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New Restrictions Sweep Across Country as Pandemic Rages; CDC Forecasts up to 298,000 U.S. COVID-19 Deaths by December 12; New York City Schools Close as COVID Test Positivity Rate Hits 3 percent. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired November 19, 2020 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:05]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan. Thanks so much for joining us this hour.

The United States has reached a place that was seen as unfathomable, impossible even, and if we ever got there, the losses would be incalculable. We are there. More than 250,000 Americans killed by the coronavirus. A quarter of a million people that did not need to die.

For perspective, COVID has now killed more Americans than strokes, suicides and car crashes typically do in a full year combined. And as bad as the situation is, a key member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force is even warning that it will get worse.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADM. BRETT GIROIR, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: This will get worse. We have had 1 million cases documented over the past week. Our rate of rise is higher than it even was in the summer. We have hospitalizations going up 25 percent week over week. Unfortunately, mortality going up. We do anticipate this to continue at least for the next couple of weeks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Even with that warning, Dr. Anthony Fauci says, too many lives have been lost and too many Americans are still in denial.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: You're hearing people even denying there's a problem as their hospitals are getting filled. Things are going in the wrong direction in an arena of increased risk. Mainly the cooler and colder weather. I mean, let's go, folks. What about that don't you understand?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: That is a great question. This is something that frontline health care workers are facing every day, not only battling the virus but battling misinformation. We heard this exactly from a nurse in South Dakota earlier this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED NURSE: Their last dying words are, this can't be happening, it's not real.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: But you cannot deny the reality, which is the numbers. Forget the number of people infected, which is skyrocketing. We're talking about the number of people who have died. That is not a number you can make up or explain away and surely you should not deny that number is rising, and smart people fear that it is about to speed up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. RICHARD BESSER, FORMER ACTING DIRECTOR, CDC: If we don't change what we're doing, we're going to be having a conversation before the end of the year about 300,000 people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Yes. Robin Roberts had the right reaction there. That's a number that should hurt.

In the next month, 50,000 more Americans are expected to die of this virus, that is the reality that we're facing right now. But it doesn't have to be the country's fate. With this reality, state and local officials across the country are forced to implement more restrictions, new mask mandates, schools going back to online only learning and other key parts of the economy and every community having to be put on pause once again.

CNN's Natasha Chen, she's in Atlanta, Florida. She is joining me now, this is a state that just passed 900,000 coronavirus cases, third most in the country behind Texas and California. Natasha, the CDC just put out a new forecast of projected deaths. What did it say?

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. This is a forecast that says you know by December 12th we could be seeing up to 298,000 deaths in the United States. As you mentioned, we've already crossed the quarter million mark so with December 12th being a little more than three weeks away we're talking about potentially another 40,000 people in America dying of COVID-19 with Thanksgiving happening between now and then and many of the people we've talked to today saying that they're getting tested because they want to see their families.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CHEN (voice-over): More than a quarter million people have died from coronavirus since the pandemic began in the United States. On Wednesday, over 1,800 Americans lost their lives to the virus.

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: If you were to read all of the names of the people who have died in the United States from coronavirus, it would take about 10 days. That's the magnitude of the loss.

CHEN: There's growing concern in the northeast, as new cases rise across the region. The country's largest school district is closing down today, after New York City saw an average of 3 percent test positivity over the last seven days.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D-NY), NEW YORK CITY: We set a very clear standard, and we need to stick to that standard. And I want to emphasize to parents, to educators, to staff, to kids, that we intend to come back and come back as quickly as possible.

CHEN: In Pennsylvania, case numbers are soaring. The state reported approximately 6,400 new cases on Wednesday. Growing concern there is over 2,900 patients are currently hospitalized with the virus, the highest number so far in the pandemic.

And in New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy has implemented new restrictions on indoor dining and outdoor gatherings. Since then, the state has reported more than 4,000 new cases each day for four of the past five days.

[11:05:00]

In Wisconsin, the governor announced he's extending his state of emergency order and statewide mask mandate until January, as ICU beds in that state are running out.

