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CNN TONIGHT

New York Doctor Tests Positive for Ebola; NYPD on Alert after Hatchet Attack on Officers

Aired October 23, 2014 - 22:29   ET

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


DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Anderson, thank you very much.

You know, it's interesting, Anderson, because you have been covering this as well as us for quite some time now. And it's happening now in New York City, where, as you heard the governor, Anderson, say, people are on top of each other. It's a very dense city, the most populous city in the country, probably the worst place that people would want this to happen.

But, as you heard him say, you should not be concerned, at least in his estimate, the health commissioner's estimation as well, even though this man rode the subway, he went to a bowling alley. It's very hard to spread this disease or contract this disease, even though it is, you know, very often fatal if it's not caught quick enough.

COOPER: I mean, you know, he was on the 1 Train. He was on the A Train.

I take those trains pretty much almost every day, depending on exactly which route I decide to take. I go to Williamsburg, Brooklyn all the time. So you know, I don't think this is something and certainly not something I as a New Yorker am worried about.

And it's really -- and you know, we just have to look at the evidence, Don, of the 48 people that Thomas Eric Duncan, the Ebola patient who died coming from Liberia, of the 48 people he came in contact with before being hospitalized. None of them tested positive. The only people who did were healthcare workers. Again, this is a doctor who was directly treating Ebola patients in Guinea. So for the general population at this point, we're not at a stage where I think should be the kind of concern that some people may have.

LEMON: Right you are, Anderson. Just took the A-train today from Harlem, this neighborhood where he lives, as well, and mine.

Thank you, Anderson Cooper. We appreciate the great coverage. We're going to continue on.

This is Don -- I'm Don Lemon. This is CNN TONIGHT.

Continuing on now with our coverage about the doctor who returned from Guinea treating Ebola patients has now tested positive for the Ebola virus. He is now in the hospital and, of course, the people he came in contact with are being monitored. They're in quarantine. One of them, according to New York City's health commissioner, is now in the hospital.

We want to get some analysis on this and get some things clear here. Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta is joining us. He is in Atlanta. Elizabeth Cohen is our senior medical correspondent. She's going to join us from the CDC. Also, Poppy Harlow is at the hospital, at Bellevue Hospital and our Dr. Devi is also here in studio with me to help guide us through this.

I want to get to Sanjay Gupta. Dr. Gupta, you know the health commissioner talked a lot here, but we weren't exactly clear. I think the patient who is in the hospital besides this doctor is the girlfriend of the doctor. The commissioner is saying he came in contact with three people at his apartment, which was his two friends and the girlfriend, but I'm assuming it is the girlfriend who is in the hospital, and the friends are in quarantine now.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (via phone): That's what I took away from that, as well, Don. Obviously, the girlfriend probably is the person that he had the most intense contact with, so that's why they probably have put her into isolation in the hospital, as well.

You know, we've said this over and over again, and I think it bears repeating that the -- even the risk to her is quite small. You'll remember, Don, Mr. Duncan had been at home for two days with symptoms, because he was originally turned away from the hospital. But even though he was at that apartment for two days with symptoms, it doesn't appear that any of the people who were in that apartment with him got sick, but nevertheless, this is exactly what you're supposed to do.

He goes into isolation, Dr. Spencer does, and people that he had intense contact with, especially at the time that he started to develop symptoms have gone to isolation, as well.

You know, one thing, Don, I think is important to point out is that he was not in quarantine when he got back from West Africa. It sounds like he finished his duties there on October 12. He flew back on October 14. He developed his fever today. So by my calculation, that's 11 days after he was taking care of patients, but he did not go into quarantine. There was no mandate that he do so.

But I think that this is going to be an issue that comes up again and again.

LEMON: Doctor...

GUPTA: First you heard, you know, the health commissioner say he was trying to isolate himself, but clearly, as you point out, Don, he was on subways. He was in restrooms. He was bowling. He was not in isolation.

LEMON: Doctor, there's a little bit of a time gap here, because they're saying, again, he completed his work in Guinea October 12. He left on the 14th via Europe, but he didn't arrive at JFK until October 17, so there was some lapse or a layover where he spent time in Europe. I guess if he was not symptomatic there, there is no concern. I imagine.

