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Efforts to Keep Ebola from Spreading; Are U.S. Hospitals Properly Equipped for Ebola; Major Developments in Hong Kong Protests; China Facing Huge Problem in Hong Kong

Aired October 03, 2014 - 13:30   ET

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

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting from Washington.

Let's get you up to speed on Ebola, the efforts to keep it from spreading here in the United States, indeed, around the world. A hazardous materials' team is in Dallas, Texas, where an Ebola patient was staying. Also, a company hired to clean the apartment is now waiting to get the necessary permits to transport hazardous materials. Four people who come into contact with the Ebola patient and remain quarantined inside that apartment.

In Liberia, a freelance American cameraman working for "NBC News" has tested positive for Ebola. Ashoko Mukpo is due to fly back to the United States on Sunday.

And 50 people in Dallas who came into contact with the patient, Thomas Eric Duncan "will need to be monitored for possible Ebola symptoms," those words from the commissioner of the Texas Department of State Health Services. He says none of the people are showing signs of Ebola, but they are going to monitor the 50 people to make sure they don't.

The response of Dallas health care officials to Thomas Duncan's initial hospital visit should set off huge alarm bells around the world. Workers at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital gave Duncan antibiotics and actually sent him home, despite the symptoms. Doctors were not aware that he travelled to Liberia even though he told a nurse he just arrived in the United States from Liberia.

So the big question a lot of Americans are asking right now, are U.S. hospitals properly equipped. Are their staffs adequately trained for an outbreak of Ebola?

CNN's Kyung Lah walks us through one hospital's protocol.

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KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The first line of defense in containing an Ebola outbreak in the United States are our nation's hospital.

We are at Los Angeles County USC Hospital. This is the emergency room.

Like all emergency rooms, there's a check-in. At this particular hospital, a registered nurse does that check-in. If you have nausea, headache, and have traveled to West Africa, this hospital Ebola virus protection protocol kicks in. There are signs all over the hospital asking if patients have traveled in the last three weeks to West Africa.

Is that enough to raise alarm?

DR. PAUL D. HOLTOM, LOS ANGELES COUNTY USC MEDICAL CENTER: It's certainly enough to raise an alarm, particularly with the outbreak of Ebola going on.

LAH: Do they ever end up sitting in the waiting room?

HOLTOM: No. They sit in the Emergency Room area. Then people would have a risk of being exposed to the virus.

LAH: Containment is the key here?

HOLTOM: Containment is absolutely the key.

HOLTOM: They will be brought, maybe depending on how sick they are, transported by a gurney and transported to the isolation room.

LAH: What's the first step for the health care workers?

HOLTOM: The first step is always to wash your hands. She puts on a mask and then she's going to go ahead and put on her protective goggles. She's going to put on a gown that is impervious to water or any bodily fluids.

LAH: Is this enough protection?

HOLTOM: This is enough protection. In Africa, of course, they have a very different situation. If I were in Africa, I would also use a much higher level of personal protection. But this is more than enough protection from any of the infectious diseases that we see.

By recommendations of Centers for Disease Control, we have a sign-in sheet and everyone who enters the room will sign in.

LAH: This looks like a normal hospital room.

HOLTOM: Well, it is a normal hospital room, other than the fact it has a special air-handling system.

LAH: Let's say the patient vomits on the sheets. What happens to the sheets?

HOLTOM: It doesn't matter whether they vomit or are just on the sheets, all of the patients on the sheets who are suspected of Ebola are disposed of as a bio-hazardous waste.

LAH: Are we able to contain Ebola in America? HOLTOM: I think that we are. I think the case in Dallas, if the cases before, were a wake-up call, really has made everyone very aware that all hospitals need to be prepared for the possibility of seeing someone coming from West Africa who has Ebola.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: That report from Kyung Lah.

Hospitals not only in the United States, but in Europe and Asia and Africa, South America, all over the world, lessons need to be learned.

Just ahead, as fears grow over Ebola, many people are deeply worried about how the disease is spread. Our experts are joining us. We're getting ready to answer your questions.

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BLITZER: All right. Let's get right back to Hong Kong. Will Ripley is standing by.

I understand there's major action going on right now. Will, what are you seeing right now?

WILL RIPLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Let me walk you through what happened in the past few minutes. It all started when we heard an up roar in the crowd. People started shouting, "Police, police." When we looked up at the pedestrian bridge, we saw a line, dozens of uniformed police officers walking along the bridge, which takes you directly to a police building, which is right there. Right there where you see all of those people walking up, all of those people gathered, that's where the police building is. You can see what happened next. The police officers essentially forced their way through a barricade that the protesters had set up. They kept repeating that they were unarmed. It appeared that they were carrying supplies to delivered to a large contingent of police officers that we know are inside that building right now. They have been essentially camped out because the protesters have been blocking the supplies and blocking the entrance to that building. But it was quite a scuffle, as you see in the video.

