[Hala Gorani, Cnn Host:] Welcome back to our continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. I'm Hala Gorani. This is CONNECT THE WORLD. What price will reopening the United States take, at what cost? A new projection says the number of coronavirus deaths could vastly increase. Also this hour, here in the U.K., the government is testing a contact tracing app on a small island, will it help people get back to normal? And as some countries' numbers decline, in Africa, they are rising. I'll speak to a senior official from the World Health Organization about what can be done there.
[Gorani:] Well, in the United States, several new computer models are making one thing clear, the price of reopening America's economy will be tens of thousands of lives. Here's senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns.
[Joe Johns, Cnn Senior Washington Correspondent:] A warning from Dr. Anthony Fauci as more states roll back social-distancing guidelines.
[Fauci:] When you have a lot of virus activity and you know that you're able to contain it to a certain degree by the mitigation, the physical separations and you start to leap frog over some of these, you're inviting rebound.
[Johns:] Nearly 69,000 Americans have died from coronavirus so far, according to numbers from Johns Hopkins University. And this morning, one model often cited by the White House shows the human cost of reopening the country too soon could be extreme. It suggests 134,000 people could die of coronavirus by the first week of August. Monday morning, it predicted just over half that many, about 72,000.
[Dr. Christopher Murray, Director, Institute For Health Metrics And Evaluation:] There's clearly a huge relationship between how much people are out and about and how much transmission occurs. So no surprise, as people go back to being more active and interacting with each other, we're going to see increased transmission.
[Johns:] "The New York Times" on taping an obtaining an internal document showing Trump administration modeling projects there will be 200,000 new cases and 3,000 coronavirus-related deaths daily by early June, about 50 percent more than the current rate. The White House pushing back against the report, writing in a statement, "This data is not reflective of any of the modeling done by the task force or data that the task force has analyzed. The president's phased guidelines to open up America again are a scientific-driven approach that the top health and infectious disease experts in the federal government agreed with." Despite President Trump's persistence.
[Donald Trump , President Of The United States:] Some states I think, frankly, aren't going fast enough.
[Johns:] Some states resisting the push, like in New York, where Governor Andrew Cuomo has yet to move forward with any reopening plans, despite the rate of infections slowing.
[Cuomo:] This is the number that haunts me every day. And this number is not declining anywhere nearly as fast as we would like to see it decline. Still, 226 New Yorkers who passed away.
[Johns:] Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, a battle brewing between Congress and the Trump administration after it blocked coronavirus task force members like Dr. Fauci from testifying in the House later this month. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisting those conversations are crucial for properly allocating resources.
[Rep. Nancy Pelosi:] The fact that they said we're not we're too busy being on TV to come to the Capitol is, well, business as usual for them. But it is not business that will be helpful to addressing this. We need to have the we must insist on the truth.
[Gorani:] That was Joe Johns reporting and Joe joins me now live. So you know, this model is very concerning, I'm sure, for Americans around the world. Yet despite the fact that many states in America are seeing increasing daily deaths and their curves are not flattening, they are reopening portions of their economy. Why is that decision being made in many U.S. states?
[Johns:] Talking to people here at the White House, they indicate in their view there is a balance that needs to be struck, a balance between concerns about additional coronavirus sickness andor death, that they want to weigh against the concerns for the economy. And in their position it is a state by state decision here. Also, important to say the White House and just to sort of reiterate what was in the piece, Hala the White House is indicating that this was a report that was not ready to be published yet. That is what they argue, at least, that the in fact, in "The Washington Post" this morning, the creator of the model says that the numbers were not ready to be published yet. Nonetheless, it is also important to note the very same numbers apparently, according to the report, were presented to a group of individuals who handle emergency response. So there are a lot of questions about the numbers. Nonetheless, it is very concerning and what the people here at the White House say is they're leaving it to the states, Hala.
[Gorani:] And the president is traveling to Arizona; most Americans are told to stay put but the president is making this trip. What is he up to today?
