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U.S. Now The Epicenter With Most Coronavirus Cases In The World; Bill Gates Warns Entire U.S. Needs To Be Shut Down For Six To 10 Weeks; British Prime Minister And Minister Of Health Test Positive For Coronavirus. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired March 27, 2020 - 14:00   ET

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


[14:00:06]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: I'm Brianna Keilar. Welcome back to CNN's special coverage of the coronavirus pandemic.

As we are faced with a grim reality that the United States now has more than 91,000 cases, this is more than anywhere else in the world.

New York has nearly half of those cases and today, Governor Cuomo announced that his state has more than 500 deaths so far, and he says the battle is far from over.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): The benefit and the burden, right, the risk and the reward. We are battling a deadly virus. Is there an intrusion on daily life? Yes. Is there an intrusion on movement? Yes. Is there an intrusion on the economy? Yes.

But what's on the other side of the scale is literally saving lives. We're going to do this and we're going to do this together. We go out there today and we kick coronavirus's ass. That's what I say. And we're going to save lives. And New York is going to thank you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Our Shimon Prokupecz is at the Javits Center there in New York where there's this makeshift hospital that's been set up. Look, we've been talking to you about this all week, Shimon. So give us a look now that this has been set up.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Right. Finally, we have a look inside, Brianna. The military, the construction workers have been inside, folks at the Javits Center here in New York.

I've been in here, this is what they've been doing, and you can see that there's a bed here, we have blankets. They even have a little, a little plant there, a pot with some plants here.

There's a hand sanitizer. There is a humidifier, there's lighting. There's about a thousand of these all across the hall here. There's -- of course, this is F.E.M.A. They brought in the resources, the items that are needed as this location begins to take in patients. The other things I want to show you, there's this orange bag that is

displayed here behind this. There's all kinds of medical supplies in this bag, and you could see in here, there's -- what doctors and nurses would need. There's stethoscope. There's gauze pads. There's scissors. There's other materials.

There's protective gear in here. All sorts of sterilizers. There's -- a lot of this is strewn all along this line here in what is makeshift -- what is a makeshift hospital.

The other thing inside of these -- of some of these rooms, this is what they're now designed to look like is some of the things to make perhaps maybe make some of the patients who are going to come here feel better.

There's lip balm, there's a honey lip balm that the Javits Center, it's called Jacob's Honey Lip Balm. It's from the Jacobs Javits Center. There's other things here sort of to help them try to feel better as they come in. There's hand sanitizer as well.

All of this obviously is going to play a big role to try and relieve some of the stress that the hospitals we keep hearing about, the hospitals in this city, the hospitals in the state are going to start to feel.

Once they start accepting patients here, it's going to relieve some of the stress on the hospitals, and they're still building out. There's still a lot more work that's being done here.

But they're ready. They're getting prepared. The Governor just finished speaking here. They're continuing to work and this should probably be up and running sometime next week -- Brianna.

KEILAR: I wanted to ask you about something Shimon, because the President on Twitter attacked Governor Cuomo. He claimed that thousands of Federal government ventilators were founded in a New York storage facility and that the state must distribute them now.

You know, you were talking to Governor Cuomo just a short time ago, and you asked him about this and he essentially gave you a fact check. What did he say?

PROKUPECZ: He did. He said it was ignorant of for the President to say something like that. The fact that there are these ventilators, of course, they are there. They are there so that they could be distributed when they are needed. Here's exactly what the Governor said -- Brianna.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: That is -- that is incorrect and grossly uninformed. The point is, we have ventilators in a stockpile and we didn't send them to the hospitals yet, of course, we didn't. That's the whole point.

The hospitals don't need them yet. The hospitals aren't at their apex. The hospitals have enough ventilators today, but the numbers are going up.

We're planning for an apex, a high point in about 21 days that's when we need the 30,000 ventilators -- not today.

Right now, we're putting them in a stockpile. So the point is, while they are in a stockpile, you must not need them. It's just ignorant. Of course, you don't need them today. You need them when you hit the apex, which is 30,000, we're not there yet.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: And Brianna, that's exactly what the Governor has been talking about. He wants to stockpile these so that when they need them, they can have access to them, so they can move them around the state, around New York City.

