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Eight States Account for 51 Percent of U.S. COVID Hospitalizations; Taliban Now Control Half of Afghanistan's Provincial Capitals; Four Broward County Teachers Die from COVID Complications in 24 Hours. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired August 13, 2021 - 10:00   ET

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

ERICA HILL, CNN NEWSROOM: Of all those patients, COVID patients, are in just eight states, even though they only make up a quarter of the nation's population.

[10:00:07]

Things are so bad in Mississippi. A parking garage is now a field hospital. A doctor in Tennessee says there are, quote, no beds. In Texas, the state is now asking for federal assistance. One hospital there also setting up triage tents outside to handle the influx. And In Florida, devastating news out of Broward County. We're learning four teachers died from COVID-19 complications in the span of 24 hours and just days, of course, before the school year begins. We're going to have a full report on that in just a few minutes.

We have our team of reporters covering all of these angles for us across the country. Let's begin this morning with Health Reporter Jacqueline Howard. So, Jacqueline, what more do you already know right now about this authorization from the FDA for a third shot for severely immunocompromised folks?

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: This authorization for an additional dose, I can tell you, Erica, many immunocompromised patients say this gives them peace of mind. We're hearing from some patients who have said that it is great to be recognized. So they finally feel heard. And these are patients who may not have had an in the adequate immune response after receiving a first or second dose after receiving of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.

So with this FDA authorization, the FDA said that these are the people who are eligible for an additional dose, solid organ recipients or those who are diagnosed with conditions that are considered to have an equivalent level of immunocompromise.

And with organ transplant recipients, for instance, and they take immunosuppressive drugs to reduce their body's risk of rejecting the new organ and those drugs can be the reason why some might not have an adequate response after a first and second dose.

Now, for the general population, Erica, for everyone else, health officials say they're still looking at data to determine if or when a booster shot might be necessary. So acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock, she said this overnight when she authorized an additional dose for immunocompromised people.

She says, quote, today's action allows doctors to boost immunity in certain individuals who need extra protection from COVID-19. As we've previously states other individuals who are fully vaccinated are adequately protected and do not need an additional dose of COVID-19 vaccine at this time.

So that is where we stand right now, Erica. But I can tell you, this is a moment for the immunocompromised population.

HILL: Yes, it certainly is. Jacqueline Howard, thank you.

Turning our attention now to Texas, where Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo just issued a mask mandate for all public schools, nonreligious private schools and licensed child care centers. She is the latest official in the state to defy Republican Governor Greg Abbott's order preventing local governments and schools from requiring masks.

And this comes as Texas is facing a devastating surge in COVID-19 hospitalizations, approaching the peak, as you can see there, that the state saw during the 2020 holiday season.

CNN's Lucy Kafanov is outside LBJ Hospital in Houston where they have now set up overflow COVID-19 tents, which is really, I think, for so many people, you see just a bad flash back to what we saw last year.

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Erica. And devastating is exactly the right word. More than 10,000 Texans hospitalized for COVID-19 this week, at least 53 hospitals reporting zero ICU capacity. These are frightening numbers. Things are so bad, in fact, that the Republican Governor here, Greg Abbott, on Monday, requested all elective procedures to be halted at hospitals.

He's also directed the Texas Health Department to find additional medical staff from out of state to help cope with the surge. And at the same time, the governor is also making it illegal for local governments to pass public health measures, like mask mandates and other measures that could actually help us see a decline in cases.

Counties are fighting back, as you pointed out. Harris County, which, of course, includes the city of Houston, issuing its mask mandate late on Thursday evening. This was just hours after the county filed a lawsuit against Governor Abbott's orders banning mask mandates. Judge Lina Hidalgo wrote in her order there is -- and I quote, there is an unwritten contract between parents and schools and that is when our children are under the care of the schools, they do everything they can to keep them safe.

Now, mask wearing is now mandatory in all four of Texas' largest counties and officials there try to prevent children who are too young to get vaccinated from getting sick under this more deadly delta COVID surge. We also saw Representative Sheila Jackson Lee writing to President Biden yesterday asking for White House intervention in the state of Texas. She cited the emergency provision of nurses to states like Louisiana, Mississippi and Arizona, also led by Republican governors and slammed Governor Abbott for not reaching out to the White House for assistance to his struggling state.

