something sideways or wrong with the process that you will tell us and take the heat for that?

DR. FAUCI: Yes. The answer, Chris, is, yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: In some ways it is absurd that such a question has to be asked and yet in the climate we find ourselves in it is a 1,000 percent legitimate question.

DR. WEN: I think a lot of us trust Dr. Fauci. And so, perhaps this is why that question is being asked of him in this way. But it is a much bigger issue because we already have a problem of vaccine skepticism and anti-science denial in this country.

But now you add on top of that, that many people are saying that they're not going to take this vaccine not because they don't trust science but because they think that political expediency is rather than scientific rigor is driving this vaccine approval process.

So we really need the federal government to step up right now and say that they will make all the datum open and transparent because transparency is a counter to the distrust issue that we're seeing.

And we also need to have the benchmarks and metrics be established well in advance so that we're not having moving goalposts along the way. And ultimately there needs to be reassurance to all of us that it's not speed that's driving this but ultimately safety and efficacy.

KING: Dr. Wen, as always, grateful for your expertise and your insights. Thank you so much.

DR. WEN: Thank you, John.

KING: Thank you. Up next for us Joe Biden attacks the president's Manhattan roots in his new twist appeal for blue collar votes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:15:00]

KING: Important day on the campaign trail, both the president and the democratic nominee heading to Minnesota today. The Friday campaign stops cap a pretty busy week in which voters did get a direct look at both of the candidates at town halls and rallies both the president and Joe Biden spelling out dramatically different views on the Coronavirus crisis and dramatically different views on a number of issues including health care. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: They want to go to social medicine. They went to go to social. You know that, right? You do know that. They want social health care. He wants to wipe out 180 million private health care plans that people love.

BIDEN: In the middle of this pandemic, what's the president doing? He's in federal court, federal court trying to do away with the Affordable Care Act. Nobody, nobody in the United States of America would go without being able to be covered for what they need.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Julie Pace of "Associated Press" is with us now. We could start on the fact that the president keeps saying Joe Biden can't complete a sentence. He says social health care. I think he meant socialized medicine or socialist health care. He keeps saying they want social.

But let's set that aside and focus on bigger issue which is health care. A giant motivating issue for the Democrats back in 2018, the specifics of Obamacare, preexisting conditions, somewhat drowned out because of the bigger focus on the COVID pandemic but at least the Biden campaign believes they can use this issue in the final weeks.

JULIE PACE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "ASSOCIATED PRESS": Absolutely. They see a link between this fight that we saw around health care in 2018 and what we're seeing during the pandemic. Looking at this moment where people are concerned about their health, they're concerned about the possibility of contracting the virus and they don't want uncertainty around their health care, their health insurance in that moment.

And they're arguing correctly that despite some of the rhetoric that we hear from the president particularly around the idea of protecting preexisting conditions what his administration is doing is still trying to undermine and tear down Obamacare in the courts.

The president says look, I will have a big, beautiful plan for you to replace Obamacare but that has been rhetoric we've heard for frankly years from this president without a real plan on what he would do to replace that if those efforts in the court were to be successful?

KING: Right. The president always says he kept his promise. He's kept many of them but repealing and replace is one thing and he is in court as you noted right now trying to abolish the entire thing including the protections for preexisting conditions despite what he says on the campaign trail.

When you're in the final weeks of a campaign like this Julie, the map is advantage Biden right now but we all live through 2016 so you're looking around what can we do as a campaign and what extraneously he is going to happen to maybe help or hurt us?

One other things that the Biden campaign thinks might help it is this former aide to Mike Pence the Vice President who was a staff member on the Coronavirus Task Force, left the administration and now she is in a Republican for Biden group ad saying we were trying to do our job.

The vice president was trying to do our job. All the doctors were trying to do our job but then there was the president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Towards the middle of February, we knew it wasn't a matter of if COVID would become a big pandemic here in the United States.

[12:20:00]

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It was a matter of when but the president didn't want to hear that because his biggest concern was that we were in an election year and how is this going to affect what he considered to be his record of success? The truth is he doesn't care about anyone else but himself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The White House now trying to make the case disgruntled employee. When you leave the White House you know the Democrats or the never Trumpers try to get you to say things. But it's a pretty damning account from someone who was a senior staff member on the Coronavirus Task Force essentially as I said at the beginning trying to make the case everybody else was trying to do this right and do their job and the president kept getting in the way.