We're hearing stories already from hospitals that are saying that they're going to need more help, that they're feeling the burden of this virus, that they are over -- that there are too many people at some of these hospitals, and they do anticipate things to get worse.

And all the Governor is saying is, we need these ventilators so that we can move them around when the time comes.

The Governor says he still wants more ventilators. He is hoping to get that -- the apex as he said -- 21 days, and they're still working to make sure the hospitals have everything they need, that the gear, the protective gear and obviously those ventilators -- Brianna.

KEILAR: At Brookdale University Medical Center in Brooklyn saying they are down to the single digits in ventilators and here we are, 21 days away. It's stunning.

Shimon, thank you so much for a look inside what's really a field hospital inside a Convention Center. Thank you.

And as President Trump publicly pushes to reopen parts of the country claiming that some states are at a low risk, Microsoft cofounder and philanthropist, Bill Gates is warning against that idea, saying that social distancing must be the country's top goal nationwide, until the number of cases goes down.

So here's what he told CNN's Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL GATES, MICROSOFT CO-FOUNDER, PHILANTHROPIST: So we're entering to a tough period that if we do it right, we'll only have to do it once for six to 10 weeks, but we have to do it. It has to be the whole country. We have to raise the level of testing and the prioritization of that testing quite dramatically, in order to make sure we go through one shutdown, so that we take the medical problem and really stop it before there's a large number of deaths.

We do then get an economic problem, which is why you want to minimize the amount of time and having states go at different things or thinking you can do it county by county, that will not work and the cases will be exponentially growing anywhere you don't have a serious shutdown.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Dr. Gavin Macgregor-Skinner is an epidemiologist and Infectious Disease expert. He joins us now along with Elizabeth Cohen, our CNN senior medical correspondent.

And Elizabeth, to you first, CNN has learned that these plans to reopen states, they're not yet finalized, but just walk us through what the President is proposing.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, he's being very vague, actually in what he is proposing. He is saying maybe, we divide the country into quadrants, maybe go county by county. He is being very vague about what he is thinking of. I guess, the general feeling is not everyone needs to shut down.

The term county by county, the experts I've been talking to you, that makes them really bristle, like people go from county to county, why would you shut down one county, but not the adjoining county? People travel from county to county. They can easily spread it that way. So that certainly seems too microscopic.

Now whether or not to do that on a larger scale, you know, as Mr. Gates said, if you shut down the whole country, you may actually get the economy up and going earlier, because you can stop this thing now.

But I think the underlying thing that I'm hearing from people is this, Brianna, they want to hear the President talking about science. They want to hear him say, according to the numbers that we're seeing, we should do X. According to the testing data, according to the number of hospitalizations, we should do this. And that's not what he is saying.

It doesn't seem like he is making a data or science-based decision. He is just making a decision, I want to get the economy going again, that's not database, that's not science based.

KEILAR: Yes. Because you have to know what the problem is before you can solve it. It's pretty basic and Dr. Macgregor-Skinner, I wonder if, you know, when we hear Bill Gates say this, he is talking about shutting down for so many weeks. Do you agree with that?

DR. GAVIN MACGREGOR-SKINNER, EPIDEMIOLOGIST AND INFECTIOUS DISEASE EXPERT: What's happening at the neighborhood level, the community level, even the county level, Brianna, we've created resilience zones, and those resilient zones are trying to keep the virus out.

And we know the only way the virus moves across the country into different towns, different neighborhoods is by people movement, and we know that it's not everybody.

So we're using lots of maps. Right now, we're reporting where people are showing any types of separate symptomatic segments, and we're putting those dots on the maps and we're letting everyone in that neighborhood know that this is what you've got, we haven't got any patients.

So we're actually trying to create resilient zones to keep the virus out, not just focus on flattening the curve.

KEILAR: But would you want it -- would you think of a shutdown, a nationwide shut down for that long? You think that's totally reasonable?

MACGREGOR-SKINNER: Right now, my focus is on training in hospitals. I've been in a lot of hospitals in the last two weeks around focusing on provider safety, the frontline health workers safety.

[14:10:12]

MACGREGOR-SKINNER: And what I'm seeing though, is that all the communities, all the neighbors are actually trying to protect the integrity, the functionality of those hospitals.

Now, again, shutdowns, that's not my area of expertise. I focus on hospital safety. But what I'm seeing is that as people are not going to work, they coming together as a community to help to protect the hospital and hospital staff and also decrease the amount of virus being transmitted in their community.