[10:05:08]

Erica?

HILL: Lucy Kafanov with the latest for us there from Houston.

Turning now to Mississippi -- Lucy, thank you -- where the state just hit a record high for COVID hospitalizations, nearly 1,500 patients, the health department said more than 1,300 of those are unvaccinated.

CNN's Adrienne Broaddus is Jackson, where a field hospital has now taken over the parking garage of the University of Mississippi Medical Center. It is beginning to take patients in this morning as well. Adrienne, what more are we seeing on the ground?

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, right now, they continue to set up here and that overflow hospital is being set up to relieve the strain from the emergency department behind me. I want to take you guys inside a little later, but for now, use your imagination. If you walk into the ground level of the parking garage here, where you would normally see cars parked, there are at least 20 beds. These beds are going to be used to treat low acuity COVID-19 patients.

And for some of the staff here it is like deja vu. This is happening again. We saw this happened before. And there is a big plea from health officials for everyone who is unvaccinated to get the vaccine. Listen in.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When you're seeing a field hospital in a major academic medical center, we're pretty much on the -- at a collapse type system.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Almost 8,000 Mississippians have died from COVID. How many have died from the vaccine? Zero. We haven't verified a single death.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROADDUS: As of yesterday, the health department here said that the state is averaging at least 4,412 new cases every day. And as of now, the governor is also maintaining his position. He will not impose a mask mandate. At least 4,400 students are in quarantine and the governor here hoping that districts will make up their minds whether or not they want to allow masks in the classrooms. Back to you.

HILL: Adrienne Broaddus with the latest for us from Jackson, Adrienne, thank you.

For more on what is happening there on the ground in Mississippi, joining us is Dr. Randy Roth. He's Chief Medical Officer at Singing River Health System in Mississippi. It is good to have you with us. Your hospital system, Dr. Roth, tweeted, our situation is indescribable, noted the influx of patients was pretty much preventable. What are you seeing this morning?

DR. RANDY ROTH, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, SINGING RIVER HEALTH SYSTEM: We're seeing the point at full capacity. It is to the point where we're shutting down elective procedures, like bypass surgery, things that people need, even some early cancer surgeries that we're not going to be able to staff. The morale is low. Our staff is overworked. They're doing a lot of overtime to cover things. We're taking great care of patients still but the surge is still rising and I'm not sure that we're going to be able to meet the demands that we're seeing in the future.

HILL: I'm just going to let that sink in, the concern you won't be able to meet the demand. You bring up the staffing concerns as well. I spoke this week with a nurse who is also in the same River Health System who told me she had just submitted her resignation because she's so exhausted. She's an ICU nurse. She's so burnt out.

Here is a little bit more of the picture that she painted for us earlier this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NICHOLE ATHERTON, ICU NURSE, SINGING RIVER OCEAN SPRINGS HOSPITAL: I work in a 12-bed ICU. All 12 patients right now are all COVID. They are all unvaccinated. We do not have a fully vaccinated people in that ICU. And they are young. We are watching not grandparents this time around, parents, parents with young children. We have a mother right now who has never held her newborn baby.

To call us heroes but not do what you can to protect yourself and to protect us, it's just words. And words don't save lives. Actions save lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Actions save lives. You have really made it a priority to reach out to the community, I know, to encourage more people to get vaccinated, to do their part. You wrote earlier this month, choosing not to get vaccinated, which is everyone's right, puts unvaccinated people at significantly increased risk. How much of an impact do you think your outreach is having?

ROTH: One person at a time. If I can save one life, if I can approach students, if I can approach church groups, minority groups, and get in front of them and just get them to believe in the vaccination, it is worth it.

That nurse, I know her very well. The difference between the first wave and this wave is that we're seeing 30 and 35-year-old, 40-year- old patients die. And when you talk about withdrawal of care and you're speaking to their brothers and sisters or their parents instead of dealing with an 80-year-old that is kind of in that circle life where it is supposed to happen, it is a devastating -- from a spiritual and emotional standpoint, there is only so much our nurses and frontline people can take.

[10:10:05]

So it is about one shot at a time, one vaccination at a time. Trust and please get vaccinated. Right now, out of 140 inpatients, about 12 or 13 have completed their vaccination cycle. So it is not bulletproof but it sure is a good first step.

