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First Move with Julia Chatterley
Dr. Anthony Fauci Talks A Partial Reopening Of The U.S. Economy On May; China Limits Information About The Origins Of The Virus; Major Oil Producing Nations Agree On Supply Cuts, But Plenty Of Challenges Remain. Aired 9-10a ET
Aired April 13, 2020 - 09:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: CNN's coverage continues right now.
[09:00:07]
JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN BUSINESS ANCHOR, FIRST MOVE: Live from New York, I'm Julia Chatterley. This is FIRST MOVE, and here's your need to know.
The month of May. Dr. Anthony Fauci talks a partial reopening of the U.S. economy.
Research restrictions. China limits information about the origins of the virus.
And historic, but insufficient. Major oil producing nations agree on supply cuts, but plenty of challenges remain.
It's Monday, let's make a move.
Welcome once again to all our FIRST MOVErs around the globe. Great to have you with us and I hope everyone that celebrates Easter was able to connect
with family and friends, in some way, of course.
This year we saw the first Zoom Easter and Passover. Technology is keeping us together in these uncertain times, and that is incredibly critical at
this moment.
Zooming now briefly to the market, Wall Street back in action after the long holiday weekend. Futures as you can see a touch lower at this moment
following the best week for the S&P 500 since the mid-1970s. Earnings season begins this week in earnest, too, and will tell us more about the
economic fallout faced by big and small companies alike.
The handover from Asia was cautious particularly in Japan as you can see. Hong Kong markets were closed for Easter Monday. Big news in the oil
sector, too, a historic supply cut deal from the major oil producers, but a drop in an ocean of oil compared with the fall in demand that we've seen
amid the lockdowns, shut-ins around the world. More detail on what we saw there in just a second.
Before that Goldman Sachs suggesting investors will look through earnings season thanks to the trillions and trillions of dollars of stimulus from
the Federal Reserve. That stock markets may have seen the worst. Also assuming there is no second wave of COVID-19 infections and of course, that
remains the big question as the world watches, the likes of China, Spain and Italy's efforts at even easing restrictions.
As I mentioned there, Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN this weekend that the U.S. could see some easing of the lockdown measures in May. To our drivers now
and Richard Quest joins me with more.
Richard, interesting to see Dr. Anthony Fauci, talking about the possibility of seeing a restriction or reducing the restrictions in May. My
view is, we need, if we're going to get a taskforce that covers every sector of the U.S. economy -- retailers, pharmaceuticals, the construction
industry -- just to give their perspective on how and when perhaps they could ease the lockdown measures that we've got right now.
RICHARD QUEST, CNN BUSINESS ANCHOR AND EDITOR-AT-LARGE: If you accept, Julia, and good morning to you, and I hope you had a restful weekend and a
good weekend. If you accept that it is not going to be simply switching a lightbulb on, a light switch moment to restart the economy, you have to
understand who goes back to work, in what order, what precautions are necessary and are you ready if there is a second wave of infections?
So I think the earnings season will be extremely interesting not because of what it's going to tell us about what we've seen so far, butt what
companies are telling us about how fit they are for when things reopen.
Everything now in terms of numbers, is not about the mirror, it's about the map forward and earning season, economic statistics. We've got a whole slew
of them this week, Julia that will be coming out. For example, we've got industrial production. We've got business inventories. We've got
residential construction, all these numbers.
We don't necessarily care about what they tell us about what's happened, but from them, we can extrapolate what happens next.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, we know it's bad. And to your exact point, I agree with you. There needs to be some synchronicity, waves of different sectors,
perhaps coming in different times, depending on what's available to them in terms of testing, of course, too.
To this exact point, the point that Goldman Sachs made about we've seen the worst for markets if we don't see a second wave of infections at this
moment. They said look ahead to 2021. How do we look ahead? How do these companies forecast when we have so little clarity at this moment about what
the future looks like?
QUEST: I think there's a lot more clarity than that in a sense. Each individual company knows its current position. It knows its order book,
cancelled and real. It knows its employee numbers. It knows its future direction.
[09:05:04]
QUEST: Now, what it doesn't know is the date upon which it's going to be able to get back up to full steam or how consumers are going to respond.
But it plans on the basis of what it does know about its own house.
I've been doing a lot of reading about this over the weekend, and more and more what I'm hearing the experts say is, companies look to their knitting.
You control what you can. You get the grand loans that you can, and you prepare yourself for what might come.
