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Live White House Press Briefing; Second Nurse Tests Positive for Ebola; Is America Prepared for Ebola?

Aired October 15, 2014 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


QUESTION: The president has said repeatedly now he's not satisfied with the global response in terms of stemming Ebola at the source. So my question for you regarding these various conversations is whether he made any specific asks of these world leaders or whether he's satisfied that they have fully stepped up to their responsibilities.

JOSH EARNEST, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well, I will say two things about that.

The first is more than a month ago -- or I guess it was about a month ago -- the president made an announcement at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta that he was going to make a significant commitment of Department of Defense resources in Western Africa to put in place logistical infrastructure that was needed to ramp up our response to the Ebola outbreak in that region of the world.

That continues to be a priority for his administration. The president is receiving regular updates from the Department of Defense about their ongoing efforts to put in place that logistical capability. The Department of Defense has tremendous expertise in this area.

And the reaction to that commitment has been an increase in resources and personnel that are being supplied by nongovernmental organizations and from governments around the world. We have been heartened by that response. And that's an indication of just how important it is for the United States to show leadership in a crisis situation like this.

Now, that said, that all being said, the president does believe that we need to see more from the international community, that we have not seen a sufficient commitment of resources and personnel from other countries to dealing with this urgent situation in West Africa.

The stakes are high. And the impact on the local population there is tragic. And we need to see a more significant commitment of resources from countries around the world to dealing with this effort.

QUESTION: Restating my question, did he make any specific asks of the world leaders today or is he satisfied that the countries involved have met that challenge?

EARNEST: Yes.

Well, we will have a more detailed readout of the secure video teleconference that the president conducted today with those European leaders. But, as a general matter, I can tell you that the president did urge those world leaders to commit -- to make a more significant commitment to dealing with the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Justin.

QUESTION: I wanted to circle back on the question about why the president is staying here in town here today. I'm wondering -- I know that you said that it was necessary to respond to the outbreak, but I'm wondering why that is, especially since not only the Malaysia Airline plane that went down, but everything from Ferguson to Egypt to the Fort Hood shooting, we have seen the president either maintain his political schedule or his vacation schedule.

EARNEST: Sure.

Each of these situations, we take on a -- we consider on a case-by- case basis, as you would expect. In this situation, the president felt it was important to convene a meeting of the senior members of his administration who are responsible for responding to this particular incident.

And so the president is convening that meeting this afternoon. And because of -- because the meeting was this afternoon, the president had to postpone the political travel that he had already planned. We do anticipate that the president will be able to reschedule this trip in advance of Election Day.

QUESTION: The reason I ask, presumably, Air Force One has got a phone.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN ANCHOR: Oh, that's new. All right, let's go ahead and pull away.

You have been watching Josh Earnest there, part of the White House daily briefing, a lot of questions, the majority of questions all about Ebola. The significance here, we know the president of the United States basically scrapped two different campaign trips today. He was supposed to be heading to New Jersey and also to Connecticut.

We now know he's staying put at the White House and, in just about a half-hour from now, will meeting with different cabinet agencies to talk about the government's response to what's been happening with Ebola specifically here in the United States.

Just to bring you up to speed, a couple of notes from this briefing, questions about, especially from conservatives, should the chief of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden, still be in that top spot? Josh Earnest saying absolutely yes, the president has absolute confidence in him leading this charge.

And there are also questions and have been brought up before as to whether or not the White House should nominate some sort of Ebola czar. Could it happen in the future? Yes. Is it happening now? No.

Let me get you more information on this second nurse though who has contracted Ebola. She's 29-year-old Amber Vinson. Here's her photograph, as we're looking at her now, some of the first images on her here at CNN. She also was in the thick of it treating Thomas Eric Duncan.

She also flew on a commercial jet just a day before she fell ill, and just about 48 hours after that patient who had come over from Liberia then died in Dallas. The nurse, again, 29-year-old Amber Vinson, and so you see the map. OK? So last Friday, she jumped on that plane from Dallas to Cleveland. That return trip was Frontier Airlines Flight 1143.

She came back to Dallas Monday night. Health officials say she headed to Cleveland to visit her family. Here's what's key. The director of the CDC says, given her previous exposure to Duncan at that Dallas hospital, Vinson had no business being on that commercial airplane.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

DR. THOMAS FRIEDEN, CDC DIRECTOR: Because at that point she was in a group of individuals known to have exposure to Ebola, she should not have traveled on a commercial airline. The CDC guidance in this setting outlines the need for what's called controlled movement.

That can include a charter plane. That can include a car, but it does not include public transport.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: All right. So, we will talk about that travel question surrounding the travel people who were on board that plane, people who she came into contact with in Cleveland, also this today, because all these developments beg multiple questions.