[Johns:] Right. As you know, the president has been eager not only to get the country opened up but also to get out of the White House, where he's been, since just about March 28th, except for one trip out to Camp David. And he is going to Phoenix, he's going to attend, among other things, a meeting with Native Americans. And one of the things on their minds is $8 billion that was set aside for coronavirus aid that they haven't received. We just got a news release, saying part of that money is coming out. And he's also going to go to a factory that has in part been converted to create N-95 respirator masks. This is something the president has been very high on. But most important thing to say about this trip, I think, Hala, is what is very obvious, that is that Arizona is likely a battleground state. It is a state that could be in play in November. The president hasn't been able to get out and campaign and highly interested in going to states that he needs to try to win re-election when we get there.
[Gorani:] Thank you, Joe Johns, at the White House. I want to talk more about these U.S. coronavirus models with CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. Is this these models are taking into account the fact that many states are lifting lockdown orders, right? Because initially the projection or at least the hopeful optimistic goal was for far fewer deaths in the
[U.s. Elizabeth Cohen, Cnn Sr. Medical Correspondent:] That's right, Hala. So the optimism was based on the United States doing the kind of social distancing that it was doing starting sort of middle, end of March. That's not the way it turned out. They did it for a while but it didn't continue as we see more and more states opening up. And you don't have to be a professional immunologist to understand this concept; the more people get together, the more the virus is going to spread.
[Gorani:] And now let's talk, though, about these antibody tests as well. We talked a lot about vaccines. But antibody tests aren't always reliable; they're tightening rules regarding these tests. Tell us more about that.
[Cohen:] So there has basically been seven weeks of testing chaos, antibody testing chaos in the United States. Seven weeks ago is when the Trump administration changed their rules, as you sort of hinted there, making it more relaxed. And so now the Trump administration is changing it back, something experts said should have been the case all along.
[Donald Trump, U.s. President:] Thank you very much.
[Cohen:] Just weeks ago, President Trump was so proud of removing regulatory barriers in the fight against coronavirus.
[Trump:] We've cut through the red tape to give doctors and patients unprecedented freedom to make their own healthcare decisions.
[Cohen:] But on Monday, his administration reversed course. It has to do with this, an antibody test. It tells you if you've already had COVID-19 and might possibly be immune to it. In mid-March, the Food and Drug Administration started allowing companies to sell tests without first proving they got actual got accurate results. The outcome, dozens of companies started selling these tests and many of them often gave false results. Monday, the FDA reversed course and said now test developers do have to show their test work accurately. How would you describe what the FDA did back in March?
[Rep. Lloyd Doggett:] A real breach of the public trust, yielding to President Trump instead of remembering its traditional responsibility to protect the public health.
[Cohen:] FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said it was all part of an evolution. We are continuing to adapt approach based on real world experience and data, he said Monday. This has all informed the changes to our policy regarding antibody tests. But Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who chairs the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, said it was obvious that relaxing the regulations was a bad idea.
[Doggett:] It seems to have come as a surprise to the FDA that if it does not do its job, who authorizes.
[Cohen:] Recently, earning FDA authorization, this test by Roche, they do have data and their data shows it has almost 100 percent accuracy.
[Severin Schwan, Ceo, Roche Group:] And so this is pretty extraordinary. And what that allows us is to really reliably test whether a person has been infected by the coronavirus.
[Cohen:] Even with a nearly perfect test, there is a problem. If the test shows you've previously been infected and have antibodies, you might have some degree of immunity to the novel coronavirus, but maybe not.
[Schwan:] There're still open questions on how long will this immunity be. Will it be for one year, two years, several years? Will it, you know, be full immunity or is the reinfection just less severe?
[Cohen:] Scientists still need to work that out, another mystery of the virus. FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn said it was all part of an evolution. We are continuing to adapt approach based on real world experience and data, he said Monday. This has all informed the changes to our policy regarding antibody tests. But Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who chairs the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, said it was obvious that relaxing the regulations was a bad idea.
[Doggett:] It seems to have come as a surprise to the FDA that if it does not do its job, who authorizes.
[Cohen:] Recently, earning FDA authorization, this test by Roche, they do have data and their data shows it has almost 100 percent accuracy.
[Schwan:] And so this is pretty extraordinary. And what that allows us is to really reliably test whether a person has been infected by the coronavirus.
[Cohen:] Even with a nearly perfect test, there is a problem. If the test shows you've previously been infected and have antibodies, you might have some degree of immunity to the novel coronavirus, but maybe not.