ANDREA PALM, SECRETARY-DESIGNEE, WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES: Over the past week, hospitals have reported nine of our ICUs at 100 percent capacity. There are zero ICU beds available in one region of our state.

CHEN: Along with Wisconsin announcing new restrictions, Minnesota is reporting it is closing indoor dining and gyms and limiting social gatherings.

And Kentucky is moving the entire state to online learning to try to stem the increase in confirmed cases.

These states join nearly two dozen other cities and states that have increased restrictions over the last week. Some states are still not taking many important measures, despite rising numbers, including Florida, which is starting to see an uptick of cases again after its summer surge. Even though some counties in Florida do have mask mandates, there's still no statewide regulation recovering face coverings.

And in South Dakota, Governor Kristi Noem is doubling down on her refusal to mandate masks.

GOV. KRISTI NOEM (R-SD): Some have said that my refusal to mandate masks is a reason why our cases are rising here in the state of South Dakota, and that is not true.

I'm not in favor of mandating mask wearing. I don't believe that I have the authority to mandate that. (END VIDEOTAPE)

CHEN (on camera): And what you're seeing behind us here is a very long line of cars that are waiting to drive up and get tested here in Orlando. There is rapid testing available here. We met some of the people in line earlier this morning, some who got here two hours early. They were talking about the fact that a couple of them work cleaning hospitals for a living. A couple of them said they might have been exposed to someone who tested positive.

So, there's a lot of concern here in a state that is in phase three with no capacity restrictions on businesses. And local jurisdictions like Orange County here, they can have local face mask ordinances, but they cannot restrict capacity at restaurants for example without telling the state what kind of economic impact that would have. Kate?

BOLDUAN: And that's really a large part of the ball game, indoor dining, as much as we love to do it. We know what the science says. It's good to see you, Natasha. Thank you for your reporting.

Joining me right now is Dr. Eric Topol, physician and scientist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. It's good to see you again, Dr. Topol. Thank you for being here. The number that we were just talking about at the top of the show, passing 250,000 deaths. Dr. Besser thinks we could be talking 300,000 deaths and that's just in another month and the CDC's projection isn't far-off from that now. How do you describe this moment?

DR. ERIC TOPOL, CARDIOLOGIST: Well, first, Kate, it's good to be with you again. This is a horrifying time. This is a crisis. And we're not doing enough to take control. We've already seen Europe go through this very pronounced second wave. They have achieved control. It's being much more aggressive. And what's also important to note is, this is the worst of times yet in the pandemic for the U.S. But we're not far away from getting the vaccines out there, having now approved monoclonal antibodies, rapid tests at home for the first time being approved. So, although the fatigue has set in, we're just not doing enough to be the bridge to a much more favorable outlook.

BOLDUAN: I like the way you talk about it. The country just needs a bridge to get to that vaccine. Just a bridge. It's like just hold on a bit longer. The positivity rate I know something you've been talking about, the numbers in some states are just bonkers. I mean 50 percent positivity, 70 percent positivity. What does this say about where we're headed? Why does this bother you so much?

TOPOL: Well, to see Wyoming over 70 percent, Kate, you know I've never seen anything like this in the entire world of positivity of tests. But throughout that, the Dakotas and the neighboring states. We're seeing 50 plus percent. And it just shows we're not doing enough testing. We're not taking this seriously. It's almost like being numb and paralyzed when it should be just the opposite, doing everything we can, full-court press. And it's amazing to see in this country that we can't get the tests going where we need them the most.

BOLDUAN: You mentioned the Dakotas. We just heard from South Dakota's governor, Kristi Noem in Natasha's story. She's defending her position on not mandating masks and not locking down her state more or restricting her state more. She's saying because those two things that she could do is not the reason cases are so high in her state. What do you think of that?

TOPOL: It's reprehensible. And the reason that you can say that is, for one, the Dakotas are the top two per capita in cases and deaths in the world.