And we have a young man here who caught right in the middle of it all. His name is Raymond and he's 24 years old. He's just now back.

Raymond, first of all, I understand that you were actually thrown to the ground at one point.

RAYMOND, HONG KONG RESIDENT: Yes.

RIPLEY: Tell me, are you doing OK?

RAYMOND: Yes, I am OK now.

RIPLEY: Take us through what happened, Raymond. RAYMOND: OK. The police go along the bridge and then there's a

barrier in front -- at the corner. And then they just keep pushing. And then the police pushed us along and then go to the -- another barrier at the entrance and then they just pushed me to the wall and then pulled me out of the area and kicked me.

RIPLEY: Yes. So you were kicked and pushed but the officers were unarmed. Is that what you saw?

RAYMOND: Yes.

RIPLEY: OK. So talk to me about why this created an uproar. Because there are thousands of people here and everybody was immediately alarmed as soon as the uniformed officers were spotted. Talk to me about why that was so concerning to you and other protesters here.

RAYMOND: They just go up and there are many people. And also they just -- this is the second time to try to protect that barrier. And this is the second time they climb there. Actually, the barrier was set up by me and my friend because we want to stop that guy so that the people on the bridge can go downstairs --

(CROSSTALK)

RIPLEY: So they can move peacefully? I know that's something --

RAYMOND: Yes. Yes.

RIPLEY: But the police have a different side of the story, Wolf. They say that protesters have been blocking supplies from getting into that building and they were very determined to enter that building and that's exactly what they did.

But there's growing fear here in the heart of this protest that this is only one small sign of what may be to come. The inevitable, in the view of many people here, action on the part of the city of Hong Kong, and they fear Beijing itself dispatching perhaps its People's Liberation Army, which has a garrison in this city, an estimated 6,000 to 10,000 troops. There's a lot of concern that at some point they are going to try to break up this whole operation. And I can tell you, even here in the early morning hours, Wolf, thousands of people continue to line these streets and the mood is certainly shifting. It's been peaceful for much of the week but there have been clashes around the city. And now the biggest incident that we've seen since that incident on Sunday, when pepper spray was involved, happened in a few minutes when those uniformed officers entered the building -- Wolf?

BLITZER: When you say uniformed, I want to be precise, uniformed and armed officers or just uniformed officers?

RIPLEY: They kept repeating, and you can hear the officers saying, "We are unarmed, we are unarmed." One officer was carrying a baton. We know that officers do have riot gear available. We saw them a couple of days ago with riot shields. They were carrying containers believe to contain rubber bullets. They have the capacity to deal with the crowd but none of those tools were used tonight. They forced their way through the barricade to get supplies to the officers.

But, Wolf, the Hong Kong city government has issued repeated warnings to all of the protesters here saying that if they do not disperse from in front of government buildings, if they don't allow this city -- this is a main thoroughfare, normally full of cars, and it's been closed for nearly a week now. There's financial hardship as a result of this. Government employees had to stay home today. And the city of Hong Kong says that if this doesn't disperse soon, there will be very serious consequences. We don't know what those are or what that is going to look like, but maybe we got a preview of that tonight.

BLITZER: It's approaching 2:00 a.m. Saturday morning in Hong Kong.

Stand by, Will. We'll get back to you.

I want to bring in the former U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman. He's also a former governor of Utah, and now the host of "No Labels Radio with Jon Huntsman" on Sirius XM.

You spent a lot of time in China and Hong Kong. You see what is going on, Governor. What do you say? What's your analysis?

JON HUNTSMAN FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO CHINA, FORMER UTAH GOVERNOR & HOST, NO LABELS RADIO WITH JON HUNTSMAN: The first reaction, and having stood on that same street many weeks ago, is that you've got a chief executive in Hong Kong who has very little legitimacy and credibility. He came to power in 2012, seen as in the hip pocket of Beijing, is not respected by the protesters and others involved.

The other part of the equation is, you've got a new leader of China, Xi Jinping, who has embarked on the best part of the two years he's been in office on this anti-corruption campaign. He can't afford to make a mistake. He's got to be very careful in terms of what he chooses to do. The way that this is navigated is going to have to be a very narrow approach. The options are not great but they can't take a hard line against the protesters. That would be a cataclysmic result. Yet, they're going to have to find a compromise to get them off the street.

BLITZER: How worried should we be about this -- and we hope it doesn't -- becoming another Tiananmen Square?

