Blew it on testing from the very beginning. It took weeks for the cdc to sort out malfunctioning coronavirus test kits and federal officials failed to ensure there could be enough supplies for the test going forward. This includes the swabs that the test requires. Scott becker, the head of a National Association of health labs told cnn, quote, there is very little that has gone well. Actually im not sure what has gone well. It is just been a continuing cascade of challenges. And now there is ania battle. Crowds of protesters are demanding the u. S. Reopen faster as their behavior risks the health of themselves and other americans, even as the death toll today in the United States surpasses 40,000 people. And for context, the death toll was only 4,000 less than three weeks ago on april 1st. A devastating tenfold acceleration. Lets bring in nick watt live in los angeles. And there are new new areas that the white house is watching as potential problem areas. Tell us about them. Reporter there are. Listen, brianna, were seeing some places spike, some places dip. New jersey governor just said weve achieved relatively stability, new york the numbers are looking good. Relative though is a word we should be using a lot these days because the governor comes out and says numbers are looking better in new york, but still, as he points out, nearly 500 people died of covid19 in new york state in one day, yesterday. The places the government is looking at now, hot spots, we have boston, chicago, philadelphia. Also one more pork production plant is closing down today after a spike, this one in minnesota that puts out about 4 of the pork that we eat in this country. So that is something that theyre watching. Nursing homes, of course, also another place where we are continuing to see spikes. Now, the people who make that model up at Washington State, Washington State university, they have come out now with a kind of formula for which states they think are ready to open. And the formula is that per 1 Million People in the state, the state can only have 1 new case per day. That is the calculation they make where the state is still able to treat that patient and also trace and test all of the contacts that that person has had. So by their reckoning, the only states that will be ready to open in a couple of weeks from now will be minnesota, west virginia, hawaii and vermont. Lets take new york for example. New york would need to see 20 or fewer cases a day for them to reach that benchmark. Right now they are seeing 50 times that. They are seeing 5,000 new cases a day. The governor has just called the governor of new york has just called for 50 hazard pay for people in what he terms essential jobs. So that might not just be the Health Care Workers but the grocery workers as well. Testing as you mentioned, brianna, is going to be the key and according to the governors and the people, many people who conduct those tests, there is still not enough testing. The Vice President had a call this morning with governors. We heard from one governor who was on that call who said it was pretty much all about testing. There was a cry for help. And he said that Vice President pence said the federal government is moving as fast as possible to do whatever it can to help the states with this testing. Brianna. Testing, testing, testing. Nick watt, thank you so much for that great report. President trump at this point insists that there are no problems with testing. He claims that it is up to states to take charge on this. But a group that is representing tens of thousands of lab workers is urging the White House Task force to immediately address the lack of testing supplies and protective equipment. Joining me now is cnn Senior Investigative correspondent drew griffin. And this is the American Association for Clinical Chemistry that is issuing this major appeal. Tell us about this. Reporter these are the scientists that are in these labs, private, public, state, health labs crying out, sending a letter last thursday night to the Coronavirus Task force, particularly dr. Birx, telling her that no matter what comes out of the president s mouth about the states needing to do more, nobody could do more without the supplies and that is what the letter was all about. Listen to the president of this organization. Were experiencing a shortage of collection supplies, the supplies to transport, the samples to the labratory and then once we get into the lab we require reagents when you would think of them as ooirngs and then reporting to the doctors. So we feel there is a disconnect between the capacity and what were actually able to do. Reporter the disconnect, brianna, not just from this group but from many professional groups involved in testing is the fact that there is no National Strategy on testing. And that means when the president kicks this can down the road to states, all of the states are now competing with each other for these limited supplies. They dont know where the supplies are coming from. So the organizations are begging for leadership, some kind of direction, and a comprehensive testing strategy so that all these different parts, all of these different labs can get together, know what is coming in the front door so they could get the testing that we need out the back door. Right now that is not happening. And they have not gotten response to their letter yet to the Coronavirus Task force. And bringing all of this into relief is this harvard study that said the u. S. Needs to triple or quadruple the amount of daily tests to safely reopen the economy. Can the country get there . Reporter can the country get there . Of course. The question is when. Right