[John King, Cnn Anchor:] Another daily record in the coronavirus case count. And this is what you get from your government, a fight over who to believe and who on the president's team can be trusted. A top economic adviser to the president says Dr. Anthony Fauci is just about always wrong and that you shouldn't listen to his advice. That, as Dr. Fauci tells us the current pandemic may, in his view, approach the horror of the 1918 flu epidemic. And as the Trump White House also sidelines another key science-based agency, the CDC. The pattern here is crystal clear. The president wants you to listen to him, not to the experts. But he can't hide the numbers and the numbers are troubling. Period. Take a look. Another 60,000-plus new coronavirus cases confirmed. And that runs the American total to 3,431,000 infections. The death number the president has been insisting is low, well, look again. It's starting to rise. Florida reported a single-day high for deaths, as did Alabama, Oregon and Utah. And 14 states reporting record hospitalizations, which almost always, sadly then, sends the death count up still more. The president cheering this morning what might be a glimmer of hope in this dark coronavirus summer. Moderna's vaccine candidate produced immune responses in all who volunteered to take it, according to the results published in the "New England Journal of Medicine." That is a good sign. But let's be clear, a fully vetted and readily available vaccine is still a good ways off. The Coronavirus Task Force meets today in private. And with the soaring summer case count, come new warnings about whether it's safe to reopen schools and new debates about whether the only way to stop the spread now is to roll back some of the economic reopening. The moment is urgent. The issue is quite complicated and very consequential. But from the president, another simplistic and, not to mention, a ridiculous attempt to explain it all away.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] Frankly, if we didn't test, you wouldn't have all of the headlines. Think of this. If we didn't do testing, instead of testing over 40 million people, if we did half the testing, we'd have half the cases. If we did another you cut that in half, we'd have, yet again, half of that. But the headlines are always testing.
[King:] The headline, the president says, is always testing. That's not the only headline. But the testing is critical because it gives us the numbers that feed this map. And this map at the moment, I'm sorry, Mr. President, is quite troubling. Let's take a look. You don't have to be a scientist to know 38 states heading in the wrong direction, meaning a higher case count this week than last week, is bad, five-plus months into the crisis. Again, 38 states. And 33 in the light orange, going up. Their cases this week 10 to 50 percent higher than last week. Five states in the danger zone. Their cases this week 50 percent or more higher than last week. And 38 states going up. That is simply the wrong direction. You have nine states holding steady. That's the beige. Only three states heading down, Maine, Delaware, and out in the west there, Arizona starting to go down a bit after having a tough stretch. But 38 states heading up is bad news for the country. The same five states, again, with the highest positivity rate. Yes, Mr. President there's more testing. The key when you get that testing is to have the positivity rate coming low. That means you're stopping the community spread. In South Carolina, it's more than 18 percent coming back positive. In Florida, nearly 19 percent back positive. Alabama, 17 percent. Texas 17 percent. And Arizona is actually down, but it's almost still 25 percent in Arizona. That is a troubling number for the positivity rate. Hospitalizations, this was the peak in April 21st. Remember back in April when we thought we were at the peak of the coronavirus crisis? The goal is to come down the hill. Now we're going back up. And right now, just shy of the peak on April 21st in terms of people hospitalized across the country with coronavirus cases. We'll continue to watch this number. You want it to go down and you can see in recent days it is heading up. Hospitalizations, 14 states, as we noted. And you see them here on the map. Many of them here in the south and the southeast and the others out west. And 14 states yesterday reporting record hospitalizations. That is not a trend headed in the wrong direction. Again, you see this happening and you see the numbers. You see politicians and scientists and everyone trying to explain we're do OK. Here's something to see. Remember this. The United States and the European Union went up the coronavirus hill at about the same time. The population is roughly comparable. We have 50 states. They have a mix of countries. Up the hill at the same time. Here's where the European Union is today. The United States started to come down. There's where we go right now. And as we watch this curve and it is troubling Florida is the hottest of America's coronavirus hot spots right now. The Miami area in there hit the hardest, as well. Hospitalizations up. ICU problems across the state of Florida. And let's go straight down to Rosa Flores on the ground in Miami. Rosa, new numbers from today from Florida yet?