And I think, bearing in mind, Julia, that from those numbers last week, those unemployment numbers, the initial claims, we were able to extrapolate
quite a lot of data.
If you think of how the week is going to proceed with data, I think by the time we get to Friday, we'll have a better idea of how bad and the prospect
for what.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, it's going to be fascinating to see what this is also going to come down to. It's confidence of workers to get back to work and
confidence of consumers, to your point, to get back out there and for that we need to get this right. Richard Quest, thank you so much.
QUEST: Thank you.
CHATTERLEY: All right. To Europe now on a milestone for one of the continent's hardest hit nations. Factory and construction workers in Spain
returned to their jobs as the country relaxes some of the lockdown restrictions.
Scott McLean joins us from Madrid. Scott, great to have you with us once again. So cautious start, specific sectors going back to work, too. My
conversation there with Richard, what are workers saying about how confident they are to be back at work at this moment?
SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's far from unanimous right now. So officially, Julia, the lockdown ends on April 26th at the absolute
earliest, but as you said about 300,000 workers in Madrid alone will get to go back to their jobs beginning today in sectors like construction and
manufacturing.
I'll just show you where we are. We are at the Principe Pio Station where you can see this is the intersection of several different metro lines. It
is several different subway lines. It's one of the busiest in all of Spain.
And you can see even today, officials say there's a fraction of the normal ridership. But there's a steady flow of people here. Police are actually
handing out these surgical masks to everyone coming in and out, everyone who wants them and you'd really be hard pressed to find anyone who is not
wearing them.
This is a scene that would have been completely unthinkable at the beginning of this outbreak, Julia, because there weren't even enough of
these masks for hospital workers, let alone for people on the metro system.
We spoke to one woman earlier today who said, in the two weeks, she hasn't even left her house to buy bread and so she is understandably nervous now
about going back to her job, which she cannot do from home.
We've had other people who say they're pretty happy to be going back because the bottom line is, they need the money. They have to be able to
pay their bills.
This decision though, is not without controversy, especially considering that Spain is still getting about 3,000 or 4,000 new infections of the
coronavirus every single day. The President of the Catalan Region, called it reckless and irresponsible. And also keep in mind that the reason that
these workers were told to stay home two weeks into the outbreak in the first place was so that the hospitals, that the ICUs weren't completely
overwhelmed.
And remember that Spain still has 13 hotels that they're using as hospital wards, in addition to a Convention Center.
One other quick thing that I'll show you, Julia, and that's just this incoming train here. You can get a sense of how many people are on it and
how people are able, with some exceptions to keep, you know, one or two meter distance.
But again, the reason why these masks are so important, is just in case people cannot do the social distancing, they can't keep their distance on
these trains that that have the masks as sort of an extra layer of protection.
But whether this was a good decision or a bad decision, we're all going to find out in the next numbers in a couple of days or a couple of weeks from
now.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, Scott, you raised some really excellent points. The challenge here for the economy of remaining under such stringent lockdown
measures, But to your point, they are still seeing plenty of cases on a daily basis.
So just watching what the impact of this is going to be is going to be critical, not just to Spain, but for everyone watching. Stay safe, Scott.
Great to have you with us. Thank you for that.
To China now, where the nation is reporting 108 new infections including 10 locally transmitted cases. It's the first time since March 10th that China
is seeing double digit numbers in those locally transmitted cases.
In the meantime, the Chinese government is imposing restrictions on the publication of academic research into the origins of COVID-19.
Ivan Watson is live in Hong Kong with all the details for us. Ivan, great to have you with us. We can talk about the number of cases, but I do want
to hone in on the restrictions that I know your investigative work suggests are being placed on where this virus came from, and it's not just Chinese
people, it's the whole world who wants to know more about how this happened.
[09:10:09]
IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think everybody on the planet can agree that the more research available on the
coronavirus, the better right now, but we have learned that the Chinese government has imposed these new regulations that restrict the publication
of research conducted by academic institutions about the coronavirus in China.
Now, it was a bit of a detective story to learn about this. Last week, we spotted a web page on the site of one of China's most elite universities,
that's Fudan University that actually published these new guidelines.
It said, "Any paper that traces the origin of the virus must be strictly managed." And there were instructions that academics had to submit
applications to a state committee to get permission to then publish the results of their research.