now the country cant get there. That is according to dr. Carmen wylie, the president of this association. The capacity is not there yet. But, of course, this is the United States. We have the ability to do just about anything when it comes to the industrialization of anything and that includes testing capacity. But, look, the lab Testing Community in this country was not prepared for Something Like this. And it takes time to ramp that up. Were seeing that not only in the testing machines, but, of course, Everything Else we listed including all of the supplies. Drew, thank you so much for that report. Really appreciate it. Joining me now is dr. Mark rup, a Infectious Disease specialist from the university of nebraska medical center. Doctor, thank you for being here to share your expertise. Yes, good afternoon, my pleasure. So you just heard about the harvard study that we were talking about that says the u. S. Needs to times three, times four daily testing to a minimum of half a million tests each day. What do you i mean, what does that say to you about how long its going to take to get to that point and what that is going to mean for people who are wondering when things could at least get back to a little bit of normal. Well, i would tend to agree that we do need much more broadbased testing throughout the United States in order to more safely open up our society and try to get our economy rolling again in those areas where that makes sense. So its really going to be predicated upon being able to do tests on people who have any degree of symptoms, being able to identify those cases quite quickly and then having a vibrant and Robust Public Health system that can do the Contact Tracing, get those people into quarantine and make sure that we dont get right back to where we are now with lots of spread. So, its going to be a delicate situation and one that will require, as part of the formula, much more broadbased testing. Lets talk about this Contact Tracing and what a key component this is. Im wondering if you could explain to us, lets just take a for instance if someone is infected with the virus, say im infected with the virus, how wide of a net has to be cast if, say, i went to the Grocery Store or did the other limited things that im doing. What does that look like for people who may have had some contact with me in quarantining. You point out the difficulties in this right away. It becomes very difficult to trace fleeting contacts and what we concentrate on are those people with longer term or closer amounts of contact with an index case. So this would be family members, People Living in the same area, close coworkers that sort of thing. Clearly you cant identify everybody who had just fleeting contact with an index case in a Shopping Mall or Something Like that. So it does appear to take more close contact for transmission and that is where we would be doing the concentrated Contact Tracing. Okay. Lets listen to what the former fda commissioner Scott Gottlieb said about the lack of Contact Tracing, where we are right now and also with testing in the u. S. I think a good rule of thumb would be about 1 of the population on a weekly basis so the ability to test 3 Million People. Were not going to be there in may or june. Hopefully well be there by september. September, doctor, because i think of schools going back. Theyre suppose to go back in august and september. Yeah, so that again gets back to the idea of having broadbased Testing Available for people and then as we talked about during the Contact Tracing is also very important. And when you have many cases, it just becomes very quickly overwhelming. As we heard earlier in the story, if youre having a thousand cases per day in new york city, thats a very, very difficult to try to get a handle on that as opposed to having just a few cases where easily you could get in, really do very, very careful Contact Tracing, get those people into some sort of a quarantine or watching their symptoms to try to prevent the spread from persontoperson. Lets talk about Antibody Testing now. We know now that a lot of people may be carrying the virus, they dont have symptoms or know they have it. But they could be tested to see if maybe they have had it. If they have the antibodies for covid19. The issue that weve seen is with the accuracy of a lot of these tests that are not fda sanctioned. It is worse that there are a bunch of tests out there confusing things versus say there just werent tests at all for people to use, what do you think . Yeah, it is very confusing and it is very difficult when you have a lot of uncertified tests that are circulating around being promoted sometimes, i think, inaccurately, that they could yield reliable results. So i would much rather see it more strongly regulated, having these tests really being test the test before they come out and are starting to be promoted. It is a very important, however, part of our capability to do what we call sirologic testing. So testing for the antibody directed tor the virus. So this is a test that wont be very useful making an acute decision as to whether somebody is infected but it is very important in figuring out what has been the penetration of the infection through society, who is potentially immune, and i think that is a very important point that we need to talk about, as we go forward and trying to open up parts of our society. It is important to know who is infected and who hasnt and what is the level of potential immunity throughout a potential community. So important. Dr. Rupp, thank you so much. Dr. Mark rupp from the university of nebraska medical center. And coming up, protesters pushing for a faster reopening