Transcripts For CNNW CNN Newsroom With Poppy Harlow And Jim

CNNW CNN Newsroom With Poppy Harlow And Jim Sciutto April 14, 2020

Study how and when to properly reopen. Though not all states are taking that approach, it is a stark contrast to what the president said at the latest Coronavirus Task force briefing, where he said governors would get in line behind whatever he says. When somebody is the president of the united states, the authority is total. And thats the way its got to be. Your authority is total . Total. It is total. The governors know that. Cue the tenth amendment, which that frankly ignores, the amendment about powers reserved for states. It means outside of the National Parks and other federal properties, most scholars, constitutional experts, say the president doesnt have the power to tell states when to reopen, jim. And as many have pointed out, it is why the very document was written. Lets begin with new york in new york with athena jones, so, athena, you know, on the good side here, the worst predictions or forecasts have not panned out for the last week. What are authorities there saying now . Reporter good morning, jim. Well, Governor Cuomo is saying the worst is over if we continue to be smart. It is a good thing that we didnt hit those high high numbers in terms of cases and deaths in hospital beds but thats because we have been following the social distancing guidelines. It is very, very important to continue to do that and only begin to undo that in a very well planned out way. New york deaths in new york have surpassed 10,000. That is a Staggering Number when you keep in mind this has only been going on for a few weeks. So 10,000 people have died, the case load nearing 200,000 people infected with the virus, as cuomo said, the curve is flattening, flattening at a high level, high level of hospitalizations and higher level than you want to see of deaths. There is still now looking beginning to look ahead to what is going to come next. Governor cuomo saying this state lost billions of dollars, of course he wants to open the economy, but you have to do so in a well thought out, well planned out, gradual phased process. They announced seven states announced theyll be working together as a Bipartisan Group of governors, massachusetts, rhode island, connecticut, newark, new jersey, pennsylvania and delaware so they can take a regional approach to reopening. If you open things in one state, new jersey, and things are still closed in new york, thats going to affect people going across state borders. The states, were not talking about something that going to be immediate. The states are experiencing the virus in different ways, going to reach the peak at different times. Listen to Governor Cuomo talking about what this process needs what this process needs to entail and his response to the president saying he has absolute power here. It is going to be a phased process. We have to bring in testing. So that were testing as were doing this reopening. So that we can gauge whether or not were increasing the virus spread. If he ordered me to reopen in a way that would endanger the Public Health of the people of my state, i wouldnt do it. So there you have it, he wouldnt do it. The states are working together to reopen and we know theyre in a place like connecticut, they may not reopen or think about reopening until may 20th. This is not an immediate thing, a construct put together to try to begin to talk about reopening. Jim and poppy . Only a few days ago the president said it was up to the states to respond to this. Thank you very much. Experts agree to reopen, the country needs more testing, a question of scope, how many tests are available, no evidence of that, at least on a large scale and speed. President trump touted a rapid test, two weeks later, a Top White House official says those tests are still a limited resource. What a difference it would make to have them broadly available. Drew griffin has more on this. Thank you for being on top of this. Lets start with what the administration is saying about the timeline and do we know why it has been so difficult for some of the places to get critical testing supplies . Jim and poppy, this falls under the category of one of those overhyped messages coming out of the white house, a problem with communicating what this machine actually does with the states, and then throw in a supply chain problem and you have this kind of crisis that was just all developed in the rose garden that just didnt need to happen. When this was rolled out, when this machine was brought up by the president , he called it a whole new ball game. That was two weeks ago. This is what he said. The numbers have been incredible on testing, but in the days ahead, were going to go even faster and we have something from abbott labs, which is right here, and thats a five minute test, highly accurate. This is the first one on the line of the five minute tests from abbott. All of that is true, the problem is either the president didnt quite understand the limited ability of this machine or somehow or another that wasnt communicated in that news conference. The machine exists everywhere. All abbott did was make a test that could detect covid for it. And it was needed for a particular person. That was the front line Healthcare Worker that needed to know immediately whether or not they had covid or not. The test