PACE: Absolutely. I think for the Biden campaign there are two salient points out of this. One, is the fact that this is somebody who had an up close view of the president's handling of the Coronavirus and has a very damning assessment and it gets to the heart of what Biden has been trying to argue about Trump which is he doesn't care about anybody besides himself.

And then the second piece of this is that Biden throughout this presidential election has been trying to position himself as a safe candidate for Republicans who feel like they simply can't stand with President Trump anymore.

He makes clear he is more of a moderate, he is not going to be pulled too far to the left and who can feel comfortable disgruntled Republicans coming and being with me and I think that this is an example of someone coming from forward saying that is true.

I validate what Joe Biden says. I feel like this is a safe place for Republican who doesn't want to support this president anymore to move toward.

KING: Julie Pace, great to see you. As always, I appreciate the reporting and the insights. Fascinating six weeks left, six weeks and a little change. We'll stay on top of it Julie.

PACE: Absolutely.

KING: Thank you so much. Coming up for us the outgoing U.S. Ambassador to China takes a parting shot at Beijing on the Coronavirus.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

KING: Terry Branstad is about to leave his post as the U.S. Ambassador to China but before leaving he is coming home to help the president's re-election campaign. Branstad blaming Beijing for the Coronavirus pandemic for that story and more let's get to our International Correspondents with the headlines from around the world.

DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Here in China the outgoing U.S. Ambassador is leaving his posting with a harsh assessment of China's handling or mishandling of the Coronavirus outbreak. The Chinese once referred to Terry Branstad as an old friend of the Chinese people.

He has a personal relationship with President Xi Jinping that dates back to the '80s but in an interview with CNN the Ambassador aligned himself heavily with President Trump in blaming China for the outbreak.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TERRY BRANSTAD, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO CHINA: The Chinese system was such that they covered it up and they even penalized the doctors that were pointing it out at the very beginning so the result was what could have been contained in Wuhan ended up becoming worldwide pandemic. And that was what's so sad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CULVER: The U.S. Senate Relations are at what some consider all-time low given raising tensions in the South China Sea, Hong Kong's controversial nationalist security law, allegations of widespread human rights abuse in China's Schengen Province.

I asked the Ambassador with the worsening situation if he is leaving behind a diplomatic failure. He says he's focusing on the accomplishments, he points to the phase one trade deal and this could very well resurface when Branstad returns to his home state of Iowa where he is very likely to campaign for President Trump. David Culver, CNN, Beijing.

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Here in the UK, the British government is trying to put the brakes on a resurgence of the Coronavirus and to do it the Health Secretary is not ruling out the nuclear option, a second national lockdown.

Today the government expanded restrictions to several more cities in England which effectively ban almost all in-person socializing with people outside of your own household. And the Health Secretary this morning stressed that it is essential that people follow the rules that are in place right now but if things continue to get worse, well, that national lockdown is there as a last line of defense.

As the virus creeps into older parts of the population, even gets into care homes hospitalizations are doubling about every eight days. Just as the country is also dealing with a shortage of tests despite the fact that it is doing more testing than any other major country in Europe that means the government has to prioritize who actually gets a test and who doesn't?

And right now more than one third of all the tests that the government does have are being set aside for care homes. Scott McLean, CNN, London.

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In Israel the country has officially begun its second general lockdown scheduled for last three weeks because of how bad the Coronavirus numbers are here, per capita, among the highest in the world and that makes Israel perhaps the first in the world to re-impose a general lockdown.

Just yesterday according to Ministry of Health data more than 5,200 new cases that's not a record but it is indicative of an upward trend there. The other two numbers that are raising the number of serious cases according to the Ministry of Health and steadily raising the number of patients on ventilators.

All of those numbers worrying which is why the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who warned just yesterday that if this trend continues and the new cases don't come down he may have to tighten the restrictions on this lockdown, some health experts warning that this second general lockdown has essentially enough holes and enough loopholes that it won't be able to contain the Coronavirus numbers.