168 Die From Coronavirus In Italy In Just 24 Hours; Harvard Among The Schools Canceling Or Moving Classes Online
BLITZER: Looking at live pictures coming in from the White House briefing room. Vice President Mike Pence and the coronavirus task force members, they're expected to walk in fairly soon, make an update, some statements on what's going on right now, the latest information they have and take reporters' questions. We of course will have live coverage of this briefing. We're bringing you special coverage of the coronavirus pandemic as only CNN can, with our worldwide resources. Right now I want to go to China, the epicenter of this crisis. CNN's David Culver is joining us live from Shanghai. David, what's the latest there?</s>DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, I can tell you that they're showing some signs of progress here, and that's coming all the way from the top. Early on in this, we noticed that the President here, Xi Jinping, was keeping a very low profile, even as this thing got worse and worse and folks were getting more and more concerned. However, it marked a milestone this week, in fact just 24 hours ago we saw that the President made a visit to the epicenter of all of this, Wuhan, that's within Hubei Province, that's where this outbreak started, that's where tens of thousands have been infected by the virus. Now the most extreme lock downs are within that area. And it is fascinating, Wolf, for me to listen into how it's being handled in the U.S. in particular because you've got to wonder if they can do nearly the level of containment that has happened here. And containment, as your panel has been pointing out there, goes beyond just sealing off neighborhoods, which they have done here. Quite frankly, what I was hearing from New Rochelle as far as minimizing some of the mass gatherings, that's something that's happening in the city where I am, Shanghai, 24 million plus people. That is light lockdown compared to the sealing of communities within, for example, Hubei Province. But then the other aspect of this, Wolf, is tracking people. And they're doing that here through big data. They're trying to figure out who you were in contact with, perhaps were you exposed, and are you taking that to another area. How exactly is that happening? I wanted to show you this Wolf, this is a QR Code. Every one of us here has to check in when we travel into a city, when we go into a hotel, when we go into a shopping mall, and when we do that they're then able to know our location and figure out if perhaps down the line we are in an area that happened to have exposure, they'll be able to figure out where we are and they'll track us down and potentially put you in quarantine, Wolf.</s>BLITZER: All right, be careful over there. David Culver on the scene for us in Shanghai. I want to go to Italy right now. That's seen the biggest increase in deaths due to the coronavirus crisis. At least 168 people have died over the past 24 hours alone. Ben Wedeman is on the scene for us in Bologna right now. It's a beautiful city. I've been to bologna. And the streets over there, Ben, clearly empty.</s>BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they are empty indeed. The only traffic we've seen are some police cars and food delivery bicycles going around. Now, even though Italy is technically on a lockdown, it appears that the authorities are going about this rather gradually, keeping in mind that unlike China, Italy is a democracy, and the people need to be slowly eased into this new reality. But we were speaking with some people today who said that in order to contain this virus, which the numbers have really increased dramatically in the last two weeks, that they believe that Chinese style measures will have to be taken. There are some politicians who generally do support the measures taken by the government, who are suggesting that perhaps everything should be closed, bars and restaurants, which are open now from 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., everything should be closed except grocery stores where people can at least get the food to eat, because what we have seen, we arrived here just 15 days ago, the number went from 322 recorded cases to now over 10,000. The number of deaths, there were ten when we arrived, now well over 600. So there is mounting pressure to try to get this situation under control, at a time when the medical services, the health services in this country, which are some of the best in the world, are under increasing strain, trying to treat those who are in the intensive care units. And as we've seen, most of those who have died are the -- have an average age of 81. The worry is that young people who only make up about five percent of those who have the disease, may be passing it to their older relatives. So the government here is struggling to get the situation under control. So far, with limited success, Wolf.</s>BLITZER: All right, Ben Wedeman in Bologna, be careful over there as well. Thank you very much. It's a serious problem, Italy, 60 million people, as we've been reporting, on lockdown right now.