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New Day Sunday

Second Ebola Case Confirmed in U.S.; U.S. Insists Baghdad Safe from ISIS

Aired October 12, 2014 - 07:00   ET

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

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Officials have interviewed the patient and are now trying to identify anyone else who may have been exposed. They scheduled a news conference for 8:30 Eastern, so 90 minutes from now. Of course, we'll bring that to you as it happens.

We've got with us David Sanders, associated professor, a biological scientist at Purdue University.

It's good to have you with us this morning as we try to understand this. First case contracted in the U.S. of this Ebola virus. The question we've been trying to understand all morning is, likely this health care worker contracted this virus from Thomas Eric Duncan? We don't have the answer yet.

But understanding the isolation environment, it is more likely that this was the first visit? The ambulance driving? The second check in? Or is there enough exposure during the isolation once he was positively diagnosed that he could have it there?

DAVID SANDERS, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES, PURDUE UNIVERSITY: Let's hope that it's the former rather than the latter. That it wasn't after the containment was supposed to be in place. I don't know anymore -- have any more information about it than you do. I would be very concerned if it were when the patient had been identified as Ebola patient, that there was a break down.

But this can happen. I mean this is something that we have to be prepared for. It's something that we discussed and I think one thing we have to be thinking about is that it may not be that every single hospital is, in fact, prepared for this. We may have to think about regional centers that are best prepared to deal with Ebola patients. I think that's something we really have to take into consideration.

BLACKWELL: CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is joining us by phone as well.

Elizabeth, is there enough exposure in this containment, in this isolation environment that this health care worker could have contracted the virus then?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): You know, anything is possible. And certainly, we've seen health care workers in Africa and in Spain become exposed even though they were using -- they were -- they said they were doing everything that they were supposed to do to protect themselves.

I think the comment that the doctor just made, I think it's really important. It may not be that every hospital is cut out to do this as well as every other hospital. It may be that the CDC needs to step in and say, you know what? When people -- when one of these contacts develop a fever, we want them to go here. And sort of name a specific place that they ought to go, a place that has experience dealing with infectious diseases.

You know, all hospitals have experience in infectious diseases but a hospital specially trained to deal with Ebola patients. I think that's something that might be discussed at pretty high levels at this point.

PAUL: David, in a press release that they released early this morning when this was actually discovered late last night, they said we're broadening our team in Dallas. Who do you think that means they would bring in?

SANDERS: I think the idea is that they have to do more contact tracing, that that's an essential part of what has to be done now. They don't have to just deal with the contracts of the first patient. They have to have -- look at the contacts of the second person as well.

I think they may also be wanting to have a review of they're containment facilities to make sure that they are adequate. I have to say, you know, health care workers who are working with these patients are really performing heroic deed and they should be protected to the best of our ability. And we need to be sure if there are any problems in the system that they're correcting.

BLACKWELL: Elizabeth, I have a copy of the detailed hospital checklist. It goes for pages and pages of things that must be checked off and resources that shoe covers, gloves, and permeable gowns, how much of this would this hospital or any hospital speaking about Texas Presbyterian or any other have in place already and how much would they have to make sure it's not transferred or transmitted from a patient to then a health care worker?

COHEN: Right, that's a great question. You know what, speaking to infectious disease expert, even way before Ebola happened, it's not about the stuff so much. Of course, you need the right stuff. You need the right protective gear, all of that. But it's about the mindset of the hospital.

Hospitals, I'm starting to say that hospitals don't have a fabulous track record at being -- at protecting their workers and always protecting patients from infections. I mean, people die in large numbers from infections they acquire in the hospital. In other words, you come in without an infection and then they die of an infection they got there. It has been a real problem.

And hospitals got much better. But still, it is a real problem. Some hospitals have a terrible track record just with doctors and nurses washing their hands. I mean, something as simple as that. So, it's really about not the stuff that's part of it, but it is

also about what is going on in their heads. I think this is hopefully a wakeup call to U.S. hospitals that they have got to be better at handling these kinds of issues.