Now, we called the number of a Ministry of Education official who was listed on this webpage, as well as e-mail address and phone number named to
confirm this and the individual who answered the phone said yes, there are, in fact these new guidelines, but this is not for public consumption.
And shortly after that phone call, that webpage disappeared from the university's website. But we have since learned that at least two other
Chinese universities have published similar guidelines, managing the publication of this information.
Now, why is this so important? First of all, the first known cases of coronavirus were diagnosed in the Chinese City of Wuhan in December of last
year. There was a trend of scientists and doctors when they tried to share information about this, to sound the alarm that they were persecuted by
different levels of the Chinese government.
The most famous case was Dr. Li Wenliang, who later actually after being summoned to the police and reprimanded for going public about the
coronavirus, caught the disease and died of it in February.
We have reached out to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of Science and Technology and have not heard anything back from these Chinese
government institutions.
But we have spoken with a number of researchers around the world. Their first word for this is censorship and they argue that this is an attempt by
the Chinese government to continue to manage the message about the coronavirus especially its origin which has become this real political
football between the Trump administration and the Chinese government -- Julia.
CHATTERLEY: And that will continue clearly because one, the restriction of information helps no one and everyone wants to make sure that nothing like
this can ever happen again. So we will continue to focus on this.
Ivan, great work. Thank you for that. Ivan Watson there in Hong Kong for us.
The OPEC Plus oil nations have agreed a record production cut of near 10 million barrels a day. The unprecedented deal is an attempt to stabilize a
market upended by a devastating drop in demand, and of course, the brutal price war between the biggest players.
John Defterios joins us now. John, a historic deal, but already big analysts are coming out and saying, look, it's simply insufficient in the
face of the overwhelming demand destruction that we're seeing around the world. I think you and I agree, even if this is a big deal.
JOHN DEFTERIOS, CNN BUSINESS EMERGING MARKETS EDITOR: Yes, it's an underwhelming response by the market because we're unclear Julia what's
going to happen in the third quarter. It has settled in here at about seven billion people have in the world, nearly half are in lockdown. So that
means there is no demand.
We know it has dropped about 30 percent in this current month, and does that carry on to May and then June? This is a huge question mark, but we
cannot sneeze at the deal. I mean, it's nearly 10 million barrels a day from OPEC Plus minus what Mexico refused to cut. That was the extra 300,000
barrels.
And they have this math here, Julia, and it's 10, roughly from OPEC Plus. They are counting on four or five from the U.S., Norway, Canada and a
couple of others in terms of dropping production by the end of the year. I think that's real, but it's hard to count right now because of the
antitrust concerns and then they're saying by Wednesday, we're going to start hearing from the IAE and others, the industrialized countries, how
much are they going to buy to put into their strategic petroleum reserves?
This is going to be done, because it's a good price, but also to mop up the excess demand and support prices. So they're thinking all of these things
will add up to 20 million barrels. What's the market saying? Show us the results before we start coming back into this market in a big way.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, still so much uncertainty. President Trump tweeted that this was a de facto rescue for U.S. jobs. But you know I look at the price
of oil at this moment and as you and I have discussed many times, it's not high enough to cushion some of these shale producers. They're going to need
more support surely or higher prices.
DEFTERIOS: I would say that's a premature victory lap by President Trump. He did a fantastic job of ending the price war and bringing Saudi Arabia
and Russia together but $20.00 to $25.00 a barrel where we are today does not rescue the 10 million plus jobs. And I'm thinking of auto dealers and
the barbecue houses and the estate agents. It is not just those on the drilling rigs or in the services department. So there's a long way to go.
This should mop up a lot of oil, two billion barrels by the end of 2020. It should have the desired effect -- just not yet. Abdulaziz bin Salman, the
Minister of Energy for Saudi Arabia said that OPEC Plus is alive and well. Julia, I'd say it's revived.
We had a pressure on him and Saudi Arabia in general on Capitol Hill saying you have to have a deal or the tariffs will come back on or we'll stop the
weapon sales. So he called another meeting on Sunday night making sure he had his ducks in a row there, Julia. He did not want to have Monday trading
without a deal. But they have to restore confidence in the overall market that this will be sustained and delivered.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, absolutely. If this is a mop up, you need -- what -- a million mops, not just one, quite frankly, for all the excess supplies
still out there.
JOHN Defterios, thank you so much for that.
DEFTERIOS: A great way of saying it.