HILL: I mean, you talk about the lasting impact. I can remember at the start of the pandemic here in New York City talking with a cardiologist who had been repurposed back to the emergency room to help with the influx of patients of COVID-19 patients. And she talked about her very real concerns for the lingering PTSD that frontline workers wouldn't start to experience for at least a year. But now, we're seeing it sort of compounded.

I mean, you just touched on that. But in terms of available resources, I mean, do the staff -- are they even finding the time to take advantage of those resources to take care of themselves, to deal with what they're seeing on a daily basis?

ROTH: Well, we advocate for all of our employees, our medical staff, included. You have to take time for yourself, whether it is physical exercise, going home to your family, taking some time. But we signed up for this. And I don't think that I can expect a lot of our nurses and doctors just to walk away. They're putting in extra hours and not only the extra hours but the intensity of the work is unbelievable.

I've never been in the service, I'm not military, but I would imagine it is very consistent with what they see in the field and having to make decisions about life and death. The isolation of this disease, patients in the ICU and our E.R., unable to have family and visitors, puts an extra amount of stress on our staff to communicate over the phone to their families and make decisions that are so hard to make.

We do offer services to our employees and some do take advantage of it. We have certain rooms where they can go do to and rest. But right now, it just seems like they keep coming and keep coming. And we're taking great care of them.

HILL: Really quickly, the governor extended the state's emergency order for another 30 days but did says there would be no more lockdowns or mask mandates. Would you like to see some mask mandates in place?

ROTH: No, obviously, the masking is controversial and it is political, it is very polarizing. But from my standpoint, having four adolescents in high school, I'm not sure what he's waiting for. These kids need to be in school. I think they learn better than being virtual. And I would advocate for a mask mandate until we see a decline. The number of cases that we're seeing positive every day continues to algorithmically go up. So we can do four things. We can mask, we can wash hands, we can socially distance and then get vaccinated. I would advocate that we do all four of those.

HILL: Dr. Randy Roth, thank you for your time this morning and thank you for everything that you and your staff are doing.

ROTH: Thank you.

HILL: Still to come this morning, breaking news, four teachers in one school district all dying of COVID in a single day. We're live from Broward County, Florida, with more on that story just ahead.

Plus, dramatic new developments in Afghanistan, more cities falling to the Taliban, including the country's second largest Kandahar. The Pentagon now working to evacuate Americans still in the region.

And the lawyer for Britney Spears claiming vindication this morning after her father says he will step down from her conservatorship. So what does this mean for her legal battle ahead?

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[10:15:00]

HILL: The Taliban now in control of half of Afghanistan's provincial capitals, swiftly taking command of at least 17 cities in the last week, several of them major population centers. A number of other locations are surrounded or under siege and the U.S. is now acting fast to get Americans in the country out, 3,000 U.S. troops on their way to Kabul to help the drawdown at the U.S. embassy.

CNN's Nick Paton Walsh is joining me now live from London. I feel like every time I look at my email, Nick, we are learning about something else as the situation worsens.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Yes, I mean, it is staggering. It's a week that nobody, I think, in the 20-year application in Afghanistan thought it would be remotely possible. It just shows you the gap between what the U.S. said it was doing and what actually appears to have been the reality.

I think to do justice to the Afghan forces, they have found themselves in these larger cities isolated, cut off by road, unable to resupply by air, and then slowly, the kind of vises tightened on the key major cities, literally, in the last 24, 48 hours, second largest, city of Kandahar, third largest, Herat, the deeply symbolic city of Lashkar Gah, they have all fallen very quickly.

Now, we seem to be at 17 provincial capitals, when a week ago, they idea of one seemed a little farfetched because everyone thought the Taliban would stay out in the rural areas. Focus now on Kabul.

And even remarkably, while yesterday, I think the debate was would there be a siege, could there be an encirclement, when will the Taliban going to advance. A lot of the discussion I hear now is about the possibility of negotiation to prevent some sort of awful situation in the capital city of 6 million people.

Now, diplomacy has been being pushed by the U.S., very unsuccessfully for quite some time now and they haven't given up on it yet. So we'll have to see whether we get the idea that maybe as these 3,000 U.S. Marines turn up in Kabul's airport to provide a security bubble for diplomats to leave, but make no mistake, it will have an impact on the capital generally, one that maybe you might see the Taliban choosing to challenge.