[Rosa Flores, Cnn Correspondent:] Yes. The Florida Department of Health just reporting more than 10,000 cases. This means that the state of Florida has surpassed more than 300,000 cases. Look, here in Miami-Dade County, the mayors had a roundtable discussion with Governor Ron DeSantis yesterday. They asked for more resources, for more contact tracers, for a unified message. They asked for more data so that they can have the information necessary to make decisions, to save lives. Here is the reality on the ground. City of Miami Mayor Francis Suarez put it like this. He says he's being pressured to shut down the economy in the next one to two weeks because they need to turn this around, he says, in the next week to four weeks. The reality in Miami-Dade County, the positivity rate is 31 percent. And this according to Miami-Dade. And the hospitalization in the past 13 days, according to the county, are up 56 percent. When it comes to ICU beds, 65 percent and also ventilators, 92 percent. Jackson Health reports that in the past month, they've seen a 226 percent increase in COVID-19 patients. Here is Jackson Health CEO Carlos Migoya.
[Carlos Migoya, Ceo, Jackson Health System:] We have a lot of aggressive, non-compliant people, people that do not believe that masking is the right thing to do and they don't believe it. And frankly, a lot of young people are saying, so what if I get it? If I get it, it doesn't mean anything. But the challenges that we have in Miami, like in other places, is we are a very diverse community and we have a lot of multigenerational families.
[Flores:] John, as we look across the state, 54 ICU hospitals are at capacity. Ten of those are right here in Miami-Dade John?
[King:] Rosa Flores on the ground for us. Grateful for your reporting in Miami. I hope, hopefully, one of these days, it turns more optimistic. Rosa, thank you so much. And with us to share her expertise and her insights is Dr. Jen Kates, who is the director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. It's good to see you again, Dr. Kates. Again, I wish we were having a more positive conversation. I just want to pick up Florida. Florida is the hottest of the hot spots right now. When you hear 31 percent positivity in Miami-Dade we are five-plus months into this. If you are still in a major American urban area, getting a 31 percent positivity rate and I showed the numbers in South Carolina, Alabama, Texas and so on when your positivity rate is in double digits and, in some cases, above 20 percent, 30 percent, what does that tell you about where we are?
[Dr. Jen Kates, Senior Vice President & Director, Global Health And Hiv Policy, Kaiser Family Foundation:] That means, in Florida, it's a major hot spot in the U.S. And the positivity rate that high means widespread community transmission and the epidemic is not being controlled. It's really a big red flag. You want to see that number coming down while testing is going up. That's not what's happening. It's getting worse.
[King:] So one of the things that some people in the Trump administration are, quote, unquote, "celebrating" this day is this, what I want to play you. First, we saw the president over the weekend finally in public wearing a mask at one event. And this is the CDC director, Robert Redfield. Listen.
[Robert Redfield, Cdc Director:] I'm glad to see the president wear a mask this week and the vice president. We need them to set the example.
[King:] Should we be celebrating that now or should we have had the president setting that example maybe weeks and months ago?
[Kates:] The evidence has been pretty clear for a while that face coverings are a critical intervention. They've got to replace social distancing and walk six feet apart. And without face coverings, we won't bring down the rates that we're seeing. The evidence has been there. And it's better late than never to have an example set from the top that this is what people should do. It's really it's about protecting the community around us. And I think it can make a big difference. We've seen that throughout the world. And we've seen that in places in the U.S. And the CDC came out with a strong editorial yesterday about this and encouraging the American public to wear face masks. And I hope this will increase the willingness of people to do so.
[King:] Help me understand. This is the business of Kaiser. And Kaiser is a great global resource and here in the United States for data. You collect data on health care trends across the United States so you can see, today, how are we today
[Kates:] Right.
[King:] how does it compare to last week, and how does it compare to last month, how does it compare to five years ago, and so on and so forth. And that data is critical as you shape public health policy decisions. What does it tell you and I just read a little bit in the "New York Times" today, that the president is telling the United States, send your data now to a Washington database, bypass the Centers for Disease Control, which, for years, has been the place where you do this. The Trump administration ordering hospitals to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all COVID-19 patient information to a central database in Washington beginning on Wednesday. Does that trouble you? Have we switched to some new system? Can they convince you it's better than the CDC way?
[Kates:] I think it raises questions that we do not have answers to. Why is this switch happening? Is it to streamline things, or expedite things? It could be the case. What will be the role of the CDC? As you mentioned, we, at our organization, rely on data, as do reporters, as do think tanks, as does the American public to try to understand trends. The CDC has been critical for that throughout the history of its existence and certainly during COVID. There are a lot of questions of who will have access to the data. Will it be public? What will be the transparency here? So right now, I have a lot of questions. I think everyone does.
[King:] Jen Kates, the vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, very much appreciate your expertise and insights today, as always. Thank you.
[Kates:] Thank you. Thank you.
[King:] Thank you. Up next for us, a Trump administration official attacking a colleague, Dr. Anthony Fauci. Mixed messaging from the White House again in the middle of a pandemic.