[Jake Tapper, Cnn:] Barbara Starr at the Pentagon, thank you so much. Our coverage on CNN continues right now. Our thanks to the Larkin family for participating in that story.
[Wolf Blitzer, Cnn:] I'm Wolf Blitzer in THE SITUATION ROOM. We're tracking two major stories tonight, new developments in the coronavirus crisis and a huge turn of events in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. Financial markets tanking today amid growing concern about the economic impact of the outbreak. There are also new fears tonight about testing shortfalls here in the United States. Vice President Pence says there are currently not enough screening kits to meet the anticipated demand. The number of cases now stands at more 200 in the U.S. with 12 dead. Also tonight, another major shift in the race for the Democratic nomination, Elizabeth Warren dropping her presidential bid after a deeply disappointing showing on Super Tuesday. Warren declined to immediately endorse either of her main rivals leaving supporters up for grabs. I'll speak with Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips, chief clinical officer in a major hospital group in Washington, a state where at least 70 people have the virus. And our correspondents and analysts have full coverage of today's top stories. First, take a look at this. New testing kits being dropped off by a helicopter to a cruise ship just off the coast of San Francisco where passengers on board are showing symptoms of the virus. CNN's Lucy Kafanov is joining us right now and she's got details. Lucy, give us the latest.
[Lucy Kafanov, Cnn Correspondent:] Wolf, that's right. They have dropped off those medical kits. Passengers also tell us that medical workers are now on board to help test for the coronavirus. But there are more than 2,000 people on board the ship. The question on everyone's mind is whether their ordeal is about to be over or whether this is the start of a new one. Will they be quarantined, and where? The answers might depend on those test results.
[Kafanov:] Tonight the Air National Guard air lifting coronavirus test kits to a cruise ship off the coast of California.
[Gov. Gavin Newsom:] We have a number of passengers and crew members that have developed symptoms on this cruise.
[Kafanov:] The Grand Princess was returning from it Hawaii. The voyage interrupted by the death of a 71-year-old California man, a coronavirus fatality. Health officials believe he contracted it on the same ship during a cruise to Mexico from February 11th to the 21st. Those on board now stranded. At least 11 passengers and 10 crew members exhibiting symptoms. Less than 100 will be tested for the virus, but thousands may have been exposed.
[Unidentified Male:] Is this your first Princess cruise?
[Sharon Lane-simon:] It is. Yes. And it will be the last.
[Kafanov:] Last month, more than 600 cases were reported on the Diamond Princess, quarantined off the coast of Japan. Passengers on the Grand Princess fear they're next.
[Lane-simon:] We're due to go home on Saturday but obviously, we don't know whether we're going to be quarantined for two week what's happening.
[Kafanov:] Thursday, lawmakers on Capitol Hill pressed Trump administration officials for answers on how they'll prevent a similar situation.
[Kenneth Cuccinelli, Acting Deputy Secretary Of Homeland Security:] We don't want to obviously use one bad example to set the rule for everything else. And that's why we have flown test kits out to the ship literally as we're speaking. That's going out so that we have greater clarity on exactly what we're contending with.
[Kafanov:] Across the U.S., more than 200 cases of coronavirus reported in 17 states. The brunt of them along the West Coast with a total of 12 deaths reported, 11 in Washington State and one in California. Cases also rising in the east, doubling overnight in New York, largely as a result of increase testing from 11 cases to 22.
[Gov. Andrew Cuomo:] The number will continue to go up. It must because we are continuing to test more and more. The more you test, the higher number you will have.
[Kafanov:] Now, the CDC is working around the clock to produce and send out more test kits. They say that by end of next week, they hope to have enough to test at least 1.5 million people. Wolf.
[Blitzer:] All right, let's hope. Lucy Kafanov reporting for us, thank you. Let's go to our Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta right now. Jim, the Vice President is offering a rather candid assessment of a major short coming in the coronavirus response.
[Jim Acosta, Cnn Chief White House Correspondent:] That's right, Wolf. The White House point man on the coronavirus outbreak, Vice President Mike Pence acknowledged today that the administration is still working to meet the demand for testing across the country. That acknowledgment comes as President Trump is coming under intense scrutiny for comments he made about the outbreak. The President appear to suggest that people can go to work after being infected with the virus even though the CDC is warning people not to do that. But the big worry for this administration is that they don't have enough tests for this virus.
[Acosta:] In the race against the coronavirus the Trump administration is still playing catch up to meet the demand for testing kits for people who suspect they've been infected. Vice President Mike Pence conceded to reporters that the administration is still working to make enough tests available.
[Mike Pence, Vice President Of The United States:] We don't have enough tests today to meet what we anticipate will be the demand going forward.
[Acosta:] White House officials insist the administration will meet its goal of distributing more than 1 million tests by the end of the week. But those officials concede the government is still well behind anticipated growing demand for tests over the coming months. Earlier this week, Pence said the administration wants to have the ability to test any American.
[Pence:] Any American that wants to be tested for the coronavirus on their doctor's indications can be tested.
[Acosta:] The administration is also trying to contain an outbreak of sketchy information coming from the President. He told Fox News it was his hunch that the mortality rate for the coronavirus is much lower than what's been cited by the World Health Organization.
[Donald Trump, President Of The United States:] Well I think the 3.4 percent is really false number. Now, and this is just my hunch, and but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this. So I think that that number is very high. I think the number, personally, I would say the number is way under one percent.
[Acosta:] Contrast that with what some administration experts have said.
[Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director, National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases:] If you look at the cases that have come to the attention of the medical authorities in China and you just do the math, the math is about two percent.
[Acosta:] Even Mr. Trump's top allies are advising Americans to listen to the scientists.
[Sen. Lindsey Graham:] Listen to the scientist when is it comes to numbers.
[Acosta:] The President also suggested people infected with the coronavirus could go to work.
[Trump:] So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work. But they get better.
[Acosta:] But the CDC website says don't to that, adding, "You should restrict activities outside your home except for getting medical care. Do not go to work, school or public areas. Avoid using public transportation, ride-sharing or taxis." All week, the President has been playing fast and loose with the facts claiming a coronavirus vaccine could be ready in months.
[Trump:] I don't think they know what the time will be. I've heard very quick numbers, a matter of months. And I've heard pretty much a year would be an outside number.
[Acosta:] Only to be contradicted by the experts.
[Fauci:] So he's asked the question, when is it going to be deployable? And that is going to be at the earliest a year to year and a half no matter how fast you go.
[Acosta:] Democrats say the President should be more careful.
[Rep. Donna Shalala:] My chief concern is that we not politicize this. You know, fear is a virus as well. And it's very important that we stick to the facts.
[Acosta:] The White House is also advising federal workers to stay home if they are suffering from flu-like symptoms saying in an e-mail that they should not come into the office out of an abundance of caution. In the meantime we should point out the financial markets don't appear to be encouraged by the government's response to the coronavirus outbreak. The Dow dropped just under 1,000 points, another wild swing in a very volatile week. Wolf.
[Blitzer:] Volatile indeed. All right, Jim Acosta, thank you very much. Let's get some more analysis right now from an expert right at the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak here in the United States. Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips is joining us. She's the chief clinical officer at the Providence St. Joseph Health hospital group. Thanks so much for joining us Dr. Compton-Phillips. As you know better than anyone, 12 Americans have now died from coronavirus, 11 in your state of Washington alone. What are you learning about how to protect people who get this virus?
[Dr. Amy Compton-phillips, Chief Clinical Officer, Providence St. Joseph Health:] We're learning that we really need to be very cautious about how infectious this germ is because it's reasonably easily transmissible. And so we're doing everything we can not to focus on the outbreak of sketchy information, but on leveraging common sense and actually following evidence- evidence-based guidelines that say that you wash your hands often, that you use hand sanitizer, that if you're going to do anything that interacts with somebody who has the germ, that you use appropriate personal protection equipment so that you can minimize any risk of transmitting person to person.
[Blitzer:] Yes. Potentially life-saving advice for a lot of our viewers. The Vice President as you just heard says the country right now doesn't have enough testing kits to meet the future demand. How does that impact hospitals like yours trying to contain the spread of the virus?
[Compton-phillips:] It's a huge impact to have insufficient tests available because we any time there's an outbreak, you see the tip of the iceberg. You get the people who have the most severe symptoms coming in. But those people got that infection from somewhere. And we need to figure out in order to interrupt transmission of this infection. We need to figure out where that infection is coming from, which means you need to treat the less severely impacted. People who think they just have a cold, but they really have coronavirus. And if they happen to get around somebody that's, you know, 70 years old and has some underlying health conditions can be lethal. And so we've got to start actually testing those less severely impacted patients.
[Blitzer:] Yes, much worse for the elderly right now than for younger people. Your team has been treating coronavirus patients including some from the Diamond Princess Cruise ship. Tell us more about what that treatment looks like.
[Compton-phillips:] Well, it absolutely varies on the severity. So we've had people that really have had very minimal symptoms, more like your cold or flu symptoms. And we've had people who have passed away, unfortunately. And the big challenge is that if the virus goes from having upper respiratory symptoms, so headache and fever and congestion, to having a viral pneumonia, it can really impact the ability to get oxygen in the bloodstream. And so then we have to do everything from using extra oxygen, to using a ventilator. And in China they've even had to use something called ECMO, which is like a bypass machine that can oxygenate the blood outside the body. And so we're working hard to learn from the experience in other countries so we can apply those lessons here as rapidly as possible.
[Blitzer:] I'm curious, doctor, how these so-called isolation chambers, the negative pressure rooms, as they're call called, actually work.
[Compton-phillips:] They actually do work. And the reason we use those is that in a regular hospital room, if somebody coughs and then you open the door, if there's anything that's aerosolized in that room, the air can whoosh out of the room and into the hallway and infect the hospital, which is, of course, not what you want. And instead with the negative pressure room, you keep the atmospheric pressure in that room a little bit lower than the hallway. So when you open the door air rushes in. And that air is then all filtered through a specific HEPA filter that keeps the germs from going beyond. In fact, in one of our hospitals, in our Everett Hospital, we've turned an entire floor into a negative pressure floor so that we can actually manage the influx of people who are infected.
[Blitzer:] Well, thank you so much for what you and your team are doing. I know you're saving lives out there. Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips, appreciate it very much.
[Compton-phillips:] Thank you so much.
[Blitzer:] All right. A quick and very important programming though to our viewers. Later tonight at 10:00 p.m. Eastern, CNN presents a live global town hall, Coronavirus, Facts and Fears. Join our Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta live tonight at 10:00 Eastern only here on CNN. Up next, from today's big trop on Wall Street to the impact on Main Street and beyond, take a closer look at the financial fallout from coronavirus fears. Plus, today's big development in the presidential campaign, Senator Elizabeth warren drops out setting up a showdown between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.