[10:20:00]

Remember, they managed to penetrate very successfully into Kabul over the past decade, even once laying siege to NATO H.Q. there where the Americans were based for a whole afternoon. So, make no mistake, it could be messy in the next two to three weeks here.

But there's also the possibility that diplomacy tries, the Taliban capitalize on their territorial gains, it is going to be difficult to see where we really are. But the impact of the United States yesterday, saying they were sending in more troops into Kabul to get their people out then they necessarily had to withdrawal as part of the military departure, I think that upset a lot of Afghans I spoke to. It is going to be a very theatrical way to leave and we'll see quite what condition they leave Kabul and the rest of Afghanistan when that happens. Erica?

HILL: Nick Paton Walsh with the latest for us, Nick, thank you.

Joining me now, CNN Military Analyst Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. He's the former commanding general for Europe and the 7th Army, always good to talk to you.

You wrote a piece in April saying at the time that President Biden made the right call. It was time to pull out of Afghanistan. Do you still believe that and did you anticipate the situation deteriorating quite this quickly?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: I do still believe that, Erica. It was time to pull out. Unfortunately, the planning and the execution didn't quite go the way the Biden administration thought it would go. It certainly was much more intense. The Taliban has become very brazen in the way they are attacking the cities.

Nick just brought it up. The thought was that they were going to stay more in the rural provinces and continue with their very successful insurgencies. But, in fact, what we've seen is a much faster transition, almost from an insurgency to a near conventional type of fight where they are going into the cities because they have become more brazen, they have used psychological warfare and attempted to threaten and intimidate the security forces of Afghanistan. So all of this went down much faster than anyone thought it would.

You know, most Afghan watchers predict that things were going to be bad. Some thought they were going to go faster than what the administration was saying. I was one of those. Even I didn't consider that it would happen as quickly as it has with the momentum that it has now.

HILL: And there also we're seeing there are reports that senior Afghan government officials joined the Taliban in Herat after the Taliban took control of this city. The Taliban is claiming that thousands of Afghan security forces have joined their ranks. I want to point out, CNN has not been able to independently verify all of these claims from the Taliban, but has viewed video of one prominent Afghan politician with the militant group.

We look at the way that they are now surrounding Kabul as well. I mean, at this point, when they're controlling, access essentially are getting close to controlling the roads in and out of Kabul, how soon before they really do control the country as a whole?

HERTLING: Yes, I can't see your picture, Erica, if you showed one, but I think the politician you're talking about is Ismail Khan, who is considered the lion of Herat. He has been fighting for Afghanistan since the -- he's 70 years old, before even the Soviet invasion.

What I'd suggest is, yes, this is very damning in terms of how the Afghan government is controlling their forces in the provinces. You know, there are 34 provinces in Afghanistan. What we're seeing now, if we see the maps of the ones that the Taliban have overcome, is a great deal of red or black in those provinces that are showing Taliban- controlled area.

When you have Kabul as the capital of the country in the center of all that, it would almost likely replacing Washington, D.C. and having Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, and the states surrounding that capital being held by insurgents. It is a similar situation. So even if the Afghan government does hold the capital, it is going to be a very tough fight defending it and I think that is why we saw the -- Admiral Kirby's statement yesterday on what was going on with the deployment of additional soldiers for the airport to help to get folks out.

HILL: Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, I always appreciate your insight. Thank you.

HERTLING: Thank you, Erica.

HILL: Up next, breaking news, four educators in Broward County, Florida, have died from COVID in a single day. We have a live report ahead.

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[10:25:00]

HILL: Breaking news out of Florida. Four Broward County educators have died in a 24-hour span from COVID-19 related complications. That's according to the president of the Broward County Teachers Union.

CNN's Leyla Santiago is in Fort Lauderdale this morning with more for us. Leyla, what more are we learning about these educators?

LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Erica, we're learning that it was three teachers, one teaching assistant who died between Monday night and early Wednesday morning, that information coming from the president of the teachers union. And, listen, school hasn't even started yet. That begins next week here in Broward County. Broward County Public Schools reporting that they've had 138 employees that have already tested positive.

[10:30:07]

Listen to what the chairman of the board just told CNN.