GUPTA: That's right, Don. I think it's a really important point that you're not a threat in terms of transmitting the virus until you're symptomatic.

And also I'll try to explain this as best I can. But it's not a binary thing, Don. It's not like as soon as you become -- have any symptoms at all, all of a sudden you're fully infectious now and before that you are not. As people get sicker and sicker, that's when they become more and more infectious. That is in part why people who are healthcare workers, who are taking care at -- that person during their sickest time are going to be most at risk.

Again, going back to the case of Mr. Duncan, I know it's just one patient, but people that he was living with when he was starting to become ill did not become infected. On the other hand, two nurses who took of him at a time when he was very ill did become infected.

LEMON: But how quickly...

GUPTA: You sort of get the idea.

LEMON: How quickly, though? Because this was just last night. This was just Wednesday where he took the train and he went to this bowling alley. And I've got a question about that, because they're now sending people to the bowling alley. Why aren't they sending people to -- on the subway or sending people to his apartment, because it's our understanding that they're not doing any sort of sanitizing of the apartment, but they're doing it at the bowling alley, not the subway.

And also, the plane we were told, has been taken out of service for now to be cleaned, but why not the subway?

GUPTA: Well, you know, one can ask questions why the bowling alley, why the plane? And I think part of that is these are probably judgment calls on the people who owned those -- owned the establishment. Perhaps in the case of the bowling alley. And this term gets thrown around a lot, Don, abundance of caution.

So this is one of those situations where the bowling alley folks probably said, "Look, this is how we're going to handle this situation."

He was bowling at this bowling alley. It doesn't sound like he was symptomatic. I think the idea that he could have possibly -- that there's any kind of threat from the fact that he was there is extraordinarily low. I mean, no one ever wants to say zero percent, because that's not how science typically works. But it's extraordinarily low.

But you know, there's a collision now of science and social concern. And so the bowling alley owners are going to know that their bowling alley is in the news now, and they're going to make every effort, obviously, to say, "Here's what we did to -- to mitigate risk."

LEMON: OK. All right. Dr. Gupta, stand by. I'm going to go to Elizabeth Cohen now, senior medical correspondent.

She's at the CDC.

So, Elizabeth, apparently, he was feeling weak for a while. He went for a jog. He was feeling fine. And then he's feeling weak for a short time after that. And then very quickly, because again, last night he went to the bowling alley. And according to the doctors at the press conference tonight, between 10 and 12 this morning Eastern Time in New York, that is when he started feeling sick and his temperature was elevated; and he reached out to the health department.

How quickly, then -- I mean, all of a sudden immediately, you become symptomatic and you can spread it that quickly?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So Don, as Sanjay said, it's not binary. It's not like you're not infectious one moment and then you are infection the next moment. It's sort of a continuum.

In the very beginning when you're not sick at all, you're not infectious. But then gradually, you become more infectious as you become ill.

So we can't say exactly when, you know, Dr. Spencer he became infection. There is no specific moment.

You know, one thing I think this experience -- it may lead to a discussion about fever. You know, we hear so much about fever. Ebola patients have fever. Well, you know, there have been studies. There was one in the "New England Journal of Medicine" recently that shows that not all of them, maybe sort of 10 to 15 percent of them don't have fever, especially in the beginning. And so it does make you wonder about that period of time when Dr. Spencer is said to have felt not well but didn't have a fever yet, and he was still walking around.

LEMON: All right. I want to go to Poppy Harlow now, who's at Bellevue Hospital.

And Poppy, you were in that press conference, and we have heard throughout the day -- there was a press conference earlier. There's also, obviously, this one this evening. And both the governor and the mayor say that the -- during the transport everyone followed protocol. They had on the hazmat suits. They were ready for this. They had been doing drills. The risk to the population of New York City or even the healthcare workers very minimal, if any at all.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, really nil is what they said. We heard Governor Andrew Cuomo, New York City Bill de Blasio saying repeatedly in that press conference, Don, trying to assuage any concerns New Yorkers may understandably have.

This went seamlessly. This doctor knew that he may have been exposed to Ebola, was watching that over the last 10-12 days. Got this 103- degree fever this morning sometime between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m., called Medicines Sans Frontiers, which is Doctors Without Borders that he worked with. They called the health officials here in New York. An ambulance, FDNY responded with hazmat suits; really cordoned off his apartment. He even locked his own door. Followed every single step to come here to Bellevue Hospital, which is 100 percent, we're told, prepared for this. They drilled for this for weeks.