One, how can we trust that people who have Ebola symptoms are not flying? According to the CDC, more than 94 percent of travelers entering the United States from Western African countries impacted by Ebola travel through these five airports and let me show you. They are New York, Newark, Washington, Chicago and Atlanta.

New screening measures are about to go into effect at these airports, but still a lot of people are worrying, want to make sure Ebola stays out of the United States. Many want a ban on flights from countries impacted by the virus. Is that possible? Would that be smart?

Let's talk about that, CNN medical analyst Dr. Alexander van Tulleken and CNN aviation correspondent Richard Quest.

So, gentlemen, we got a lot to talk about, beginning with you, sir, just from a medical perspective, thinking about this 29-year-old nurse wanted to go see from what I'm hearing her mother in Cleveland, hops on a plane not 48 hours after this man dies of Ebola in Dallas.

I want to give her the benefit of the doubt that she just didn't know that was breaching protocol. Should she have known?

DR. ALEXANDER VAN TULLEKEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: I think there's every reason to think that she thought she was reasonably safe because that's what we have been told consistently, is health care workers in this country aren't going to get it. And what we find this is absolutely indicative of an approach where

only is she not informed, but this is a wild deviation of what should have happened. She should have been at home with serial blood measurements taken every day looking for the virus and measuring white blood counts and other sorts of other inflammatory markers as well.

So, what hasn't happened here is any adherence to any kind of sensible protocol.

BALDWIN: That's I know you're dumbfounded by, the sort of lack of protocol, which we will get to.

But to you, sir, then you think about she's on this plane, again no symptoms, which means not contagious with Ebola, although she did have that 99.5-degree fever..

RICHARD QUEST, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, I will defer to the doctor. So interrupt me. But it's a gray area.

BALDWIN: This whole thing is so gray, by the way.

QUEST: This is gray area, the point upon which you can say symptomatic vs. not. So, yes, she sat on this plane and she may have -- but it was the next day she had the low-grade fever.

Well, the previous day when she's flying what sort of fever did she have then? Was that sufficient? That's why you have this controlled movement rule that she should have had. You're only supposed to travel by charter or by car, but seemingly somewhere along the line she didn't know this.

And now you have 132 people that Frontier Airlines are trying to get ahold of, all of whom are worried; 99.99 percent of them have got absolutely nothing to worry about at all. This has got all the potential, Brooke, for suddenly reaching hysterical levels.

BALDWIN: Let's tamp down. No one here is string to be hysteric. But when you think of traveling from point A to point B, we're hearing now from Cleveland, and now Cleveland is getting involved. Right? Who could she have come in to contact with? It's all these questions that branch out from West Africa to Dallas to who knows where.

QUEST: And you have got the university where she was an alum where the family also worked and you now have got it mushrooming. And this is exactly what happens in these situations.

Now, you talk about should you have more screening at airports? The World Bank president told me that's the equivalent of putting a wet towel under the door of a building on fire, because she would have succeeded in getting in on the low-grade fever test. She would have got through. It's a very nice panacea to say, let's have more.

It's a wonderful suggestion perhaps, I'm being sarcastic, of some politicians to say ban travel.

BALDWIN: Right. QUEST: But every major global expert on this says, don't do it. You

will make a bad situation worse. Put the fire out in Africa. Don't lock the door in another place.

VAN TULLEKEN: I think that's absolutely right.

And there are two really crucial issues here. The first is, we know it hasn't worked from other epidemics. When you look at SARS, when you look at MERS, huge screening, massive amounts of money, huge travel delays, and we didn't catch a single case.

Not only that, but if you stop travel to West Africa you hinder the very thing that we need to do, which is putting out the fire there.

BALDWIN: Yes. Yes.

QUEST: And, of course, you can get planes to take -- sure, the military can fly in aid workers, but you make the job that much more difficult. I can see the delightful, simplistic attraction of saying pull up the drawbridge. Put up the lever jack. I'm OK.

(CROSSTALK)

BALDWIN: Let me jump in because we also have -- I want to come back to both of but, but I also have -- I'm hearing Dr. Sanjay Gupta and he's joining me now as well. He was in Guinea not too long ago.

And so he's put on these different hazmat suits. He's been around all of this and he's been covering this from the get-go.

So when you take all of this in -- I know we're in the thick of it. We're also in this gray area. But I go back to this, to the doctor's point, where was the protocol? Where was the plan? Where was the readiness? What happened?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, there's something I just want to comment on this, this whole travel thing again, because that's obviously a very, very important point.

BALDWIN: Yes.