[11:10:02]

And, we know the things that would help like masks and she's in total denial, saying she won't do a mask mandate, and the little bit she has done to support masks is just inadequate. So, this is just reckless, and it's somewhat emblematic of you know several parts of the country, just not doing the things that we know would help.

BOLDUAN: You mentioned that numbness. This one thing you would have been hitting on is this numbness that has set in. You know, the president has disappeared. 12 of the last 16 days he said nothing on his schedule and he's definitely not focusing on COVID publicly for sure. We have 80,000 people sick enough with COVID that they need to be in the hospital. Those are numbers of people cannot make up. It doesn't have to be this way. But what does this numbness that we really all see in our lives? What is this numbness that we're all seeing in our lives towards this pandemic?

TOPOL: It's not a simple matter, unfortunately, because some of it is fueled by misinformation. Some of it coming from our own president and administration. And some of it is just the fatigue factor that, you know -- they kind of sense of doom this is going to happen when it isn't at all the case. We know so many things that don't require a national lockdown that would turn this around. We've seen many successful countries that didn't have to use the most stringent measures and they got control. It's just the lack of leadership here is stunning, really.

BOLDUAN: What is your assessment of testing right now nationwide? We're seeing long lines waiting for testing in many states at this point, labs, the large labs saying they're projecting there's going to be big delays in getting results. How are we back to this place, still, this many months in that the system is so stressed it can't handle testing capacity still.

TOPOL: It's really important point because you know we are barely over 1 million tests a day when working with the Rockefeller Foundation and action plan. We recommended at least 5 to 7 million tests a day. At least. So, we've never gotten the testing right. And the turnaround times are also unacceptable. Still.

So, what -- the remedy for this is the home testing. Every household should have a free supply, a significant number of home tests so they would know whether people are going out to work, to school, to travel, whatever, if they might be infectious. We haven't made that switch. It's our FDA, unfortunately, that is finally starting to come around. But we can never get to the level of testing with the crude methods we're relying on right now.

And so, this has been going on, as you said, Kate, for so many months. It's a model that has failed. And the testing we know the answer, it's just that we haven't been able to implement it. The only good thing, this week we saw the first rapid home test approved, and that's opening the door for many more, 30, 40 different rapid home tests that could go as low as $1, that you could get the answer within five minutes. That's what we really need.

BOLDUAN: We have learned collectively -- the collective we have learned a lot and so much progress being made from the test to the vaccine. It's just this bridge you're talking about that everyone has to buy in and wrap their arms around each other one more time and just through it. Doctor, thank you.

TOPOL: Thank you, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, moments we from now, we're going to get the results from Georgia statewide election audit. With this announcement, will the president finally accept the outcome?

Plus, the nurse whose emotional story of treating COVID patients brought President-elect Joe Biden to tears. She's our guest.

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[11:18:15]

BOLDUAN: Minutes from now, Georgia election officials are expected to announce results of a statewide election audit. They've been counting all of the presidential votes by hand for a week. And Georgia has become really the center of the political universe as President Trump has largely banked his entire baseless claim of a rigged election on this audit in that state.

CNN's Amara Walker is joining me now. She's in Atlanta. Amara, what are you hearing about what's going to be announced and what's expected?

AMARA WALKER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The expectation is that the results of this audit are not going to change the overall results of the election. What we're expecting today, Kate, is we will see the full results of the audit sometime around noon. We'll basically be getting an Excel spread sheet county by county tallies of what the results of the hand counts were versus the original count. So, we'll be able to see if there are any discrepancies.

Well, we already know though is that out of the 159 counties here in Georgia, 112, vast majority of them, have already reported that they have not seen virtually any discrepancies, what's been getting a lot of attention because President Trump and his allies have been tweeting about, is the fact that more than 5,800 uncounted ballots were found during this audit process in four different counties and yes, it did end up benefitting President Trump, adding to his column, 1,375 votes. But at the end of the day it's not enough to overcome Joe Biden's margin of victory here which is at about 13,000. Let me just explain tough what happened because state election officials, Kate, have been expressing and underscoring the fact this was all due to human error, had nothing to do with the machines and this is not a sign of systematic fraud.

