[Vause:] Just hours ago, crowds of Cubans welcomed home doctors who went to Italy to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic; 52 health professionals landed in Havana on Monday after spending more than two months in the Lombardy region. Cuba has employed health care workers around the world as part of their response to the outbreak. U.S. State Department has criticized the country's medical diplomacy as propaganda. The U.K. has imposed a mandatory two-week quarantine period for those who are arriving back. And now in some areas in the United States, we are seeing spikes of the coronavirus. This is not the U.K.; this is New York, where they're taking the first cautious steps toward reopening. CNN's Nick Watt has more.
[Nick Watt, Cnn Correspondent:] One hundred days since New York State's first case the Big Apple is back. Well, they're now allowing more retail, manufacturing and construction with some strict parameters.
[Mayor Bill De Blasio , New York City:] It is the day that we start to liberate ourselves from this disease the day we move forward. Phase 1, the restart begins today in New York City.
[Watt:] Let's not forget the terrible toll on this city. Nearly 22,000 deaths so far and black and Latinx New Yorkers dying at twice the rate of white residents. And it's not over.
[Gov. Andrew Cuomo:] We're not out of the woods, but we are on the other side certainly.
[Watt:] The governor rode the subway to his daily briefing this morning. The message, it's safe.
[Cuomo:] We are continuing our decline. The rest of the country is still spiking.
[Watt:] Florida has added more than 1,000 new cases a day for five straight days. Texas, another early reopener, now adding an average of over 1,500 cases a day. That's up 50 percent.
[Unidentified Male:] Governor Abbott has had an inadequate and weak response that has been based more on politics than on science. He opened up the state too early.
[Watt:] Bucks County, Pennsylvania, announced 33 new cases Saturday, 11 of them tied to one person who they say has been partying down to the Jersey Shore.
[Unidentified Male:] It's kind of a coming together of a perfect storm, if you will. We had the Memorial Day weekend, a lot of folks were being very lax and relaxed about proportions. And we've been having a backdrop of states reopening. Plus, all the protesters in these mass gatherings.
[Watt:] Protests sparked by George Floyd's death might be spreading this virus around the country.
[Unidentified Male:] I don't want to catch it. I don't think anyone wants to catch it. But when it comes to issues of social justice, that takes precedent, I feel like. COVID-19 is going to be here for a little bit. Hopefully we'll get a vaccine.
[Watt:] The White House has a vaccine program.
[Trump:] It's called Operation Warp Speed.
[Watt:] But today, two prominent professors say they're scared it might move too fast. "Given how this president has behaved, this incredibly dangerous scenario is not far-fetched," they wrote in a "New York Times" op-ed. "In a desperate search for a political boost, he could release a coronavirus vaccine before it had been thoroughly tested and shown to be safe and effective." The big question, did lockdown work? Well, researchers from UC Berkeley say absolutely. They estimate that just the first few weeks of lockdown here in the U.S. might have prevented 60 million infections. But the price we are paying for that, the U.S. is now officially in a recession, as it has been since February Nick Watt, CNN, Los Angeles.
[Vause:] Meantime the U.K. is bracing for a grim milestone, which is a death toll that could be north of 50,000. CNN's Nina dos Santos is standing by in London. So this seems to be the British government moving too slow and acting too late. What are they saying?
[Nina Dos Santos, Cnnmoney Europe Editor:] Yes, that's what it seems to be the case. But to be honest with you these are figures that are likely to come up from the official statistics that are higher than the public health bodies here. And remember we have this idiosyncrasy here in this country; other parts of the United Kingdom, like Scotland and Northern Ireland and Wales, that have their own health bodies and they tally up their own numbers separately. They also count them slightly differently. It's the same situation we've seen in many European countries as well, when it comes to the overall statistics agency, that they are likely to report that we are at 50,000 or close to 50,000 for the bulk of the U.K., which is England and Wales. And this is a grim milestone, it is one of the worst death tolls anywhere. You can't say the British government was not warned here. But they claim they were taken by their own science advisers who briefed members of Parliament back in mid March when the virus was taking a grip here before the lockdown and saying that "a good outcome" for the public health officials in the U.K. for the death toll at that point would be only 20,000 people. And he was roundly criticized for those comments, being insensitive. But as you can see we surpassed our 40,000 and are set to hit around 50,000. The big question in this country and elsewhere, is how did we get here? It's a lack of testing; as we know, the government has had difficulty with logistical gymnastic maneuvers to try to meet its testing targets. Then there's been an embarrassment over the contact tracing apps and, as of yesterday, there is a 14-day isolation rule on new travelers traveling to the U.K. Many are perplexed, especially those who are coming from countries where the infection rate is lower and then saying, why wasn't any of this done earlier and the borders locked down sooner?