PAUL: Dr. Sanders, I know you were part of a report that found a train of Ebola that has the potential to enter a person's airway. How does that happen? And is that the strain that we're seeing here in the U.S.?

SANDERS: So, we are talking about Ebola Zaire. It does have the inherent capacity to enter into airway cells from the air wayside. That's correct. We have no evidence that is how Ebola is currently being transmitted. So, I want to reassure everybody. We have no evidence that is happening now.

But I have been trying to emphasize that this is something that could happen in the future. And if the epidemic in Africa is not suppressed, that raises the possibility of that happening. We have no evidence of that happening currently.

PAUL: No evidence that it could be airborne, but that we cannot rule out the possibility?

SANDERS: It is a -- I'll just say the cell biology of Ebola is consistent with the possibility of it going airborne. That is not an impossibility. People have compared it and said, well, HIV has never gone airborne. That cannot happen. HIV cannot go airborne for a variety of scientific reasons.

Ebola can. It has an inherent capacity to do that even though once again I must emphasize, we have no evidence that that's how it's transmitted currently.

PAUL: Good to know.

BLACKWELL: All right. So, the folk just joining us this morning, the Texas Department of State Health Services tells us this morning that there is a second case of Ebola confirmed in America. This person is a health care worker at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital who provided care for the Ebola patient we know now as Thomas Eric Duncan, tested positive for Ebola in a preliminary test at the state public health laboratory in Austin.

We'll continue to learn as much as we can about this. We know that the Texas health resources spokesperson confirmed to our CNN's Elizabeth Cohen that a news press conference will happen at 8:30 Eastern. So, a little less than an hour and a half from now.

Dr. David Sanders and Elizabeth Cohen, thank you both. We'll be speaking with you throughout the morning.

PAUL: Thank you both.

SANDERS: Thanks so much. PAUL: Now, we want to remind you Thursday four of the nation's

busiest airports are going to join JFK in rolling out these new Ebola screenings. And this is all part of an effort to prevent the deadly virus from getting through airport gates and into the general public.

BLACKWELL: Yes, JFK became the first airport in the country to implement the new procedures yesterday. And officials are targeting passengers traveling from hard hit countries, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone.

PAUL: Despite global efforts to try and contain the virus, though, the CDC warns there is still a risk.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. MARTIN CETRON, CDC INFECTIOUS DISEASES SPECIALIST: No matter how many of these procedures are put into place, we can't get the risk to zero.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: Officials say screening will impact about 150 travelers per day.

PAUL: Passengers can expect to have their temperatures read by trained medical professionals and be asked questions about their travel history.

BLACKWELL: All right. We'll continue to follow the breaking news on this now first case of Ebola contracted inside the U.S. But we want to get you caught up on another big story as well.

PAUL: Besieged Syrian town strangely quiet this morning we've been told. Kobani, they've been under relentless attack by ISIS. The terror group is also eyeing a key province to the south in Iraq, right near Baghdad. We're going live to the Iraqi capital.

Stay close.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLACKWELL: Twelve minutes after the hour now.

The ISIS threat in Iraq and Syria, it's growing this morning.

PAUL: Yes, the terror group is poised to take control of a huge stretch of territory from the perimeter of Iraq's capital to northern Syria. That's 350-mile.

BLACKWELL: Yes, despite new U.S.-led air strikes overnight, ISIS fighters are tightening their grip on the Syrian city of Kobani, near Turkey. They also pose a threat to the vast Anbar province, just west of Baghdad. The province's leaders are pleading for U.S. ground troops. A U.S. official says that's not going to happen.

Iraqi police say a coalition air strike did kill more than 30 suspected ISIS militants in the province yesterday.

PAUL: Now, the Pentagon and Washington insist Baghdad is safe even with ISIS on the city's doorstep. We're covering this from multiple angles.

