WHO Says, COVID Proving Exceptionally Difficult To Stop; U.S. Has More Than Five Million Coronavirus Cases And Almost 163,000 Deaths; Almost 100,000 Children Tested Positive For Virus In Last Two Weeks Of July
JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Brianna Keilar picks up our coverage right now. Have a good day.</s>BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: John, thank you. I'm Brianna Keilar and I want to welcome viewers here in the United States and around the world. We begin with a sober reality check from the head of the World Health Organization.</s>DR. MICHAEL RYAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION: This virus is proving exceptionally difficult to stop. What it has clearly demonstrated is take the pressure off the virus, the virus bounces back.</s>KEILAR: But the situation is not hopeless unless we keep doing exactly what we're doing. If we want things to get better, it appears it is up to us as citizens to step up in the absence of a vaccine and a national testing strategy. Experts are clear. Follow the recommended safety measures, like wearing masks, washing hands and social distancing and we can dramatically cut down the transmission of the virus. And the numbers are showing just how important this is because right now the U.S. has more than five million coronavirus cases and almost 163,000 deaths. Schools are beginning their reopening plans and anxiety is already high among parents and educators. And now, there's an alarming new finding from the American Academy of Pediatrics that almost 100,000 children tested positive for the virus in the last two weeks of July. In Georgia, you will remember this picture from last week of students packed in the hallways of a high school. Well, that school is now shut down for at least two days after several positive cases. College football is likely done for. There are reports that the leaders of the Power Five Conferences may postpone or even cancel the football season. Over the weekend, the MAC, the Mid American Conference, announced it's canceling its fall season. But in the midst of the coronavirus chaos, the secretary of Health and Human Services is describing a pandemic response that is out of touch with reality.</s>ALEX AZAR, SECRETARY, HHS: In terms of the president's historic response to the coronavirus crisis, a novel, unprecedented pandemic, we have actually been able to manage to ensure that the disease burden did not exceed our health system capacity.</s>KEILAR: It's a historic response all right, but not in the way that Secretary Azar means. The U.S. has more than 5 million cases of coronavirus, almost 163,000 deaths at this point, as we mentioned. Comparing that to the rest of the world is actually many times more deaths than the U.S. should account for considering its population. And Tom Foreman is with us now on this. Tom, there are five states that are outpacing the rest of the U.S. Show us how they're doing.</s>TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: If you look at the numbers, forget all your political apprehensions about this, just look at the numbers right now, California, Florida, Texas, New York and Georgia are really leading in the big bulk of the cases in this country. Don't take that to mean that this is not a real threat in every state because it is. But they are accounting for the really big numbers out there. Are they accounting in the same way? No, not necessarily. Some of them are simply huge populations that had big surges. Their trends are looking a little bit better now, New York being one of them. Some places, the trends are not looking good at all but they may have a smaller number of cases. But then it gives you a sense of how embedded this can be in a big population. If you look at the global picture, this is where you can really see the difference and the counter play to what Secretary Azar just said there. If you look at the global picture, the United States is still way up in the numbers there, massive numbers accounting for about a quarter of the cases in the world even though we are only about 4 percent of the population of the world. That is an equation that nobody really wants to see. The U.S. trend, because of people gradually accepting masking and social distancing, look at the trend numbers here, it has been slightly improving. That's possibly one of the reasons why the jump from 3 million to 4 million and from 4 million to 5 million looks a little bit more like each other in terms of the number of days involved because the trend with social distancing and everything else seems to be working in the right direction. But don't forget in all of this, the U.S. response is, no matter what you're being told by the White House, is, by the assessment of many others, far below standard. Look at this assessment from a Foreign Policy magazine, and they looked at this. Their take on it was that the United States simply belongs in the bottom of the countries in terms of responding to this virus for not really getting enough supplies, for not moving proactively enough. And key point here, again, going back to what Secretary Azar said, one of the big knocks against the U.S. response from the beginning, Brianna, is that the administration here has not been shooting straight with the American people about the number of cases, the import of that and how to deal with that. One of the key reasons why the U.S. response is being ranked so badly is simply that it has not been honest from the government level and that has made it worse. Brianna?</s>KEILAR: All right. Tom Foreman in Washington, thank you. Texas and Florida have now topped half a million total cases each. They join California in hitting that mark. Texas experiencing another uptick of cases after seeing a bit of a drop there and Florida is reporting another 4,000 new cases, which is actually a drop there but it is the lowest daily case total it's reported since the end of June, however, that is still an extremely elevated number of virus cases. Florida is still a hotspot even as it is reopening more schools. Our teams are on the ground in both of those states, and I want to start with Ed Lavandera in Texas.</s>ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, startling statistics emerging from Texas this weekend, the coronavirus positive infection rate in the state now tops more than 20 percent. That is a record high. Top health experts across the country say that this infection rate is one of the key indicators showing how quickly the virus is spreading through the state but it also comes as the number of tests being reported on a daily here in Texas has dropped significantly. About two weeks ago, it was close to 70,000 tests per day, now we're hovering around 45,000 tests per day. Brianna?</s>ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, at least a dozen school districts in counties across the State of Florida are planning to reopen for in-person instruction this week. This is according to the Florida Education Association and also to these districts' websites. 