works. Abbott sent out 556,000 of these since it has gotten the emergency use authorization. The issue is it went to all of abbotts customers that already had this machine. And this is where the screwup came in. Health and human services, in what brett giroir said, decided to buy the remaining machines he could, send it to state labs that did not have this, but they werent able to get the tests that go with the machine. So you had all these States Holding these machines without the ability to use them because of the supply chain issue, throw in a couple of news clips that didnt explain the whole process and you have this mini crisis on their hands. The good news is, abbott is pumping out 50,000 of these rapid i. D. Tests every single day, they are being used, but they are just part, jim and poppy, part of the problem, part of the solution to this testing debacle we continue to go through. Yeah, it goes to having a national plan, drew griffin, thank you very much. We tried on this broadcast throughout to give you both the good news and the bad news, and lets turn now to at least one promising new projection, the director of one of the models that the white house has been closely following now says that u. S. Coronavirus cases, deaths, could stop this summer around the date of june 21st if social distancing is kept in place through the month of may. He spoke with Anderson Cooper last night. One thing we absolutely know for sure is that social distancing measures work, it leads to a situation where every case is infecting less than one other case. And that means if you keep the course, youll get transmission essentially down to zero. A little more important context here, dr. Murrays model projects the u. S. Will have 68,841 deaths by june 28th, roughly 45,000 more deaths than we currently have. So still an unbelievable number. Lets talk about all of this with dr. Celine gounder, Infectious Disease specialist and epidemiologist. Lets talk about that math here and the modeling because it is just modeling, but the university of washington has been in front and all of this, the white house has been paying close attention to what they have done. The model graph shows it on july 10th, i think we have it here, zero icu beds and zero ventilators would be needed for coronavirus. What do you make of it . Well, i think, first of all, i think this projection is very promising, but it does as dr. Murray says depend on whether we do continue social distancing through the end of may. And i know that there are some states that still have not implemented this, that are still reluctant to do so and there are other states that are wanting to lift those restrictions as soon as possible, perhaps before the end of may. So, you know, thats these models will change depending on what we do between now and then. That said, you know, i think it really also will be very much on us to be planning for what to do next. So the key things are come the end of june, we really want to be able to do testing of every Single Person who has symptoms, right now, as you were mentioning, that remains a real challenge. Another challenge is that we dont have the swabs necessary to collect specimens, so even if you have a test, youre not able to collect the specimen to send the test. And then we need to be able to do Contact Tracing. And in wuwuhan, we would need t do what they did, about 300,000 people here in the u. S. Tasked with Contact Tracing across the country. Were not really prepared to do that right now. So there are a number of things that need to happen between now and then. And i would still expect in the coming months as you said were looking at 60,000 or so deaths, 68,000 by the end of the summer, and many parts of the country have not really seen their peaks yet. So thats still to come. Yeah. So, dr. Gounder, folks at home must be getting confused here, right . If you could begin to relax social distancing at some point, but you need to have testing and Contact Tracing to do so, and this country has shown no National Ability or capacity to do that, how do you then relax the social distancing if one is dependent on the other . Thats precisely why were really concerned because even if we can get the number of cases the transmission suppressed right now with social distancing, we need to be preparing for the next phase of this, which is a more targeted approach. We havent really done the necessary things to get ourselves there. So thats very concerning because then what you can in fact see is another spike in cases and then, you know, again, the same political battles about whether to reinstitute social distancing. So the best thing would be to be prepared with the testing and the Contact Tracing come, you know, end of may. Yeah. Jim, im so glad you asked that, because i know we got to go, but dr. Redfield just said that, a few days ago, the cdc, you need very aggressive Contact Tracing and widespread testing before we can get back to any semblance of normal. So there we have it. We dont have it, yet. Dr. Celine gounder, thanks so much for helping us dive through all this. Still to come this hour, the new york governor says he thinks the worst could be over for his state. Were going to speak to the new york city commissioner who handles Emergency Preparedness there about what she is seeing, plus, the Florida Surgeon general fears social distancing will need to stay in place a lot longer than just this summer. Why is he saying it could last more than a year . And later, President Trump gets defensive, very defensive over accusations of inaction by the administration in february in response to the virus. You wouldnt accept an incomplete job from anyone else. So why accept it from your allergy pills . Flonase relieves your worst symptoms which most pills dont. 