CHATTERLEY: I know. Working on my imagery. All right. Thank you, John. All right, we're going to take a break on FIRST MOVE. Coming up on the show
though a FinTech fix. Could online lenders be the key to unlocking speedy small business support?
Plus, food chain fears. Concerns about the U.S. meat supply as coronavirus forces plants to close. That's coming up. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHATTERLEY: Welcome back to FIRST MOVE. U.S. futures still pointing to a modestly lower Wall Street open after last week's market rally. The Dow and
the S&P finishing the holiday shortened week with double digit gains. It was the best week for the S&P in fact, since 1974.
[09:20:10]
CHATTERLEY: Investors bracing for a whole array of data this week from corporate earnings to U.S. retail sales and first quarter GDP growth
numbers, of course, from China and the latest U.S. jobless claims numbers on Thursday.
Now, as we await the opening bell, oil stocks are higher this morning premarket after the OPEC Plus decision to cut oil production, too.
In the meantime, congressional leaders will try once again this week to pass an additional $250 billion in aid for small businesses struggling to
survive the COVID-19 crisis.
Small businesses employ around half of the U.S. workforce. They're a critical driver of the economy, but the Paycheck Protection Program has had
a pretty rocky rollout so far with firms scrambling to secure loans that should help them save jobs.
What more is required? Joining us now, Karen Mills, a former Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, the SBA under the Obama
administration and is currently a senior fellow at Harvard Business School. She's also the author of the book "FinTech, Small Business and the American
Dream."
Karen, fantastic to have you with us. Overwhelmed is the word I would use just in terms of the sheer volume of loans that are trying to be created
here to support small business, is and are FinTech lenders, perhaps a key to getting money out quicker, particularly to some of the smallest
businesses in the nation.
KAREN MILLS, FORMER ADMINISTRATOR OF THE U.S. SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION: Well, I think this is going to be the week that we see
FinTech come in and maybe even save the day. You know, the next two weeks are critical for America's small business owners.
As you know, they have really been struggling. They only have about three or four weeks of cash on hand, and they've been closed for that period of
time.
So you saw it in the unemployment numbers, and as you said, these are half of Americans jobs.
So we did have one week of the plan so far, and as you said it was bumpy. Banks are not known for moving quickly. And this is $349 billion worth. In
my tenure, we had a big crisis, and we did a record year, we did $30 billion. So this is 10X that volume.
So what we're seeing now is that people are applying. They say they've got about $200 billion approved, but only about one percent according to some
information I received this morning seems to be flowing into the hands of small businesses.
So the question is, what are we going to do to get the money out there? And over the weekend, we had some good news, which is that Square and PayPal
and Intuit which runs QuickBooks got approved to be direct SBA lenders, so this could be a real game changer for small business owners because
QuickBooks, for instance, has a TurboTax like calculator where you can go on, and it will tell you how to get through all of these calculations, and
it may even have a button you can press and it uploads all your information from QuickBooks.
So that kind of thing could take away a lot of the pain, then we just have to get the funding to flow, which means that the Fed has to start buying
this paper that they promised to buy, so the banks and others can replenish their balance sheet, and then we need Congress to give us more money
because we're going to run out.
CHATTERLEY: I mean, you made a point that -- and I had the same thing over the weekend -- despite the fact that a lot of these loans are being
processed, just one percent of small businesses are receiving the money. And a lot of that, according to the lenders is a backlog of the Small
Business Administration because they haven't given out approval or authorization numbers, because they are completely overwhelmed by the
number of elements that they have to go through here in order to give that approval.
In fact, they're being told, and they're telling the banks, whatever you've received so far is not enough for you to be able to release the money. Is
it just a case of bringing FinTech lenders here in to provide money or does more firepower and support need to be given to the Small Business
Administration to unlock that choke point?
MILLS: I think they brought in some firepower in the form of Amazon, and my understanding is that they have actually gotten some of that bottleneck
moving. So e-trend is up and moving, and they've got about $200 billion through that pipeline.
Now the question is, where's the funding coming from? And in fact, the funding comes from the banks and their balance sheets, so I'm not sure why
they haven't pressed the button and transferred the cash.
Part of it is they're kind of worried they're going to run out of money on their balance sheet and they want to see this facility up and running, and
I did hear this weekend that that might take 10 days and we do not have 10 days.
Also for the FinTechs, they don't have a lot of money on their balance sheet so they have to line up the cash.