[Schwan:] There're still open questions on how long will this immunity be. Will it be for one year, two years, several years? Will it, you know, be full immunity or is the reinfection just less severe?
[Cohen:] Scientists still need to work that out, another mystery of the virus that's caused this global pandemic. Now public health experts welcome this change from the FDA, saying it is about time. Hala?
[Gorani:] All right, Elizabeth Cohen, thank you very much. So it is about antibody tests, of course, and in the longer term it is about a vaccine. But in the short term, with the help of technology, there are ways to try to limit the spread of the virus. For instance, contact tracing apps to try to sort of limit the spread of COVID-19. This contact tracing app was rolled out today on the Isle of Wight. It uses Bluetooth to alert users if they have been near someone who has symptoms or tested positive for the virus. Of course, it is a small population, it is self-contained and it is easy to evaluate whether it is a successful initiative. Hadas Gold joins me from London with more. Do we have any sort of are we able to assess early on whether or not this has been a success or not yet?
[Hadas Gold, Cnn Correspondent:] Well, Hala, this app just started rolling out today and it is the first week that they're actually fully testing the U.K.'s own version of the contact tracing app on the Isle of Wight, known as one of Queen Victoria's favorite vacation spots. But now it's the first place this app will be tested. There are reasons for testing it on an island but how this app works is that it uses Bluetooth technology to track what other devices you've been around. This information is anonymized but the phone keeps track of it. The app marks your symptoms. If the app decides your symptoms line up with a possible COVID-19 diagnosis, it will alert the other devices you have been around they have been in touch with a risky contact. Then, if you do manage to get a test and put that into the app you tested positive, it will then again alert the people they have been around somebody who has tested positive. Won't tell them who, only they have been around somebody for enough time with close enough distance that that person has been tested positive. If you test negative it will alert everybody and say, hey, it was a false alarm, it is OK. We have seen these similar apps pop up in other countries around the world. There is a major difference between the U.K.'s app and other apps we're seeing. First, it is not using the framework that Apple and Google started, offering it for free around the world. One of the main reasons for this is because the U.K. wants to be able to store the data from these apps centrally. The reason for this is because they want to be able to study the data. If you don't study the data centrally, you can't study trends, different symptoms that might be popping up. The privacy advocates are against this, they say that by storing the data centrally opens it up possibly to bad actors and it is safer to actually store it decentrally. But this is the way the U.K. decided to move forward. They got the endorsements from the former head of U.K. intelligence services and the information commissioner, say that thus far it is OK. But one of the major hurdles here is actually just getting people to use the app. The government says they want at least half of the 80,000 households on the Isle of Wight to download this app. Experts say you need at least 50 percent to 60 percent of a population to download this app and use it in order for it to be at all effective.
[Gorani:] I wanted to show our viewers a graphic that illustrates just how difficult that might be, especially among the most vulnerable residents on the Isle of Wight. Older people are more vulnerable to COVID-19-19. And only 40 percent of people over the age of 65 in the United Kingdom use their phones to go online in 2019. It gives you a sense just how much more younger people, less susceptible to contracting and showing symptoms of COVID-19, how much more younger people use their smartphones. How do you get around that?
[Gold:] The government acknowledges there is an issue with the fact that you need a smartphone to use this app. That's why they say this app is only one part of their broader strategy of tracking and tracing and testing. And that's why the U.K. also wants to hire 18,000 human contact tracers, people who, if you get a positive test, they will physically pick up the phone and start tracing where you have been and calling the people you may have been in contact with to notify them in the same way the app does. One advantage of an app is that you have to know who you've been you might not know who you've been around, you might be in a store or riding a bus. And the app will pick up other phones that have been around you. If you to recall to a human contact tracer, I took bus number 13, on Tuesday, at 2:00 pm, it is harder to keep track of who has been on the buses. But the government says all of these things together, the app, the contact tracers, increased testing, are all one of the only ways they'll be able to start lifting the heavy lockdown we have in the United Kingdom.
[Gorani:] All right, thanks very much, Hadas Gold. Still ahead, new information, new startling information about when the coronavirus first spread to Europe. Doctors in France now say it happened in December. And a new report sheds light on the likely origin of the coronavirus and it is not exactly what the U.S. president is claiming. We'll explain next.