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And like were seeing across the country, Governor Whitmer along with the governors of minnesota and wisconsin say theyre making their own regional coalition, theyre going to decide when and how they will reopen their states for business. Lets go to ryan young who joins us from detroit. Ryan, Governor Whitmer in so many ways has been on the front line of this, at first, pleading essentially for supplies, pushing back at the president s claim now that he alone has the power to order the governors reopen their states. Reporter yeah, poppy, something ive watched since ive been here. She doesnt mince any words when it comes to protecting the people of the state. One of the things shes done is extend the stay at home order through the end of the month. People were upset last week when she said she couldnt buy paint or certain supplies from stores, but she said she was doing this to make sure people were safe. Take a listen to her words as she just said yesterday. The government doesnt get opened up via twitter. It gets opened up at the state level. Ive been in contact with a lot of my fellow midwestern governors on this subject specifically because we recognize that we have to have good data, we have to have a good plan, we got to make sure that we avoid a second wave at all costs. That would be devastating for our economy. Avoid a second wave at all costs. You shared photos among emergency room staff and theyre disturbing. Can you talk to us about them . Reporter yeah, obviously very difficult. Look, we have been here for almost two weeks now, a little more than two weeks and working together with my team, youre talking about 25,000 people who have tested positive from the coronavirus, youre talking about so many people have lost their lives and we were talking to some of the staff here who has been working heroically 24 hour shifts to make sure everyone is safe and they started telling us stories about what was going on inside. And they were upset about the staffing levels, upset about what was being done with the bodies. Take a look at the pictures. This was a sleep study room, they had bodies propped up inside. Some staff there in the er, emergency room, upset, and they wanted more to be done in terms of what was going on with these bodies. And then the freezer room, which had bodies on top of each other, this was before the hospital was able to bring in extra freezers. We know there was a shortage of supply and space and thats why they did bring in more freezers. We have aerial footage we went back to that hospital, and now they have five freezer containers to contain all the bodies of the hospital. Look, this city was hit hard. There were a lost patients at one time, we know at Grace Hospital you had to walk outside of the hospital, you had nurses who were upset about the patient ratio there. For the hospitals part, they have been surging in extra staff, but as you can understand, these pictures are difficult to look at. But i want to say, again, this was the staff that shared it with us, they were so upset and moved by what was going on. Horrible to see. Im glad that they made some progress since then, but, still, ryan, thank you very much. Well, this morning, new yorks Governor Andrew Cuomo said that if it would endanger the Public Health of the people of his state, he would not listen to the president s order to reopen new york. Joining us now is deann criswell. Always good to have you on. Thank you so much. Good morning, jim. A week ago, a little more, you know, at the worst moments, there were fears new york would have more patients than icu beds, ventilators, that didnt happen. Tell us how new york avoided that. So the best way to avoid that and what we did was through the strict social distancing strategies. And, you know, it takes a while to see the results of those. But were seeing the results of those. And the number of new admissions while still going up isnt going up as fast as it was a few weeks ago. Are you concerned that discussions of reopening now, whether in new york or elsewhere around the country are too soon . That if you reopen too soon, then you might challenge new york Healthcare Facilities once again . I think the discussions need to happen, but the discussions need to be about how we do that in a very controlled fashion. We went from, you know, the early stages of containment into mitigation which is where were at. And when we start having conversations about reopening, it has to be around how can we continue to contain it then again so we dont see that second wave and that second spike. Key to that, and the governor mentioned this, as have other governors and Healthcare Professionals is testing because you got to know who is infected, who has antibodies, et cetera, but Governor Cuomo, there is no capacity to do that on a broad basis now in new york state. When will that happen, will it happen . Are you confident that new york and

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