U.S Death Toll Tops 40,000 As Need For Testing Grows
COOPER: As the coronavirus death toll tops 40,000 and continues to climb and the governors from both parties say that testing is far from where it needs to be for the country reopen. Still, at least a few states are easing some restrictions this week. In Texas, state parks opened again today but plans to restart businesses wouldn't come until at least next Monday. My next guest says that lifting state home orders too soon could be incredibly dangerous. Infectious disease specialist Dr. Carlos del Rio joins me now. Dr. del Rio, thanks for being with us. What is your biggest concern about lifting the stay-at-home orders or what do you think needs to happen before some states can start kind of easing them open?</s>DR. CARLOS DEL RIO, INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPECIALIST, EMORY UNIVERSITY: I think we made a lot of progress. I think a lot of things have happened that was good. We are seeing a decrease in number of new infections. We are seeing an increase in the doubling time of infections, and that is all good. But I think, Anderson, that we still need to ramp up testing. As you mention, we still are not where we need to be in testing. And we need to be better prepared to do contact tracing, which is critically important to control this. And, again, it's not going to be the same in New York State or New York City as it is going to be maybe in Austin or Nevada. I think each city needs to be looked at a little different. And I think decisions have to be locally based. But they need to be locally based based on science and based on data. And I think looking at the -- what's happening locally, the doubling time is, the testing capabilities are and what the responses are at a local level is really good and informed where we need to be and what we need do.</s>COOPER: I'm wondering, the White House put out three stages essentially of kind of reopening. And, again, those are just guidelines. Obviously, even they finally came around saying it is totally -- it's up to the states. But were you concerned at all that there wasn't really a blueprint for federal support for testing, federal backing for getting all the things you need for testing, not just to test themselves and the ability to get the results but all the reagents and the swabs and all of that?</s>DEL RIO: Absolutely. I think that while the decision has to be made on a local level, we really need -- everybody needs a lot of federal support and any support, I mean, industry, private partnership, academia, to really do the things we need to do. There is no way to do the kind of testing we need to be doing just by relying on our public health laboratories, just by relying on our hospital laboratories. We all really need to come together and to work together. And we need to get as much as support as we can possibly get from the federal government to really get those kits and get those supplies, such as swabs and reagents, ready so we can then go ahead and be where we are in testing. We are testing a lot of people. We have ranked -- the scale up has really happened, but we're not quite where we need to be. I would say, we're probably about halfway where we need to be. And depending on the state in some states, we're doing better than in others, depending on the number of tests we have. But, roughly, we need to be able to test about 3 percent of the U.S. population. And at that point in time, we'll be in a much better position.</s>COOPER: And in terms of temperature checks, obviously, some people are asymptomatic. Would their temperature read any differently? I mean, I guess one can't generalize, right? Do temperature checks, is that an efficient method or is that just one of several methods to try to kind of keep this monitored?</s>DEL RIO: Nothing is going to be perfect. But I think if you think about -- if I was thinking about opening an industry, I would think -- an office, I would think about it the same way we are working right now, for example, at my hospital.