of the u. S. We are live on the ground where they are next. Plus President Trump putting the blame over testing on governors. So how did the white house call with those governors go today . State farm is announcing the Good NeighborRelief Program were returning 2 billion dollars to our auto policyholders through may 31st. Because now, more than ever, being a Good Neighbor means everything. Like a Good Neighbor, state farm is there. Theyre getting larger, theyre letting louder, theyre mostly not Wearing Masks. Properties demanding state and local governments reopen towns. Miguel marquez is at one such rally in harrisburg, pennsylvania. And miguel, it is just are these protesters not worried about their health . Reporter a lot of them say that they are not. That they dont think this sickness is as bad as the media said and they dont think that either they could get it or it is a great concern at least in places like pennsylvania and other places. They say new york, new jersey, let them quarantine but here lets go back to business as usual. Most of it is broken up. This is in front of the State Capitol here. There were probably in excess of a thousand people in front of the capitol here at one point and then on the other side of the street as well. The other thing the protests brought is the number of people on car. Here we have a panda bear on a scooter. Im not sure what that is all about. But most of that has now stopped. But you had hundreds and hundreds of cars sort of cruising back and forth on the capitol here and most of that activity has stopped. We have seen lots of people with trump signs and it has the feeling of a trup reelection rally for the most part. There is also a very big secondary amendment contingent with heavily armed individuals indicating that they want the government here to know theyre protecting their Second Amendment rights. Also a big religious angle as well. Many people some of the signs weve seen are jesus is my vaccine is one that ive seen throughout here as well. So a lot of different voices coming together here and were starting to see it in other places. Many of the rallies not very big at all. This one, because the president has push it on his twitter feed and officially at the white house as well, it really started to pick up steam here in pennsylvania. Brianna. And so what is the plan . What is their plan to reopen the economy and roll the dice or they just think it is not rolling the dice . Reporter yeah, i think interestingly that the governor, tom wolf, which a lot of the ire and anger is directed at, with these protesters, he extended the stayathome order to may 8th. They are calling for a may 1st opening of pennsylvania. My sense is it is going to be sort of lots of individuals in groups pushing back against the government here, testing what they could do and we will see where it goes. Brianna. All right, thank you so much, miguel, for bringing us that story from harrisburg, pennsylvania. Republican and democratic governors at this point pushing back against the white houses claims there is enough Testing Available for states to reopen and insisting they will need more federal help to make that happen. But the president says if there are any issues, the governors are to blame for not moving fast enough to ramp up testing in their own states. Kaitlan collins is joining me live now from the white house. Kaitlan, the white house Coronavirus Task force spoke to the governors today. Tell us about that. Reporter the Vice President has been doing weekly calls with governors and other members of the task force were on the call with him but noticeably the president was not on the call. And of course this call was had a lot of things to discuss for several reasons. Not only including the protesters that miguel was talking about, a protest which the president has encouraged these protesters saying he does believe the stayathome orders are too strong but because the governors are saying they do not have the supplies that they need to conduct the tests that they want to conduct to be able to reopen their states. The president has pushed back on that, including today on twitter comparing it to when they were asked for ventilators. He said there has to be more ventilators than they needed and we saw how that turned out and now he said the testing is the same way. He dismissed this as democrats playing politics. This is a mix of democratic and republican governors taking about the shortage as they try to reopen their states. Were fighting a biological war. Weve been asked by the way as governors to fight that war without the supplies we need. It is not accurate to say there is plenty of testing out there and the governors should just get it done. That is just not being straightforward. It would be nice if we have a National Strategy that was working with the states so every state knew precisely what was coming in. But at the end of the day, we, governors, are doing the best we can with what weve got. Reporter now one thing that is notable between how the Vice President and the task force is saying on that call today is were told by sources they were stressing a partnership between the federal government and these state entities is how theyre moving forward with trying to reopen and moving forward in phases that theyve put forward and the own states are coming up with. But the president is pushing back saying no, it is up to the states to handle this on their own. Kaitlan collins at the white house, thank you so much. Here is the scary thing, right. You could be sick right now and might not even know it. Well talk to an expert about the stunning new data about socalled silent spreaders next. You want