</s>TAPPER: Couple -- a week -- or one week ago we went from like two to 20 deaths over a weekend. And now they're in the hundreds. Let's talk about more of this with CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Also joining us, former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy. Dr. Murthay, let me start with you, what should people at home who are not over 60, do not have underlying health concerns, have not yet had it come to their community, in other words the vast majority of Americans, what should they be doing and how worried should they be?</s>DR. VIVEK MURTHY, FORMER U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: Well, first of all we should recognize that what we're dealing with, with this novel coronavirus, COVID-19, is different from the flu. There are common questions that come up. Is this just a cold? Is this just the flu? And it's not. It's very transmissible, similar to the flu, but it is more deadly in the sense that it has a higher mortality rate. We're still trying to figure out exactly what that rate is. But by all estimates, it looks like it will be significantly higher than the mortality rate of the flu. But the good news is, there are steps people can take to protect themselves. Basic hand washing measures, making sure you're washing your hands frequently and using hand sanitizer, staying at home if you're sick, making sure you're not touching your face, especially when you're out and about and touching other surfaces, and decontaminating surfaces, including your keys and your cell phone. These are common steps we can all take. I also think now is the time for us to think about how we greet each other and to modify that so that we are minimizing contact. Instead of a handshake, we can do the elbow bump. We can also just use a hand over our heart as a simple greeting, which people do in many cultures around the world. But these are simple steps we can take that can reduce our risk of contracting this virus.</s>TAPPER: And one of the things going on right now, Sanjay, as a lot of colleges are shutting down or changing to an online system.</s>DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.</s>TAPPER: What about parents of children who are in grade school, middle school, high school? Should those parents be concerned? Should those schools think about closing if there is no confirmed case directly in that community?</s>GUPTA: You know, it's interesting because I think the benefit of that has been largely modeled on the flu like Vivek was talking about. This coronavirus is different. With flu, I think it made a lot of sense. Kids get the flu, they can transmit it. And here we know that kids can get the infection and they can transmit it even if they're not developing symptoms. We know that, but it's a small driver of things. The bigger drivers, people who are sick. Coughing, sneezing, putting those respiratory droplets into the air. I do think you have a harder time justifying school closures for this reason, you know, actually trying to prove that it works. And obviously, everything in life is a risk-reward relationship. So the reward maybe you do decrease somewhat the number of your social distance little bit more as a result, but the disruption is pretty significant I think here. So, the other things, closing of mass gatherings, you know, possibly people working from home, these types of things, obviously identifying people through surveillance and testing and contact tracing, isolating people who have been positive, all those things, yes, I think and do it early, because that's when it seems to make the most difference. School closings, I think is still a little bit of a question mark, in terms of the real impact of that.</s>TAPPER: So it makes more sense to you that they're canceling concerts than it does for Harvard or Princeton to cancel classes.</s>GUPTA: You know, I do. And look, this is -- I don't think there's a right answer here. And people were going to have differing opinions on this I know. But what is the justification for what exactly are you getting by pulling all the kids out of Harvard and sending them home? What is the point? No question. Campuses can be a hotbed of various viruses, you know, the flu, meningitis, things like that. But again, we're talking about something that really doesn't affect young people that much. They seem to be fairly insulated from that. They are in the young and healthy sort of category so far less likely than the vulnerable populations to have any negative impact from this. And now you're putting them back into the community where maybe they're going to be back with parents or grandparents possibly taking a virus home. So I don't know. And I'm sure they gave it a lot of thought. But I -- you know, changeable benefits.</s>TAPPER: I'm sure their lawyers played a role also.</s>GUPTA: Yes, maybe is this more just -- let's be full of abundance of caution, or is there a bigger justification? I don't know.