[11:20:05]

And three of those counties, basically the ballots were all scanned to a memory card but the last step that they were supposed to take, uploading that memory card to the county system was not done. Hence, those votes were not counted.

The one outlier here is Floyd County about 2,500 uncounted ballots. What happened there was what state officials call gross mismanagement. There was a box of ballots that they completely missed, it was sitting off to the side, nobody saw it. So, again though, state election officials saying that human error, isolated incidents we do expect that the results will reflect the overall outcome that Joe Biden won the state. Kate?

BOLDUAN: The Republican secretary of state has been very outspoken in what you've been talking about, his confidence in the system, his confidence in the vote and the outcome and on the human error element of it. Amara, thank you very much.

Still ahead for us, the biggest school district in the country has just shown in-person learning because COVID cases are rising in New York City. But with bars and indoor dining still open and available. The decision has a lot of people scratching their heads.

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[11:26:10]

BOLDUAN: It is the largest school district in the country. 1.1 million students, 1800 schools and as of this morning, New York City public schools are closed down once again. Students going back to remote learning after the city recorded a 3 percent positivity rate. Here is how the mayor explained the decision.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D-NY), NEW YORK CITY: We have to fight back the second wave. Our schools have been a safe, extraordinarily safe. We got to keep it that way. We can't just stand pat with a strategy that worked before when conditions are changing. We need to reset the equation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Joining me right now, New York City councilman, Mark Levine, he's the chair of the council's health committee. It's good to see you again councilman. Thanks for coming on.

This was not unexpected, he set the standard we knew that. But this is still a major blow and a well-known ER doctor in New York City put it this way. Should parents drop their kids off at the bar, indoor restaurants or the gym, all of which are still open? How does this make sense?

MARK LEVINE, CHAIRMAN, NYC COUNCIL HEALTH COMMITTEE: Kate, these priorities are totally backwards. Yes, New York City is in a second wave and cases are rising fast. We have to act. But schools should not have been the first thing that we closed. We should pause indoor dining, close gyms and salons, tell New Yorkers to start working at home again. None of that has been done.

So, families, teachers have gone through an incredibly traumatic 24 hours and we haven't taken the critical public health measures that we need. And when it all boils down to is today in New York City, a kid cannot learn in their classroom, but they can have a meal at indoor dining.

BOLDUAN: It just doesn't make sense. The science doesn't tell us that makes sense. And even short of the comparison of what else is still open in the city, Dr. Richard Besser, he's former head -- acting head of the CDC, he spoke out this morning and he said he thinks the decision was the wrong way to go as it was -- as it was laid out. Let me play for you his thinking.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BESSER: I think the city tied their hands when they were linked to that 3 percent community positivity rate, because they hit that. But they hit that and at the same time they've been able to maintain a safe environment in the schools. I was talking to a state health commissioner in another state and he was making the point that for a lot of children, being in the classroom where their mask wearing can be observed, where social distancing can be monitored is really the safest place for them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: So, should the city be reconsidering this decision right now?

LEVINE: I think we should be prioritizing reopening for elementary school students and students with special needs because we know there's costs and social emotional costs to online learning. And, in fact, there are 60,000 kids in New York City that don't even have a connected device. So, I'm not sure how this is going to work for them. I guess they'll have paper handouts.

We have got to figure this out. And we can improve safety protocols even further in our public schools, better testing for sure to make sure that kids, teachers and staff are safe. Let's move quickly on this while flattening the curve, which we must do. We all have to work harder on that and let's get our priorities right and move on to businesses where there's real risk. That's the action we need immediately.

BOLDUAN: Have you talked to the mayor? What's he not getting about this? Because what you're saying is science driven. LEVINE: I'm not sure. I think there's a concern about the economic impact on small businesses to close. But the solution would be direct financial assistance. We need the Senate to pass stimulus now in the lame duck which has direct aid to restaurants and gyms and other businesses. They've done this in Europe.