GUPTA: We have been talking for some time now that these screenings going on at airports, and I agree with Richard, they have some utility, but certainly not as much utility as we would like.

But one of the things you're asked when you're trying to board a plane out of West Africa is have you recently come in contact with somebody who has Ebola? And if you do, that's something that warrants further screening and possibly not letting you get on the flight.

This woman, if she was trying to fly out of West Africa, this Amber Vinson, this nurse, she probably would have been flagged. Yet despite the fact that she just had contact with a patient with Ebola in Dallas was still able to get on the flight. Common sense didn't prevail here, I think. We did not abide by policies that are set up in other countries that we know quite well. We didn't apply that here and she was able to get on a flight, which was not supposed to happen.

BALDWIN: Sanjay, let me just stay with you, because on a totally different thought with regard to this second nurse, Amber Vinson, we also know from the CDC director that she will be headed to the Atlanta to Emory to be treated. My question to you is, should that have happened from the get-go with all of these patients, A, and,B, is it more about her treatment at Emory or it is about the fear that another nurse, heaven forbid if she stays in Dallas, someone else could become infected?

GUPTA: Yes, that's exactly the point. You know, I don't think there's a magic wand at Emory in terms of treatment, because remember there's no specific treatment for this.

We know Nina Pham, the first nurse, was able to get a blood transfusion in Dallas. That was something she was able to do there. If the experimental therapy is available, it could probably be given just about anywhere. What seems to be the case here is that this is more of a concern, saying this second nurse, Amber Vinson, is sick. We're not sure we can absolutely contain this in the Dallas hospital there, which is very disappointing.

And it sounds like part of the reason she's being transferred to Emory is because they do this regularly and they have a track record of not having a health care worker get infected from taking care of these patients. It should be able to be done in Dallas. It can to be done in West Africa by the Doctors Without Borders in these rural tent camps essentially which I have seen and visited, but for some reason it could not be done well in Dallas.

And that's a little bit of a -- we're throwing up the flag here. It's not a surrender, but it's quite surprising, Brooke.

BALDWIN: I have so much more. Can you just stick around? I have to get a quick break in, gentlemen.

But the president's top military adviser has now talked to CNN about the Ebola threat. I would love your perspective on that. He is General Martin Dempsey. He said he may one day have to fight Ebola in a much more aggressive form. He just sat down with our own Kyra Phillips. He's trying to get more information from doctors to see if the virus can go airborne. We will talk to some of you about that and see if that actually could become a reality. Stay here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

More breaking news here. General Martin Dempsey, President Obama's top military adviser, fears one day he may have to fight Ebola in a much more aggressive form. I want you to listen to what he just told Kyra Phillips.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Are you, General Dempsey, worried about Ebola here in the U.S.?

GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF CHAIRMAN: I have been worried about Ebola globally for about 90 days, and I have had some on my staff that were probably a little more worried than I was even a few weeks or months before that.

PHILLIPS: Why?

DEMPSEY: I'm worried about it because we know so little about it. You will hear different people describe whether it could become airborne.

If you bring two -- you know, two doctors who happen have that specialty into a room, one will say, no, there's no way it will ever become airborne, but it could mutate so it would be harder to discover.

It actually disguises itself in the body, which is what makes it so dangerous and has that incubation period of about 21 days. Another doctor will say, well, if it continues to mutate at the rate it's mutating, and if we go from 20,000 infected to 100,000, the population might allow it the opportunity to mutate and become airborne.

And then it will be an extraordinarily serious problem. I don't know who is right. I don't want to take that chance. So, I'm taking it very seriously.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Whew.

Joining me now is chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta and also here with me on set, Dr. Alexander van Tulleken.

But, Sanjay, to you first.

Hearing General Dempsey talking about, you know, the possibility for this virus to go airborne based upon this fast mutation rate, is that really possible?

GUPTA: Very, very unlikely.

I think when you're at his level, obviously, considering all possibilities, no matter how small, is part of your job, part of how he views the world and I can fully under and appreciate that. You don't want to take any chances.

There are very reputable scientists who study this for a long time that say the chance of this going airborne is zero percent. Ian Lipkin is one of those doctors. He's an infectious disease doctor there in New York who studies this a lot.

The idea that any virus that causes disease in humans that we know of, we have never heard of a situation where a mutation has caused one of those viruses to change the way that it transmits between humans. That hasn't happened. HIV has been around for decades. It transmits from bodily fluids. It's been in millions of people. It's mutated many, many times.

It's become resistant to more and more drugs, but it has never changed its mode of transmission. So, is it theoretically possible? Yes. Are we dabbling on the edges and the fringes? Yes. I worry that this just induces more fear than actually leads to any kind of actionable plan.