</s>TAPPER: What do you think? I mean, is it overreacting for colleges to shut down given the fact that the average age of a coronavirus death in the United States, we were told yesterday, is 80? And certainly we don't mean to make light of that. Obviously, this is a horrible disease. And if you're 70, or 80, or 90, and you have it, it's horrible. But if you're a college student, you're at far less risk. Does it make sense to you that Harvard, Princeton, American and others are shutting down?</s>MURTHY: Well, this is what I think they might be considering. I think they're looking at not only the risk to their students, but they're probably also recognizing that once a student contracts this virus, they may have the ability to transmit it to other people who may be more vulnerable, maybe that's their parents at home, whether it's other people in the community. But if you're a college making this decision, some of the data that you really need to know is how much local spread is there in the community around you. And the real challenge right now is because of the difficulty we've had getting adequate testing in communities across the country, colleges don't have adequate information. Whatever numbers they're seeing, they're wondering, are there many more cases and we just don't know about them. As we ramp up testing capacity, which I'm hoping we can do as quickly as possible, hopefully we'll get a better handle on this. But many institutions are worried that there are more cases out there than we're saying.</s>TAPPER: And Sanjay, what about the doctor in China who died, who was one of the first physicians on the case, who was a whistleblower, this is back when the Chinese government was denying and very opaque about everything. I think he was something like 40 --</s>GUPTA: Yes.</s>TAPPER: -- and he died. And we don't know of any underlying health conditions he had.</s>GUPTA: No. And, you know, and I talked to Dr. Redfield, specifically the head of the CDC about this. I think there's two things, you know, when you look at the -- even with flu deaths, you know, those are more likely to affect the elderly and people with pre-existing conditions, but you do get people. While the vast majority of people fall into those age ranges, there are some outliers every now and then. And also, as a physician who is taking care of these patients, is it possible that he had a much more significant exposure to this virus than other people? That's possible as well. So it can happen. It's far more unusual. I mean, you can actually put numbers behind this. The -- we talked about the fatality rates being around 2 percent, people in their 70s and 80s., it's closer to 15 or 16 percent. Still, look, it's still not, you know, it's not 100 percent people think is universally fatal, and people who are older, it's by no means 15 percent, 16 percent, but that's eight times higher than people who are who are younger.</s>TAPPER: And then we just heard out of Children's Hospital Philadelphia, that a doctor there who just returned from a country where there are COVID-19 cases, not one of the ones on level three reconsider traveling their level from the State Department, but a place where there were sicknesses, came to the United States, saw about two dozen patients at Children's Hospital Philadelphia interacted with about 17 staff members, and then about four days into it realized his progressive symptoms meant that he should get himself checked out or herself checked out. This is going to spread in ways we cannot even anticipate.</s>MURTHY: That's right. And this is why two things become really important here. One is that we have as much transparency into the situation as possible, which means that we not only testing but we all need to be aware of what the numbers are. But the second thing is that we have to get ahead of this which means not only practicing safe, you know, sanitation practices ourselves but also thinking about social distancing more now. We talked a little bit earlier about changing how we greet people, but social distancing also includes staying away from mass gatherings and involves shifting to telework instead of everybody coming in to a workplace. And in most extreme measures, that can involve closing schools. Now what we talked about colleges, the decision that affects far more young people is actually the closure of grade schools. So elementary school, middle school, high school. Some localities have made the decision that that's the right thing to do. But what this is highlighting is that we are woefully ill-equipped as a society to deal with situations where we may need to pull kids out of school. We don't have, for example, the safeguards to provide paid leave to parents who need to stay home. We don't have paid sick leave for those parents if they themselves become ill. So one of the things we're learning because of the coronavirus is that there are fundamental building blocks of a healthy and resilient society that we need now to build and put in place not just for now but also for future outbreaks.</s>TAPPER: You sound like you're about to announce your presidential campaign. You have my vote. Thank you so much, really appreciate it, both of you doctors. So we're standing by for a coronavirus briefing at the White House. First, we're going to squeeze in this quick break. Stay with us.