9 of the 12 schools are in counties with positivity rates of 5 percent or higher. This is as of Saturday, according to the Florida Department of Health. Now, last month, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said that schools in counties with positivity rates of 5 percent or higher might consider not reopening. Brianna?</s>KEILAR: Rosa and Ed, thank you so much. As Florida and other states reopening schools cases of kids with coronavirus are on the rise. In the last two weeks of July, more than 97,000 children were diagnosed with coronavirus, a 40 percent jump. And that is the finding of a study that was published by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association. North Paulding High School in Georgia is temporarily moving to online- only. The school and its district came under scrutiny after this photo, which you may recognize, of students crowded in a hallway went viral. At least six students and three staff members have tested positive for the coronavirus and that has forced the school to close down for deep cleaning. Joining me now is Chelsea Lennon, she's a sophomore at the North Paulding High School, and her mom is with us, as well, Michelle Salas. Thank you so much to both of you for being with us today.</s>CHELSEA LENNON, STUDENT, NORTH PAULDING HIGH SCHOOL: Thanks for having us.</s>MICHELLE SALAS, PARENT, NORTH PAULDING HIGH SCHOOL: Thank you.</s>KEILAR: So, Chelsea, you have spoken out about conditions at the school, which we should mention, so far, we do not expect to see a mask requirement when the school reopens as soon as Wednesday. I want you to listen to something that your classmate, Hannah Watters, said as she was talking about threats that she has received for making that photo available and it going viral.</s>HANNAH WATTERS, STUDENT, NORTH PAULDING HIGH SCHOOL: Some of the things are like, we're going to jump every girl named Hannah in the tenth grade or Hannah is going to have a rough day at school on Monday or someone even said I know where this girl lives because he lives in my neighborhood. So just not -- they're not entirely like something to worry about but we do try to take them seriously.</s>KEILAR: Okay. Look, you hear what she is saying, Chelsea. You have spoken out yourself. I wonder, have you received criticism or threats and have you seen these threats that Hannah is describing here?</s>LENNON: Personally I have not received any threats from anybody in my grade or anybody at my school. I have seen the screen shots of Hannah receiving threats from the class of 2021 group chat because they have a senior group chat. I have seen those and I have seen adults, you know, on Facebook, Twitter calling out to Hannah, like threatening her or like starting rumors. But, personally, I have not received any threats myself.</s>KEILAR: I want to ask you about the picture you saw that Hannah posted. Was that accurate of -- was that an accurate look at conditions at your high school?</s>LENNON: I would say that represents how North Paulding looks like pretty accurately especially during dismissal when most bus riders, they have to go out the front door of the school and it's crowded and no one wearing masks and, again, it's crowded and your next to people that aren't wearing mask, you are next to people who are and especially during class change, as well. That's how it looks. Sometimes it is crowded, sometimes it's not, but you are lucky if it's not that crowded.</s>KEILAR: Okay. And, look, Michelle, as a parent, are you comfortable with the school taking these two days to deep clean and then having Chelsea return to school at the reopening? I mean, I think we may find out tomorrow exactly what they're doing. But as of now, it's two days of deep cleaning and a reopening Wednesday without masks required still. Are you comfortable with that?</s>SALAS: No, no. And deep cleaning, I thought they deep cleaned before they started school and yet there was a spread of the virus anyway. It seems to me that the scientists and the medical people are telling us something that we should take note of whether you're a conspiracy theorist or believe in one side or the other. The fact is they have used the kids at Paulding County specifically as guinea pigs to try this out. So they got clapped back, they got caught that they weren't prepared. So now the schools rolling back and we're going to clean the school, we're going to do this, and no masks, so let's try it again. So it is like a really bad experiment, you know? They're trying to find some kind of fluency but they're using my kids and the kids that my kids grew up with as bait. So I don't appreciate that, no.</s>KEILAR: Chelsea, would you feel safe? I think I know the answer to that question. So, I guess, I also want to know how others students that you talk to feel. Would they have the concerns you and your mom have?</s>LENNON: For most of the part, my friends that I hang around, they are worried about going back to school. The whole main goal of this was to bring attention to making mask mandatory instead of like going digital or online. It is very important to recognize that we are not trying to get rid of the school year. We are not trying to force everyone to go back to digital learning. We just want safer precautions to be taken if we go back to school. And as far as I know, 50 percent of the kids, you know, take this seriously and are like excited about this and then the other half is making a joke out of it or they're saying it is not that serious and saying that, like, it is not that important, that it shouldn't matter.</s>KEILAR: Michelle, I wonder if you think the school or the district or the county is opening itself up to lawsuits by not taking precautions, like masks, which are something that -- you know, that's pretty easy to do. Are you hearing any talk among parents about that?</s>SALAS: Lawsuits, you know, that might happen. But I'm more concerned about what's going to happen to bring on a lawsuit. I don't want some parent to lose their or some child to lose their mom who is a teacher, because they got a virus that killed them. And I think it's funny how you jumped to what about the lawsuits instead of thinking about what can we do to, you know, squash any possibility of anything happening to our students or our teachers.</s>KEILAR: Yes. Well, look, Michelle and Chelsea, thank you for coming on. You're really in -- you're wading through this, as so many parents and students are, as our school year is set to begin all across the country. So, thank you for being with us.</s>SALAS: My pleasure.</s>LENNON: Thank you.</s>KEILAR: The rich are having parties and L.A. is trying to crackdown. We'll hear from someone who describes parties with caged lions and tigers. Plus, Bill Gates says the testing situation in the U.S. is mind blowing insanity. What he says can be done to fix it. And as Congress dithers on the next round of stimulus, the president signs a series of executive actions. The problem is no one can seem to figure them out.