[Vause:] Yes, interesting times with the death toll so high and the infection rates continue, yet they're opening up. I guess a lot of unhappy people at the moment. Nina dos Santos live for us there in London. On Monday during the World Health Organization's regular press briefing, the head of the health emergency program dropped this new nugget about how the coronavirus spreads or doesn't spread.
[Maria Van Kerkhove, Who:] It is still appears to be rare that an asymptomatic individual actually transmits onward. What we really want to be focused on are is following the symptomatic cases. If we followed all of the symptomatic cases, because we know that this is a respiratory pathogen, it passes from an individual through infectious droplet.
[Vause:] Just
[Kerkhove:] It still appears to be rare that an asymptomatic individual actually transmits onward.
[Vause:] So everything we've been told so far, about social distancing because people could be infected and wear a mask because you could be contagious, well, it turns out that maybe not such a big deal after all. Dr. Neha Nanda is an infectious disease specialist in Los Angeles and joins us right now. Thank you for being with us, Doctor. Good to see you. I think most people understand here, that this new virus and we're learning as we go. But this seems to be a big deal on how everyone assesses their own risk when they go out if the risk of asymptomatic transfer is very rare.
[Dr. Neha Nanda, University Of Southern California Medical School:] So at this time, it is difficult to say what percentage of people actually are asymptomatic, depending on the study that you're looking at. Depending on the study, it could be anywhere from 10 percent to 50 percent. There's some studies saying more than that. The second piece, that you are alluding to is what is the risk of transmissibility. I think there is more to come on that. The WHO, just this morning or I think yesterday, said that the risk of transmission from asymptomatic people seems to be low or almost nonexistent. I think at this time, what I would say is that there is more to come on that because we have seen that happening in studies in Southeast Asia and experiences that people have shared.
[Vause:] I guess there's a lot of confusion and it confirms the fact that there's a lot we don't know. But we know that the New York City is starting to reopen, 100 days after its first case and the mayor had this message.
[Mayor Bill De Blasio , New York City:] This is a triumph phenomenon for New Yorkers, who fought back against this disease. This was the epicenter. And folks did the hard work. They sheltered in place. They did the social distancing, the face coverings and got us to this stage. So my message, John, is stick to it. Come back to work but remember to stick to those smart rules that got us this far.
[Vause:] But again, because of the confusion, stick with what? Wearing a mask, not wearing a mask, keeping social distancing.
[Nanda:] OK. I think this is a great question. And I have to emphasize here, the nonpharmaceutical interventions, like the mayor mentioned, the physical distancing and masking, are really the cornerstone. And there is not one tool that will get us through. It will be a combination of these. So that is physical distancing, then masking and along with that, testing and quick isolation. In fact, there was a recent study that was done and this is based on a mathematical models one of the most recent models that was share in a scientific
[Vause:] Even so and this is a very contagious virus it seems, because worldwide number of new cases continues to rise. Each day we saw 100,000 new cases of 9 of the past 10 days, more than 130,000 new cases reported on Sunday. So when it surges in one part of the world, chances are it will appear in another as well, right?
[Nanda:] So also when we talk about numbers increasing, keep in mind, as the testing capacity increases, that is a big confounder. So it's very challenging to say when the number of tests increase, the number of new cases and incidences increases, does that mean the disease is progressing? Or you've given more access to testing? To tell you the truth, at this time there is no one metric that can tell us whether we are moving in the right direction or not. It's a combination of all metrics. That's what will help us decide that.
[Vause:] One last question here. There's a report that U.S. hospitals have about three months to resupply and get ready for a possible second peak, round 2. "The New York Times" reporting 60 big hospital chains have received billions of dollars of government bailout money are sitting tens of billions in cash reserves that are meant to help them weather the storm. At least 36 hospitals have furloughed or reduced the pay of employees as they try to save money through the pandemic. So aside from what they do with the federal cash, if they are laying off health care workers now, how ready will they be for round 2 of the coronavirus? It seems they'll be further behind than they were when it first broke out.
[Nanda:] I will tell you is that in the U.S., in different parts, and I can speak really for California and specifically L.A., we are prepared for a surge. It didn't quite happen here and now we are in a situation where we are financially strapped. It is impacting our human resources. If there is going to be another surge, will there be another surge? We don't know that. But I think there will be more job creation. At that time we do have to get those resources back, though I suspect that, perhaps, if there is going to be another surge and another peak, it wouldn't be as high as it was because our belief is that, with time, the height of the peak will reduce because of our social distancing physical distancing and other nonpharmaceutical interventions.
[Vause:] OK, thank you so much, Doctor, appreciate the advice and your insight. Thank you.
[Nanda:] Thank you, John.
[Vause:] Up next, with Washington in the grip of protests, did the first family make a dash to the security of the White House bunker? Or was it just a quick inspection by the president? The attorney general and Trump loyalists set the record straight. As the world mourns the loss of George Floyd, newly released video shows a police chase ending in the death of a black man in the state of Texas. Details on that when we come back.