Now, they're pretty good. They've been working for two weeks on the tech, you know, they're getting the 200 people and coding all weekend and all
week, and they're going to be fine on the front end in processing, but they've got to get the cash flowing as well.
[09:25:24]
MILLS: So this is the week of the cash. But I do want to shout out to those frontline SBA workers and bankers and small business owners who, you know,
are counseling and helping small businesses. This is overwhelming and we will get through -- small business owners will help each other through it
as well.
CHATTERLEY: How many even in the best case scenario as we see the money flowing, and let's assume that Congress agrees more money for this program
-- how many businesses in the United States do you think close and never reopen or decide they simply can't make it through this process? How many
we talking? Because we have 30 million small and medium-sized businesses in this country? How many do we lose?
MILLS: You know, I'm really worried about this. And I've said, although it's just a guess, you know, we could lose 20 percent of our small business
owners. There's a lot who are on the edge anyway, and they could just decide, you know, this is too much for me, I'm going to turn away from my
business and do something else.
And the problem is, we saw this in 2009. When we lose our small business owners in our economy, it's very hard to start them up again. So I've been
talking to Congress about a program called Restart America, where we're going to have to have local grants, you know, up to $10,000 grants to say,
you know what, maybe this is a good time for you to start a new business because we could really have trouble getting a V-shape or a U-shaped
recovery if we lose our small business owners. That's why this program is just fundamental.
And I'm glad to see Congress put a priority on it, but they better get the next tranche of money out, too.
CHATTERLEY: I know. I mean, if we're talking about 20 percent of small and medium-sized enterprises, we're talking six million small businesses that
don't make it past this process. In your mind, as Congress battles over whether to give more money to states, whether to give more money to
healthcare workers, which indeed is required, should they together be prioritizing this program specifically, simply because this is about saving
jobs today?
MILLS: Well, I do want to give a shout out to all our healthcare and hospital workers, Spalding Hospital that I was talking to yesterday, you
know, these are our frontline workers. We need to support them.
But small business is the backbone of the economy, and what I say to Congress now is more money and keep it simple. We do not need more
restrictions. I think the pipes will start flowing to small businesses soon, like this week.
And I think these FinTechs are going to give the banks a run for their money. It's going to be interesting to watch in the future how this is a
game changer for FinTechs. They've been struggling for recognition. They aren't federally approved and regulated.
If they do a great job here, which I'm betting actually they will and serve small business owners, small businesses are going to remember this and
they're going to learn to trust these providers, and banks are going to step up and try to be more responsive as a result.
So I'm hopeful for this week, although we still have a long way to go.
CHATTERLEY: Yes. This adds a lot more competition to your point. This is the moment you build clients and you build clients for life. Karen,
fantastic to have you with us. Karen Mills, former Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration and Senior Fellow at Harvard Business
School. Stay safe, Karen, and great to have you with us. Thank you for that.
The opening bell is next. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:32:13]
CHATTERLEY: Welcome back to FIRST MOVE. I'm Julia Chatterley and U.S. stocks are trading for the first session this week. We are a touch lower
this morning as you can see, around half a percentage point across the board. Light trading today. Many global investors are out for Easter
Monday.
We've also got earnings season to keep an eye on. It kicks off tomorrow in the United States when JPMorgan and Wells Fargo will be reporting results.
We've also got companies like GE, FedEx and Starbucks. They've already said that they have little visibility into how bad things will be once we get
beyond the first quarter of this year.
Bank of America is predicting earnings could fall some 29 percent for 2020 overall. Goldman sees a drop of around a third, so even bigger than that,
perhaps even more. The challenge here, of course, is predicting something about the future when things remain so uncertain on the health front.
Now, the CEO of Smithfield is warning that America's meat supply could be at risk after he closed down one of the country's largest meat packing
facilities. Several of the employees had tested positive for COVID-19. Clare Sebastian joins me now. Clare, great to have you with us, just put
his comments in perspective. How important is this particular factory and the operations of this country to U.S. meat supply?
CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Julia. Smithfield is the world's biggest pork producer, and this plant is one of their biggest
accounts, according to the CEO for four to five percent of America's pork supply.
So it is significant, this one facility, but there are more than a few cases there according to the Governor of South Dakota, 240 or so out of 430
active cases in the state overall. So that's more than half, so the idea is to close the plant down, they say until further notice, to sort of get a
handle on this -- 3,700 people work there, so the idea would be to protect the rest of them.