KEILAR: So that let me ask you then Dr. Macgregor-Skinner about -- if you're talking about protecting hospitals, and we're looking at them becoming overwhelmed and there's going to be staffing issues. What do you want to be -- what do you want to see done when it comes to medical students who are supposed to be graduating soon, right?

And what do you want to see in terms of folks being trained on how to use respirators because that may be something that's in shortage.

MACGREGOR-SKINNER: It is, Brianna, and we are training every day, even during the outbreak now. Again, I teach and train in Disaster Medicine. I've done that now for over 25 years.

Even during the disaster, you still train people. And yes, you get volunteers. As you get people within the hospital system, as well as those that have been retired, as well as new graduates coming from universities, we train them in the proper ways of safely putting the PPE on, taking off, but also in using other medical equipment.

So that training is ongoing every day in every hospital in the country right now. We're doing it by face-to-face, we're taking these large paper documents that are produced by the C.D.C., the H.H.S., and we're turning them into YouTube videos so people can watch them in their own time, because everyone learns by doing.

And instead of look it's a focused health system. It is focused by reading, we're learning by doing and we're training probably people in the thousands right now to fill in the necessary gaps on our front lines.

KEILAR: All right, Dr. Macgregor-Skinner, thank you. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you so much.

And the first reports are coming out of healthcare workers here in the U.S. dying from coronavirus. You're going to hear from their loved ones. And I'll talk to a nurse who is currently on the frontlines. Why she says she is terrified.

Plus, we'll take you to a testing site specifically for first responders as we learn more than 200 FDNY members have tested positive and 11 percent of the NYPD out sick. Standby.

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[14:16:47]

KEILAR: We are seeing coronavirus cases rise all across the country. Certainly, our eyes are on New York, but there are several other hotspots that are emerging in places like Detroit, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, and that's where we find Nick Watt and Nick Watt, you're coming to us live and there is a sight for sore eyes behind you tell us about this.

NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There is, Brianna. This is one of two U.S. Navy Hospital Ships now pressed into action to help us fight this coronavirus pandemic.

And Tom, I'll ask you just to push in. You can see some of the military personnel who are aboard this ship. They are waiting to take people out of LA hospitals to treat them on this ship, so they can clear space in the city for the wave of coronavirus cases that we are expecting.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

WATT (voice-over): With 1,000 beds on board, the Mercy docked in LA this morning. Confirmed cases here are climbing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI (D-CA): ... if this rate of increase continues, in six days, we will be where New York is today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATT (voice-over): The Comfort expected to dock in New York City Monday where the Mayor believes more than half the city's population will catch this virus.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CUOMO: We're going to seek to build another four temporary emergency hospitals. I want to have one in every borough.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATT (voice-over): More than 500 now dead in New York State, among them a nurse at Mount Sinai and an NYPD custodian; 442 NYPD uniformed personnel have tested positive, 11 percent of the entire force now out sick.'

The Governor says the rate of increase now falling peak infection still three weeks away.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JEROME ADAMS, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: And we're hopeful that next week, New York will start to come down.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATT (voice-over): Detroit now among the nation's emerging hotspots.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JONEIGH KHALDUN, CHIEF MEDICAL EXECUTIVE, STATE OF MICHIGAN: We think we're still on the aggressive up slope and we still have several weeks to go as far as when we hit that peak.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATT (voice-over): More than 500 new confirmed cases Michigan in just 24 hours, do health workers there have what they need to stay safe?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KHALDUN: Absolutely not. I've now got doctors and nurses on the front lines who are using one mask for their entire shift.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATT (voice-over): One Detroit hospital system is preparing for possible life and death decisions ahead. A letter ready to send to patients and families reads in part, " ... because of shortages, we will need to be careful with resources. Patients who have the best chance of getting better are our first priority."