We're also told by a hospital official here that he likely didn't even go into the emergency room, that they likely took him immediately into isolation.

So, you know, you and Anderson were talking about the subway. And I asked in the press conference, can New Yorkers go to work like normal tomorrow? And the answer was yes. And I'm going to take the subway tomorrow. I'm going to take the A-train, one of the trains that he took yesterday. Because it is so hard to contract this disease. So we need to make sure that people here in New York don't panic.

At the same time, we heard a few important new details. One is that four people are now in isolation: the patient, the doctor; his girlfriend or fiancee as they referred to her in the press conference; and two close friends.

What we also know is not only did he go bowling in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and take an Uber Cab -- Uber, the company, just confirmed that to us -- but that he also visited the High Line, which is a long stretch of elevated outdoor space in New York City down around 14th street of Lower Manhattan; and he also visited a restaurant. We don't know which restaurant. So he was trying, they say, to sort of isolate himself, but he certainly, certainly was not -- was not quarantined.

LEMON: All right, thank you, everyone. Stand by. We've gathered a team experts to help get us through this and to talk about this situation.

Also, how did New York City handle its response? How did New York City handle its response? And really, what is the risk to the larger population? The most populous city in the country with thousands of tourists coming here every single day. We'll be right back with our breaking news coverage, live from New York.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Breaking news here on CNN, Ebola has reached New York City. A Doctors Without Borders physician, 33-year-old Craig Spencer, who recently returned from West Africa, has tested positive for the Ebola virus. He has been in isolation at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan. That's since this morning.

Dr. Devi Nampiaparampil is with us. Dr. Alexander Garza also with us, and Gavin MacGregor-Skinner is here, Juliet Kayyem and our very own Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us on the phone.

Dr. Devi, talk to us about this particular virus. Because you said the temperature depends on -- or the fever depends on your immune system.

DR. DEVI NAMPIAPARAMPIL, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, NYU SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: Exactly. So some people have a very low fever. Some people don't have fevers right away, and some people have high fevers, like in this case. So your body, your immune system is what creates the five -- the fever, to be able to fight the virus.

So you know, like they were saying earlier, there's a period of time where you're not sure if the person is contagious or not. It depends on how much of the virus is actually in their body fluids. So it's possible that the fever is there before the virus actually reaches high levels in your body fluid.

LEMON: I want to talk to Juliet Kayyem now. Because you heard the governor talk about coordinating with HHS, Health and Human Services, also Ron Klain, who is a new, quote, "Ebola czar." And also you heard the head of the CDC speaking at the press conference, and the question is, all of this training that they have been having here. They feel that they are prepared for it. New York City feels that it is prepared for it.

They're activating its emergency operations center in Brooklyn. Are all of these the right moves?

JULIET KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Absolutely. I think, you know, over the last couple of months, some of the sort of communications errors that have come out of the government are that they overpromised and under-delivered. You know, sort of saying it would never come here. We're prepared.

The truth is Texas was -- and what happened in the Texas hospital was a wake-up call. And it was a wake-up call not just to New York but to every state that they need to start practicing and training these protocols, because someone somewhere is going to walk in with a fever.

And you saw New York -- this press conference, as well as their response, was sort of a course correction. It was a very factual press conference; it was very soothing. They did not stray from what they knew. There were no promises made. They are going to take this seriously, open up an emergency operations center to find out who may have been infected.

LEMON: And the governor actually mentioned Dallas, saying, you know, "They did things wrong. We're prepared here."

KAYYEM: Yes, exactly right. And we can look back, and sort of say, you know, we still don't actually know what happened in Texas. So there was sort of full disclosure tonight exactly where he was, how he came into, you know, sort of knowing that he had Ebola, who he contacted.

Notice that there was tremendous focus on transportation. Every single speaker talked about it. How they moved him from the apartment, not to the emergency room but straight to the special site that has been set up. I will tell you, having been at the Department of Homeland Security, every single governor, every mayor of every major city is now on a phone call with their sort of, you know, public safety heads, public health heads, making sure they know exactly what to do, because we are now in a phase where we just can't predict who's going to show up. Nothing to be scared about. This is what public safety and public health do. They train. They learn, and they learn in real time, as we're seeing with Ebola. So this is -- there is a lot of good news coming out of this, however scary it may seem.