But the CEO, as you mentioned, is against this. He said, look, this could cause severe perhaps disastrous repercussions for many in the supply chain,
first and foremost. He says, our nation's livestock farmers and particularly crucial what he said, we have a stark choice as a nation, we
are either going to produce food or not even in the face of COVID-19.
His point is that food producers are essential, that they have to keep working, even in the face of this pandemic. Controversial though, given the
number of cases in that one facility.
CHATTERLEY: Absolutely. And these workers are also on the front lines. It's just a different kind of front line. Everything has to be done to protect
the safety in terms of social distancing and protective equipment.
It's a huge challenge here, Clare. It's a challenge as well that another big producer in this country faces and that's Amazon, and they're
restricting now the number of people that they're willing to send groceries out to. You have to join a waitlist if you're not already a customer.
[09:35:05]
SEBASTIAN: Yes, you can't just sign up now today for Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods, you have to sign up for an invitation and wait to be called. So
essentially a wait list. Now this is something that we see a lot of people who deliver groceries are doing. For example, Ocado in the U.K., they
aren't accepting any new signups. They are simply allocating to existing customers and the most vulnerable people and Amazon rolling out a number of
different measures as well.
They are reducing hours in certain Whole Foods stores so they can be used to fulfill online orders. One store in California, by the way, has been
converted into a warehouse, essentially, a fulfillment center for online orders and they are they say going to introduce a new system which is a
sort of virtual wait in line for people waiting for delivery stores, because as we all know, these delivery stores are essentially currency and
this time. It is very difficult to get one.
These companies is stretched to capacity. Amazon says they've already ramped up order capacity by 60 percent. They're trying to do more, but they
are also facing, you know, not any friction in the workplace with these safety measures, but also employees at risk of getting sick, so this is a
problem that's difficult to staff.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, it's one of the ongoing challenges. Clare Sebastian, thank you so much for that.
Now, as President Trump muses reopening the U.S. economy by May the first, as we've heard, Infectious Disease experts, like Dr. Anthony Fauci are
still calling for a great deal of caution.
The final decisions, of course, will come from state governors. Among those who've had the virus and recovered, there are growing numbers who are ready
for work, and this is where antibody testing becomes so crucial. Dr. Fauci thinks those tests will be ready in a week or so.
Our next guest advocates mass testing, but also has concerns about possible reinfections, too. Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding is epidemiologist and a health
economist at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. Fantastic to have you with us once again, sir.
I remember us talking right at the beginning when we were watching what was happening in China and you're one of the first that said the infection rate
here is far higher than people realize. So thank you for your guidance at that point. Where do you think we are at this stage in the United States?
Are we ready for the discussion about reopening?
DR. ERIC FEIGL-DING, EPIDEMIOLOGIST AND HEALTH ECONOMIST, HARVARD CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: I think reopening is still very, very risky and
dangerous considering that so much of our testing is still after all of these months, still bottlenecked.
There are estimates the undercount of the actual cases in the United States. It could be anywhere between 10 and 100X lower than the actual
count of infected people. And this is worrisome for many, many reasons.
But even if we now have masks because we think that perhaps 25 percent of all patients who are infected could be completely asymptomatic or pre-
symptomatic. In Iceland, they think it could be even 50 percent, and with that many people spreading the virus, to say that we could reopen within
just a matter of weeks is still very, very risky.
I don't think we've plateaued yet, and we can't really know for sure if we plateau without adequate testing.
CHATTERLEY: Is that why it's not just about testing, but also perhaps essential to have antibody testing just to give us a sense of, of how many
people in the U.S. population -- we will leave out the rest of the world -- may have already suffered with this virus without even knowing? Is this
going to be a critical element, too, and how good is that the technology, the science that we have on this regard?
FEIGL-DING: Right. So, antibody testing is different from regular nucleic acid from the virus. Antibody testing tests your blood for antibodies,
which are basically your own molecule that fights the virus.
It means you previously had it at some point in the past few months, up to a year. The issue is, there's one study that says one in three people who
previously recovered from COVID-19 still have very, very low levels or no levels at all, five percent have no antibody whatsoever, and one in three
have very low.
So the issue is, how reliable is this? Do those people have immunity? We don't know for sure. And the test for the serology, this antibody testing
is still being validated. We want to know how accurate it is. Hopefully, we'll get answers soon.
But should we carry around antibody immunity passports? It's a little early and again, that opens a whole can of worms around many other issues.