A company spokesperson telling CNN this letter is part of a larger policy document developed for an absolute worst case scenario. It is not an active policy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every major hospital system in New York and Detroit and Chicago and Seattle are having exactly the same conversations internally.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATT (voice-over): Over in Britain, a bombshell from Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BORIS JOHNSON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: I've taken a test that has come out positive, so I am working from home. Be in no doubt that I can continue, thanks to the wizardry of modern technology to communicate with all my top team.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATT (voice-over): Hours later, his Health Secretary announced he has also tested positive.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATT HANCOCK, BRITISH MINISTER OF HEALTH: Fortunately for me, the symptoms so far have been very mild. So I've been able to carry on with the work.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATT (voice-over): Here in the U.S., the President still talking about opening up at least parts of the country for Easter.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Well, I think what the President was trying to do, he was making an aspirational projection to give people some hope, but he is listening to us when we say we really have got to reevaluate it in real time, and any decision we make has to be based on the data.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATT (on camera): Now, we have just had some terrible news from another ship, the Zaandam Cruise Ship that was cruising around South America is hoping to head to Florida. We are told now that four older guests aboard that ship have died. No cause of death was given, but we know that 138 people on that ship are reporting flu-like symptoms and two people aboard have already tested positive for this coronavirus. Back to you.

KEILAR: All right, Nick Watt. Thank you so much for that report from Los Angeles. That is certainly bad news indeed.

And right now, I want to bring in a guest, Shauna Pavel. She is a home health care nurse in the Cleveland area and yesterday, Shauna, the company that you work for received its first coronavirus patient who was being discharged from the hospital and needed some home care.

Shauna, thank you so much for being with us, and just explain what do you do in a situation like that where you're caring for someone with coronavirus and you have concerns that they may -- they may be either undiagnosed or they may still be contagious as they recover.

SHAUNA PAVEL, HOME HEALTH CARE NURSE, CLEVELAND AREA: Thank you for this opportunity. So homecare is so incredibly important, especially right now. We are providing a number of services in the home that not only keeps people out of the hospital, but also is helping create space for the hospital as they prepare for this big wave that they expect of more, you know, COVID-19 patients.

In the home, what we're doing to try and protect not only the homecare workers, but the patients that we see as well, is we're trying to conserve the PPE that we do have. We're coming up with new policies to try and do the safe the -- most safe practice that we possibly can.

KEILAR: And so how many masks would you have in a day to use?

PAVEL: Currently, with all of our patients, regardless, just for generalized safety, we're using one surgical mask, the paper mask every day, we're reusing it. The N-95 masks that protect us from the particles of the virus that could infect us, those are obviously -- they're in short supply and right now, only a few nurses that have been properly trained and fit tested are able to get a mask and they will be the ones to take care of the COVID-19 patients as they come home from the hospital.

KEILAR: Okay, and so you're seeing multiple patients a day, right? So that's part of the issue is you have one mask, some of your patients are really the most vulnerable here, including immunosuppressed, say cancer patients, what are your biggest concerns for them and for yourself as you're going about your work?

PAVEL: So we're not going to stop seeing our patients because of what's going on. We have a job, we have a duty. We're going to continue to do it.

The scary thing is how can we prevent exposure and transmission to all of our patients while also trying to conserve the PPE that we do have? We really can't do both.

KEILAR: So you have to make a choice, right? So then what do you do?

PAVEL: So we are coming -- we are being creative. I work with some of the most amazing nurses who are creating their own masks with air filters and household items to keep themselves safe.

We are working together constantly talking, constantly checking in with each other, coming up with new ideas. The company that I work for has been very open with their communication. We have meetings at the end of every day with here are the new statistics. This is what we're going to do. This is what we're going to keep doing to keep everybody safe because safety is our main priority with taking care of these patients.

We are the real life Florence Nightingale's right now.

KEILAR: Yes, you are. Shauna, you and your colleagues and homecare nurses across the country are doing God's work, and also trying to keep the hospitals from becoming clogged with other patients as well.

Thank you so much for what you're doing.

PAVEL: Thank you.

KEILAR: And we'll just keep an open line of communication because we want to know what you're going through and what you need.

PAVEL: Absolutely, absolutely. [14:25:02]

KEILAR: Alright, Shauna, good luck to you and your colleagues and some schools in China are starting to reopen as China recovers from its Coronavirus outbreak, but the fear here is still palpable in Europe and in the U.S. as well.

We'll be checking in with our CNN reporters all around the globe, next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. FABRICE SINNAH, BICHAT HOSPITAL: Every day, I see some staff member, I mean, nurses or residents who are crying out of stress. So there's a lot of anxiety in here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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