CNN senior international correspondent Ben Wedeman is in the Iraqi capital. Erin McPike is at the White House.

Ben, I want to go to you (AUDIO GAP). Give us the situation in Baghdad right now. Do you feel the city -- do the people there feel the city is secure?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No, they don't. But it's not a threat from outside from the possibility of ISIS forces invading or taking over the capital. The worry here is of things like car bombs. There were two car bomb last night in the northern -- two northern suburbs, killed more than 40 people, wounding many others. And this is long been the concern of Iraqi security forces, that ISIS -- Baghdad is not fertile territory for ISIS. It's a city with a Shia majority, very hostile to ISIS, but it's also a city where there are sleeper cells, people sympathetic to ISIS who are ready to conduct this sort of bombing campaign in the Iraqi capital.

But outside of the capital, the situation is increasingly grim. Overnight, the head of police in Anbar province, General Ahmad Saddag, was killed in a roadside bombing. Now Ramadi, the city where he operated out of, is under a 24-hour curfew. That's the city where this government does not have full control. There are parts of it that are controlled by ISIS.

ISIS also has surrounded the town of Haditha on the Euphrates River. As we heard yesterday, the Anbar provincial council is appealing for American troops to be deployed in Anbar. One of the head of the council telling us that he believes as many as 10,000 ISIS fighters have been dispatched to Anbar from Syria and northern Iraq.

So, situation in Baghdad, very tense but stable. In Anbar, very grim -- Christi.

PAUL: All right. Ben, you know, so Erin McPike, I want to go to you at the White House. He's talking about how they are some pleading for U.S. troops. We have Colonel Rick Francona and other experts who continually said throughout the weeks at some point, there is going to be most likely need to be some sort of ground movement from a coalition perspective.

Is there any indication that the president is willing to switch his stance and consider U.S. troops, in a coalition fashion to go into Iraq?

ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Christi, no. The administration is not changing its stance that there will be no American ground troops. They have said over time that their duty to be coalition forces in some fashion to, of course, train Iraqi and Syrian forces, the Syrian rebels, that is. But as far as the situation in Baghdad, we are hearing from the

administration that they are saying Baghdad itself is safe despite the fact that much of Iraq is seeing these problems and that Anbar province specifically is a dire situation right now.

But we did hear Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel push back on this a little bit last night. I want you to listen here to those comments.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHUCK HAGEL, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Iraqi security forces are full control of Baghdad, continue to strengthen their positions in Baghdad. We continue to help them with air strikes, with our assistance and our advisors which I have at the direction of President Obama added to our numbers there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MCPIKE: Now, remember that part of the reason that the situation in Iraq is what it is right now is that President Obama has said himself that these Iraqi forces have not kept up their end of the bargain, that they've been weaker than they expected over the last 10 years or so. I would also point out that remember that although there are not ground troops, there are American forces there on the ground in security roles and especially there in Baghdad -- Christi and Victor.

PAUL: All right. And, Ben, I want to ask you about that very thing.

Thank you, Erin.

There are -- at one point we know there were hundreds of U.S. citizens there, private contractors, diplomats in addition to the U.S. military personnel. Based on what happens outside of Baghdad, do you see any indication that those people would have to be extricated from the city at some point?

WEDEMAN: Not under the current circumstances, Christi.

As I said, Baghdad itself, the defenses seem to be fairly robust. We were out on the western perimeter, what's called the defensive belt around Baghdad. And it does seem that there are adequate numbers of troops well aimed and well-armed. We're told they're well trained.

So, the threat to Baghdad is nor from the inside in terms of bombings to the car bombings that have become quite frequent. But at the moment, it doesn't appear that there is any immediate threat to those Americans at the U.S. embassy, the contractors or the U.S. advisors at the moment, I stress.

PAUL: All right. Ben Wedeman and -- in Baghdad for us, Erin McPike at the White House, thank you to both of you.