LEMON: And it's exactly what health experts have been saying all along: there will probably be more cases. The question is, though, Dr. Garza, Doctors Without Borders have a high success rate of doctors not getting sick, not contracting Ebola. What could have gone wrong in this case?

DR. ALEXANDER GARZA, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF HEALTH AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY: Well, it's hard to say right now, Don. So, obviously though, if you look at who gets infected with Ebola, a very high percentage of them are healthcare workers. And it makes sense, because they are treating the patients that have the high -- excuse me -- the highest viral load of anybody. And so it's not unexpected that healthcare workers would be at the highest risk for contracting the disease, as was played out today.

LEMON: Dr. Gavin, you know, according to officials at the press conference, that he did try to self-quarantine or self-isolate for a while. But then, again, he went out in public and went for a jog and visited a restaurant. He did a number of things.

Should healthcare workers, especially those who are coming from places like he came from Guinea, some of the places that have, you know, the highest number of people who have contracted Ebola and has been treating patients with Ebola, should they know better? Should there be a system in place where they're quarantined for -- self-quarantined for 21 days when they return?

GAVIN MACGREGOR-SKINNER, ELIZABETH R. GRIFFIN FOUNDATION: Don, this is a very important question and, again, now from my team, from the Elizabeth Griffin Foundation, when we had been dealing with Ebola patients in Nigeria we came back. And we followed actually what's -- the CDC has guidelines for this.

So any healthcare worker that's had direct contact or direct contact with Ebola patients, CDC actually tells us that we should control our movement for 21 days as well as taking our temperature at least at a minimum of twice a day.

So all of our team that came back from Nigeria, we developed a peer- to-peer network we called an external conscience, where we talked to each other. We ensured that we're all feeling fine and we aren't having any of the symptoms of Ebola. And we do self-report.

And this is really important, because if we had come back and had been put into quarantine, how would very have been able to earn a salary to support our families? And it's really important that, while we don't have symptoms, we can go about and do our daily job, our daily work and responsibilities and actually earn money.

Now, to tell them everyone who comes back from West Africa has to go into quarantine, that's going to affect families. You know, many of my team would not want to go back. We all want to go back to West Africa as soon as we can. How does that affect the U.S. military that's in there at the moment? Again, so let's stick with the facts. We know you can't transmit

Ebola until you're symptomatic, but again, let's look at the symptoms. It's that sudden onset of fever. And many of the Ebola patients that I've worked with have said, well, the day -- the day of the fever had -- I felt fatigued. I had a headache. I had abdominal pain. I had a backache. I just didn't feel well. I felt nauseous. And, then, bang, that onset of the fever comes in, as we saw with Dr. Spencer and that's what we need to ensure.

So when we triage now it has -- if you've traveled from Guinea, Sierra Leone, or Liberia and do you have any of the following symptoms? It's not just the fever; it's all the other Ebola symptoms we have to triage for.

LEMON: Dr. Gupta is with me, joining me now from Atlanta. Dr. Gupta, you and I have talked a lot about travel restrictions or travel ban. Would it have -- and how do you really put that into place? How do you really monitor it? Because he came from Guinea, but he came from Europe, right, through Europe so how do you monitor that?

He did go into one of the five airports, which we're now monitoring Ebola patients: JFK, Newark, Washington, Dulles, O'Hare and Atlanta Hartsfield. But then, it may not have worked in this particular case, Dr. Gupta.

GUPTA: I think -- I think that's right, Don. I mean, I think you know, if you institute a travel ban, the concern has been sort of twofold. One is that people who are in these West African countries may go by land to another country. They may fly into another place around the world and then come into the United States. So unless you're starting to institute bans from many, many countries, it's probably not going to work.

The second issue is that, you know, you need to continue to get humanitarian aid into West Africa. I mean you've heard the numbers, Don. They're talking about the possibility of 10,000 cases per week. You start to restrict humanitarian aid in any way, that could increase even more so and, frankly, that puts just not West Africa at risk but, really, the entire world.