BALDWIN: All right, well, this was a fear check. And I appreciate you candid and I like your answer.

Dr. van Tulleken, you agree with Sanjay?

VAN TULLEKEN: I think Sanjay is making exactly the right point, which is that it would be very surprising. This is not a tough very virus. It's a little strand of RNA and it seems to be quite fragile outside the body.

But I have to say, what I really like about what General Dempsey is saying is that he's someone who is really taking every precaution. I think it's very reasonable in his position to say even if he doesn't have to fight airborne Ebola -- and I would agree, I think that's very, very unlikely -- he's very likely in our lifetime to have to encounter some very severe airborne pandemic.

And the job we're doing with Ebola at the moment is so bad, we're doing such a poor job with this at the moment, that it's reasonable to say, yes, let's worry about Ebola going airborne just because if it's not Ebola, it will be something else.

BALDWIN: Dr. Alexander van Tulleken, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the doctors, thank you both very much.

GUPTA: All right, Brooke. Thank you.

Coming up next, are hospitals around the country prepared for an Ebola outbreak? CNN found exactly how many hospitals in the United States are specifically set up to isolate and to treat these patients with contagious viruses such as Ebola. We will talk about that.

Plus, two cases now of Ebola now confirmed for people in Dallas. One of those patients just flew on a plane, a commercial airplane. What is the community in Texas saying about this? We will talk to a radio show host who is taking a lot of calls and a lot of questions from concerned listeners. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BALDWIN: You're watching CNN, breaking news as it pertains with what's happening with Ebola now.

Did you know that only four hospitals in the United States, four, are specifically set up to isolate and treat patients with contagious viruses like Ebola? Texas Presbyterian in Dallas, in which now we have these two Ebola patients, these two nurses, both in their 20s, not one of them. We have also now learned that the most recent patient there will be

flown to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta to be treated. And that's because Emory has three so-called biocontainment units that can contain the virus.

The other hospitals, and you can see for yourself on the map, you have Missoula, Montana, Omaha, Nebraska, and Bethesda, Maryland. So, count them all up, that's just 18 of these special beds to treat potential Ebola patients.

Let me bring in CNN senior investigative correspondent Drew Griffin.

You have been looking into this here. Hopefully, we won't have to use 18 beds here, but the practical reality, it's actually fewer than 18. Explain.

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Because the director of that center, the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, says, hey, realistically, Brooke, we can only handle two patients.

Yes, so they handle other things or are prepared to handle other things, but Ebola is so labor-intensive. The waste is incredible. He says, we're safely only capable of handling two. Add it all up, we got 10 beds nationwide.

But that's been enough so far and that would have been enough so far had we not had this problem in Dallas erupt. The fact of the matter is, we haven't had a real widespread outbreak. God forbid there is a widespread outbreak, because we're not ready to handle that.

BALDWIN: Right.

Could they become ready? Could they add more of these biocontainment unit, add more personnel if need be?

GRIFFIN: Well, here's the situation.

Many hospitals have isolation rooms, and are trained in these isolation rooms. Dallas -- the Texas Presbyterian has, I'm assuming one, if not two. So they have the equipment. They don't have the experience. And they don't have the training.

I will give you and example of the lack of training and why hospitals all across the country are quietly behind the scenes panicking over their procedures right now. Yesterday, the CDC put on this phone conference, four hospitals, four critical care workers, four hospitals.

You're supposed to just call in and listen. Listen what happened when I tried to call in and listen to this. Take a listen to this.

BALDWIN: Drew Griffin, my apologies. Apparently, we don't have it. Can you sum it up for me?

GRIFFIN: Yes. You couldn't get on. It was overloaded. The system was overloaded. BALDWIN: No success?

GRIFFIN: So you have all this thirst for knowledge that people and critical care people are not getting. They are asking, I know, behind the scenes, from infectious disease experts to come to their hospitals and try to get this information.

I see what -- I think what you're seeing now is an evolution, maybe we will need to move these patients to these specific centers until and unless our local hospitals are prepared to handle this.

BALDWIN: Well, you have seen the news from the CDC just this afternoon. That second nurse, she's headed to Atlanta.

Drew Griffin, thank you, sir.

GRIFFIN: You bet.

BALDWIN: We are seeking out that second nurse. We're now learning the identity of this young woman who contracted Ebola, this second nurse. Here she is, 29-year-old Amber Vinson from that Dallas hospital and we're also learning today she jumped on a commercial airplane after treating that Ebola patient who died last week.

So, how are people in Dallas, Texas, feeling? What are they saying? What are their questions? How concerned are they? Maybe they're not. We will talk to a radio talk show host taking a lot of calls lately. That's next.

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