CHATTERLEY: I mean, this is what China is doing. You now get a QR code on your mobile phone that says that you don't have the virus at this stage,
never mind whether you have the antibodies or not. So it's just one step.
You've also been tweeting about South Korea and the suggestions of reactivation. Do you think there's reactivation going on with people having
symptoms, they are not having symptoms and then testing positive again or do you think it comes down to faulty tests?
[09:40:08]
FEIGL-DING: It's a combination of faulty tests where the nucleic acid PCR test is only 50 percent accurate. There's a lot of false negative. But in
addition, we know that there are problems of people getting reactivated, and that means people who have recovered -- fever all gone, multiple
negative tests, a few weeks later, they have a brand new spike in their fever and symptoms all over again, and this is where we don't know.
These people, they supposedly have immunity. I bet their antibody tests would come up positive, yet they reactivate for some reason, whatsoever.
This virus is so new. Again, we spoke two months ago, and since then, the world has completely changed and we're still learning more about the virus.
So it's a little bit too early to reopen business as usual, starting May 1st. I think there's a lot more ways to go before we can do that.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, we've got to go very, very carefully. I wonder how closely you're watching what's happening in Sweden. There is a lot of people that
are looking at what happened with Sweden. They didn't announce the broader stay-at-home orders, the lockdown measures. They're still testing for
people. They have had more cases and incidents than countries around them that have, but the economic damage being wrought, perhaps will be a lot
less through this result.
What do you make of what Sweden is doing? And is there some kind of model in there perhaps for continuing the social distancing and measures like
that, but at least beginning to get back to some degree of normality?
FEIGL-DING: Right. So for example, Sweden and South Korea both have distancing, but they actually -- neither countries have severe lockdowns,
neither did the island of Taiwan. And so it's a funny combination. Again, Singapore also had no lockdowns for a while.
Again, if you have very high testing, then you catch people much earlier. It's called frontier testing, as I say. Instead of testing in the hospital
like New York City, where nobody else unless you're hospitalized gets a test, these countries are testing at the frontier.
As soon as you get symptoms, you're quarantined, isolated and traced, and that could be another way you could actually defeat this.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, bring it back once again to testing and tracing and the job that the Taiwanese and the South Koreans did in the early stages. Dr.
Eric Feigl-Ding, great to have your insights. Stay in touch with us, please, and stay safe as well. Thank you. Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding there,
epidemiologist with the Chan School.
All right, coming up on FIRST MOVE, as coronavirus takes a great toll on police officers and firefighters, a new app is launched to protect our
first responders and get them the testing they need. All the details straight ahead. Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:46:10]
CHATTERLEY: Two tech Titans teaming up. Apple is partnering with Google to fight in the battle against coronavirus. The two rivals plan to release
software tools that will catalog newly infected people and everyone they've been in recent contact with. That's called tracing as we were just
discussing.
Meanwhile, Stanford University is also teaming up with Apple launching a new app that connects first responders to drive-thru testing sites. If they
have coronavirus symptoms, they get scheduled for priority testing.
Joining us now to discuss, Dr. Bob Harrington, Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Stanford University. Dr. Harrington, fantastic to have you
on the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Just start by explaining how the app works and what information you collect.
DR. BOB HARRINGTON, CHAIRMAN OF THE DEPARTMENT OF MEDICINE, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: Sure, thanks for having me. And the way the app works is to try
to reach out to the first responder community, fire professionals, police men and women, as well as the EMTs. And we did it through our two local
counties, San Mateo County and Santa Clara County. They received an e-mail, each one of them through a protected site, and they were invited to
download the app.
Once they download the app, they can read some information about the coronavirus infection. They can take a symptom checker, and depending upon
the results of the symptom checker, they are referred to various places, as you've noted in your opening remarks.
They may be referred for testing. They may be actually counseled to seek medical attention. So we're trying to really offer them a way to take care
of themselves based upon what their symptoms currently are.
CHATTERLEY: So around what percent of people that are coming on the app and looking at their symptoms do you recommend go get testing or perhaps even
if they're unwell enough, just have to stay at home. What's the -- what's the ratio of people that you're saying, look, you need to get tested now?
HARRINGTON: Yes, we don't know yet with the first responder community because we literally just launched it last week. What we can tell you in
our experience thus far is that about half of the people that our primary care doctors have screened, we've referred on to testing.
The other half have gone on to convalesce at home, repeat if they have symptoms, et cetera. But our experience has been roughly half, but that's
not the first responder community yet.