Having said that, Don, and you and I talked about this, as well. I think the CDC does need to be clear. The guidance does need to be clear. If you're a healthcare worker taking care of patients with Ebola in West Africa, should you be quarantined for 21 days?

LEMON: Right.

GUPTA: Self-quarantine for 21 days. You know, it's been back and forth. Even within this news conference, first you heard the health commissioner say, well, he self-isolated. But then not really. He was on subways. He was at restaurants. He was in bowling alleys.

LEMON: But Doctor. That...

GUPTA: That doesn't help in terms of -- in terms of building confidence. LEMON: Dr. Gupta, to the average person, though, the average person

would say -- and I've heard people here who have said it to me, just on the street -- shouldn't healthcare workers, and especially people who have been treating Ebola patients, shouldn't they know better than to go out in public and possibly risk spreading this virus?

GUPTA: Well, here is -- here is the dichotomy, the rub, Don, is that you are not going to -- you can't -- you're not going to transmit the virus until you're sick, right. You'll transmit -- more likely to transit it when you are sick. Right? And you -- you're going to transmit more of the -- you're more likely to transmit it when you are more sick. So you know, it's going to be a -- you're not really a threat to the general public.

But having said that, you know, I mean, if someone has had intensive exposure to someone with Ebola, a healthcare worker in this case, taking care of patients in West Africa, it may just the prudent thing to do.

What is -- what is a little surprising to me is that there has -- there really is no guidance on this. I was in West Africa. I came back. I was in Ebola tents. My colleague, Elizabeth Cohen, was in West Africa a couple -- a month ago, a couple of months ago. There was no guidance when we came back. This is the world, the new world in which we live. The guidance is going to need to be clear.

While travel bans may not work, the idea of people being very judicious about their exposure to other people, I think is important. And the fact that, you know, I'm sure Dr. Spencer is a very meticulous, thoughtful guy, but he was on subways. He was bowling. He was at a restaurant, having returned from West Africa having had contact with patients with Ebola.

LEMON: Right.

GUPTA: This is going to need to be addressed and answered very clearly, Don.

LEMON: All right. OK. All right. Dr. Gupta, stand by. Everyone standby here. We've got a lot more on Ebola tonight.

Also the other huge breaking news story here in New York. Police on alert after a hatchet attack on officers and fears that there is a terror connection with this. We'll be right back with our breaking news.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Welcome back, everyone. We've got a lot more on our breaking news tonight: Ebola in New York. But right now, I want to turn to another huge story tonight. The NYPD on alert after a gruesome hatchet attack on New York police today. Our very own Jim Sciutto joins me now with the details on that.

So Jim, what do we know tonight about the hatchet attack in the borough of Queens, New York? JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Don, I'll tell you, this was a brazen attack. It was in broad daylight on the streets in Queens. Four New York City police officers, they had paused to take a photo when what you're seeing in this video clip from surveillance right now, this man ran up and attacked them with a hatchet.

He injured two police officers, one of them critically. Struck one in the arm, one in the head. And based on what you see in the video, police believe that this man might have been stalking the police officers for some time, and he came possibly hiding himself behind a bus stop. And that's when he came up and he struck.

We now know his identity. I'm told by the -- by a New York Police Department source his name is Zale Thompson, 32 years old. He had a criminal record in California. He was also discharged from the Navy for misconduct. But this is what really concerns police right now. They looked at his social media, his Facebook page as well as postings on YouTube, and they saw things there that made them concerned that this attack on police might be tied to recent calls by jihadist groups for attacks on soldiers, like we saw in Canada, or law enforcement officers, like we saw here in New York.

So really just a very worrisome thing, and I'll tell you, Don, this is exactly the kind, if it bears out to have been tied to Islamic extremism, this is exactly the kind of attack U.S. intelligence, U.S. authorities have been telling me they are very concerned about in the U.S., because they're frankly so hard to track. So hard to prevent as a result.

LEMON: Yes. And these lone wolf attacks, so to speak. Thank you very much. Our Jim Sciutto, reporting the breaking news here, reporting from Washington on the breaking news in New York City.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

LEMON: Hello, everyone. It's 11 p.m. in New York, and this is CNN TONIGHT. I'm Don Lemon.