And, of course, we're keeping a close eye on a new confirmed case of Ebola in Dallas this morning. BLACKWELL: Yes, we learned this morning that a health care

worker who treated Thomas Eric Duncan has now contracted the virus. We'll have much more on that when we come back.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

PAUL: Breaking news I want to share with you this morning, on the second confirmed Ebola case in the U.S. now.

BLACKWELL: Initial tests show a Dallas health care worker who treated a patient who died from Ebola last week now has the virus.

CNN global affairs analyst Kimberly Dozier joins us live from Washington.

Kimberly, this is the first case contracted in the U.S. And it makes me think back to what we heard from Thomas Frieden, the director of the CDC, a couple of days ago. I've got to hear, I want to quote him accurately. "In the 30 years I've been working in public health, the only thing like this that I've seen has been AIDS."

Now, a lot of people think that is alarmist. But a lot of hospitals are gearing up for what could be -- not just the second or third or more cases.

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Good morning, Christi and Victor.

You know what? This tells me is that U.S. health workers have to be on their game to stop this. Now, we don't know if this health worker came in contact with the patient before he was diagnosed or afterwards.

But if it was before, what it outlines is that every health worker as patients are coming in say with flu symptoms, malaria like symptoms, as the winter draws on, you're going to have a lot of coughs and colds. They have to think about every person that comes in with a fever, could this person be carrying Ebola?

And think about it even overseas in Africa where health workers have been trained and are wearing some of the suits to help them protect themselves from the virus. The virus is being transmitted there. It's going to happen back here.

PAUL: You know, we are reading this press release and they're saying that they're broadening their team in Dallas. Who do you think they may be bringing in in that regard?

DOZIER: Well, they're really going to have to knuckle down on training everyone who is in an emergency room setting who will be dealing with someone coming in, training them in how to maintain a certain distance from anyone who might have these symptoms. And the moment the symptoms are identified, then you have to take measures like wiping everything down, just -- you're going to have to start presuming that someone may be infected with the Ebola whereas before people would have thought oh, that's happening over there.

The other thing this brings home to me is those thousands of U.S. troops who have gone in to build up a new health infrastructure system to combat Ebola on the ground, it shows that no matter how good your training is or what you're looking out for, this virus can find a way to get through.

BLACKWELL: You know, you use the phrase there that is happening over there. I want to pull that thread a little bit, because up to this point we were talking about banning flights from these three countries that have been inflicted with this disease. And now, this is the first case transmitted inside the country.

Is that just a psychological difference that it's not contracted in Liberia but in Dallas? Or do we expect to see logistical changes as well in response to that difference?

DOZIER: Well, I think the psychological difference is important in that it will make this more serious for people back here. People that might have been thinking of this as happening overseas and that there is a way to stop it simply by saying no traffic from these three different countries.

You can't keep it over there. You got to start thinking about personal responsibility both in the hospitals and also just as a person traveling to and from those kind of places. What can I do to make sure I'm not helping transmit this disease?

And also, you know, it's also the scary part of this. This isn't airborne, but if you sneeze and then that sneeze goes on a door knob, there is the technical possibility that virus has jumped. It is a lot scarier to me than hearing about the AIDS virus.

BLACKWELL: Yes. And that's what we heard from Thomas Frieden. He said, we have to work now so this is not the world's next AIDS -- speaking specifically about the response in the three countries that have been affected.

Kimberly Dozier, we initially booked you to talk about ISIS, thank you for rolling with us to talk about the breaking news this morning.

DOZIER: Good to be with you.

BLACKWELL: Thank you.

PAUL: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: So, what could cause -- talking about another big story happening this weekend, a USAir jumbo jet to drop thousands of feet in just a matter of seconds?

PAUL: Well, guess what? Nervous moments caught on a passenger's cell phone. We're going to show that to you and explain.

BLACKWELL: And we're continuing to follow the breaking news this morning, the second U.S. case of Ebola, the first contracted inside the U.S.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)