CHATTERLEY: No, we're going to have to wait and see. So once you decide, okay, you need to go and get a test. They then get priority at mobile
testing sites. We've seen these around the world. The fact that you have these mobile testing sites is fantastic, but just explain that process,
too.
HARRINGTON: Yes, so once they take the symptom checker, if they are referred on for express testing, we have five testing centers throughout
the Bay Area, our largest one is on the Stanford University campus. We've turned one of the large parking lots into express testing.
They come through that and they're assigned a lane, where they will meet with medical professionals to fill out a little bit of information on them,
particularly so that we can contact them with regard to the test, and then another medical professional does the nasal swabbing, and that then gets
stored on site and then picked up several times a day back to our laboratory for testing.
So it's a very efficient process. People don't have to leave their cars. It minimizes exposure both from the medical professional side, but also from
the first responder side. It works very efficiently. At full capacity in this parking lot, we ought to be able to take care of 750 to a thousand
individuals a day.
CHATTERLEY: Wow. This method, this app, this process for me, looks like something that should be scaled up if possible at the city level, at the
state level, beyond. Would you agree with that? Are you having any discussions because this is fantastic and not actually just about frontline
workers, it should be expanded to others, too.
[09:50:13]
HARRINGTON: We agree with every single point you've made. We're looking, number one, at first seeing, do we launch it now at local counties? Can we
expand it to other frontline workers, including grocery store workers, food service professionals -- people who really are out there on the front lines
and exposed to the public?
So as we think about how it goes with first responders, we will widen the circle. And look, we are a university. We want to educate. We want to share
and we are very anxious to share with people around the country as to what we learn from this and can they use our learnings to help in their own
communities? We absolutely see that as part of the goal here.
CHATTERLEY: It seems like a small price to pay at this moment, but what about privacy? Because there will be people going, you know, I'm giving up
my personal information. Is going to be held against me at some point in the future? How are you protecting people's privacy with this, too?
HARRINGTON: We share your concern, and we also want to make sure that privacy is protected. Number one, there is no sign-in registration
required. So they've been invited to the app, but no specific sign-in registration required.
Number two -- so we don't have an identifier on them.
CHATTERLEY: Right.
HARRINGTON: Number two, the information is being stored on their local device, and not shared with either Stanford or Apple, unless the individual
would like to do so.
So we have the ability to ask them if they'd like to share their information with Stanford, but we do not require it.
We've had other experience with these apps and large scale trials with Apple, they did a large project with them called the Apple Heart Study,
where we were able to share all of that information back with Stanford, and keep that information on our protected research service.
CHATTERLEY: Yes, I mean, the hope is that people will share this information because it gives us a sense of herd immunity, what proportion
have symptoms, what's going on to help us track it? But the idea of having protections in place, too, is a good thing.
Dr. Bob Harrington, keep us updated, please, with your progress because this is phenomenal and we thank you for your work to protect frontline
workers. Great to have you with us.
HARRINGTON: Thanks for your interest.
CHATTERLEY: Thank you. Stay safe.
HARRINGTON: Thank you.
CHATTERLEY: All right we are going to take a break here on FIRST MOVE. The British Prime Minister thanks the N.H.S. for saving his life. He also name
checks a couple of nurses with a special mention. Stay with us. That's after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHATTERLEY: Welcome back to FIRST MOVE. Our healthcare heroes from around the world continue to put their lives at risk to help save the lives of
others, leaving their friends and family to watch in fear from a distance.
Yet, there is also pride in seeing that sacrifice as the mother of nurse, Jenny McGee explains after her daughter was praised this weekend by British
Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
[09:55:04]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CAROLINE AND MIKE MCGEE, PARENTS OF NURSE THANKED BY BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: It makes us feel exceptionally proud, obviously. But she has told
us these things over the years and it doesn't matter what patient she is looking after. This is what she does and I just find it incredible.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHATTERLEY: This is what she does. More gratitude to medical staff can be found in Brazil, where the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de
Janeiro was lit up to look like a doctor.
And then, there is this --
[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]
CHATTERLEY: The unmistakable sound of Andrea Bocelli occurs around the Duomo Cathedral in Milan without an audience. The Italian tenor
livestreamed a concert on Easter Sunday to promote love and healing, and we'll do the same.
Stay safe wherever you are, please, and we will see you tomorrow.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[10:00:00]
END