HUNTSMAN: Tiananmen Square was altogether a different sort of circumstances. We should be concerned here primarily because what gave Hong Kong its uniqueness and freedom, its ability to eject a bright light of competiveness across the world could be compromised some of these early steps on that track based democratic principles. I think the longer term is really the risk that is being run. The crowds will gather. Hong Kong people are passionate about their freedom. But longer term, diminishing the democratic prospects of Hong Kong could carry long-term implications that could be very harmful.

BLITZER: And further complicating the situation, a relatively new development, there other protesters, the pro-democracy protesters, there's obviously the police, but now, increasingly, there are some residents opposed to those protesters. They don't like this area being shut down. They are not going to work, they are losing money. And there could be a clash between Hong Kong residents who support the protesters and those who oppose the protesters.

HUNTSMAN: Well, that's right. You have 7.5 million in the Crown Colony. You'll have a lot of partisans who are in favor of China. And China will encourage many of them to get unorganized. That's just the way they operate. It won't be unusual to see people wearing shirts that represent that they are in favor of what China's endeavoring to do longer term and those who are basically committed to the core principles of what Hong Kong was founded upon.

BLITZER: I want to you stay with us. We're going to continue watching the breaking news on the streets of Hong Kong.

Governor, stay with us.

Much more coming up right after this.

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BLITZER: Let's get back to the breaking news on the streets of Hong Kong.

Will Ripley is there.

Will, set the scene for us. What's going on right now?

RIPLEY: This is leading into the central business district which you see behind me. Normally this street would be full of traffic. For nearly a week now it's been full of protesters, students who are demanding a choice. They say they want real democracy in this country. They want a chance to elect a candidate as Beijing promised in the 1997 hand over when Hong Kong was transferred to Chinese control. Beijing made a promise that people here would be able to elect a leader in 2017. Over the summer, there was a huge outrage in this city because Beijing said you will be able to vote for candidates that the communist party handpicks for you. There's a committee here. It's pro-Beijing. They choose candidates that will be elected into office. That's what has built up to this protest. There's no one single leader. There's no one group that's organizing this. These are students who have come out and who on Sunday unarmed were pepper sprayed by Hong Kong police causing tens of thousands of citizens in this city to fill the streets and show support for these young people. That was the only incident of violence that we saw. The rest of the week police haven't shown a presence here because there was a backlash and people were angry to see police using tear gas on students who are now joined by people of all ages who are out here because they want to demand the same thing, democracy. Tonight, as tension grows in this city, you mention it's a city

divided. Each day that this protest goes on, each workday, people are losing money. Businesses are forced to stay closed. Some smaller businesses are in danger of going under. There's a group of people here in Hong Kong who are tired of this and growing more angry with each day that this continues and that's why we're seeing now clashes popping up in parts of the city and there's a lot of tension, a lot of concern, about what the police are going to do to try to disperse this crowd. So when a convoy of uniformed officers tried to enter that government building up there, everyone rushed toward that area and started shouting and you saw video on the pedestrian bridge of the confrontation as the police forced their way through a barricade that protesters set up.

BLITZER: Be careful over there.

Jon Huntsman is still with me, former ambassador to China.

You wrote an op-ed for CNN.com. You said, "China is less concerned about the global image and far more concerned with maintaining control." This is a huge problem that they face right now.

HUNTSMAN: It's a huge problem. One of the things on the mind of Xi Jinping, the new leader in China, is how you maintain domestic stability at a time when you have 700 million Internet users, people who use social networking to band together to get messages out with lightning speed, how you deal with that environment that is pushing for change with a one-party system that doesn't want to accommodate change as quickly as the population would like it brought about.

BLITZER: What should the U.S. be doing and saying about these demonstrations in Hong Kong?

HUNTSMAN: I think the United States, we will be absenting (ph) our voice without talking about principles for which we are famous throughout the world but the Asia-Pacific region. We have a name brand. It's freedom, liberty, human rights, open markets. We also should be saying something about the importance of preserving the stability of Hong Kong and why recognizing the underlying principles of free-market economics and democracy have made Hong Kong great. They should never be jeopardized. And we should also stand up in preservation to speak to preservations of those principles.

BLITZER: Clearly, a very tense time over there. Lots at stake, not only for the people of China and Hong Kong but for people all over the world.

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: We'll watch it very closely.

Governor, thank you for joining us.

HUNTSMAN: Thanks, Wolf.

BLITZER: Governor Jon Huntsman, the former U.S. ambassador to China. That's it for me. Thanks for watching. Don't forget, 5:00 p.m.

eastern, later today, the "The Situation Room."

For our international viewers, "Amanpour" starts right after a quick break.

For viewers in North America, "Newsroom" with Randi Kaye starts right at the top of the hour.

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