Return to Transcripts main page

NEW DAY SUNDAY

Four States Tighten Rules on Ebola Contacts; U.S. Ambassador to U.N. Visiting West Africa; Police Look for Motive in School Shooting; Report: ISIS Fighters Using Chlorine Gas

Aired October 26, 2014 - 07:00   ET

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


VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN ANCHOR: Federal leaders worry the measures will discourage American health care workers from traveling to those three hard hit countries, again, Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, where the virus has killed over 5,000 people.

Now, earlier this morning, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, she landed in Guinea in the heart of the outbreak zone.

ALISON KOSIK, CNN ANCHOR: And now, one nurse is slamming the way she was treated after landing at Newark airport in New Jersey. Kaci Hickox writes in the "Dallas Morning News" that upon returning from her work with Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone, she was isolated then whisked to a hospital under police escort.

Here's some of what she said. She said, "I sat alone in isolation tent and thought of many colleagues who will return home to America and face the same ordeal. Will they be made to feel like criminals and prisoners?" And she added, "My blood was taken and tested for Ebola. It came back negative."

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told the "Associated Press" was obviously ill and apologized for her, quote, "inconvenience." She will still be quarantined for 21 days.

BLACKWELL: OK. A positive develop here. The fiancee of the New York physician now being treated for Ebola is back home. Morgan Dixon arrived last night at the apartment she shares with Dr. Craig Spencer who returned to Manhattan last week from Guinea.

Now, she had been isolated at an east side hospital. Dixon is not showing symptoms of Ebola. But she will remain under quarantine.

KOSIK: And Spencer is now reportedly entering a more serious phase of his illness and his condition has gotten worse. He's received blood plasma from Nancy Writebol. She's one of the first two Americans diagnosed with Ebola. Doctors say Ebola patients often get worse before they recover.

BLACKWELL: It was Spencer's diagnosis last week just one day after he dined out, went bowling, rode the subway that sparked new quarantine policies in three states. Our Alexandra Field is outside Bellevue Hospital live for us this

morning where Spencer is still in isolation.

Explain for us the reason that we're hearing from the governors of New York and New Jersey that these mandatory quarantines have been enacted and what we know about Dr. Spencer.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Victor, at this point officials on all levels, you know, local, state, federal are trying to navigate this. You know, what do you to contain the possible spread of this and how do you calm fears? That's why we're seeing the CDC rollout some new regulations starting tomorrow. They'll have many people who are arriving from the hot zone of West Africa under an active monitoring program, which means they'll have to check in with state and local officials for 21 days, even if they aren't showing symptoms when they arrived here.

But some state officials here in New Jersey and in New York and in Illinois have said that they want to see this go a step further so they enacted their own policies.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FIELD (voice-over): A mandatory 21-day quarantine or hospitalization already imposed by New York and New Jersey and now, Illinois is causing heated debate on handling the possible spread of Ebola. In an effort to ease public concerns, the three states announced the measures for any airline passenger coming in from a West African nation hit hard by the deadly virus. A mandatory quarantine goes into effect for travelers who had direct contact with an infected person.

In a statement issued by the state of Illinois, Governor Quinn says, "This protective measure is too important to be voluntary. We must take every step necessary to ensure the people of Illinois are protected from potential exposure from the Ebola virus."

In New York, where the state is already dealing with an Ebola case, Governor Andrew Cuomo says health care workers are ready.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D), NEW YORK: The workers feel that they've had the training. They've had the equipment. We've gone through the protocols. We've drilled. We've drilled. We've drilled.

FIELD: But the mandates are causing concerns with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in other infectious disease specialists.

In a statement, the CDC says health care workers volunteering to combat the Ebola epidemic in West Africa are heroes. The epidemic there won't end without them. And without their work, the U.S. will be at increased risk.

CELINE GOUNDER, INFECTIOUS DISEASES AND PUBLIC HEALTH SPECIALIST: I do have very real concerns especially since I am somebody who is planning to go myself that this is really going to prevent some people from volunteering. We're already having difficulty recruiting health care workers to go over. And if you're going to institute even -- what frankly feel like punitive measures against people volunteering time, taking real risks, it just doesn't feel right and fair.

REP. TIM MURPHY (R-PA), FOUNDING MEMBER, GOP DOCTORS CAUCUS: We do not have a vaccine. We do not have a cure. We only have treatment. And one needs to understand a virus constantly trying to mutate, constantly trying to find a new host to live on and as such quarantine is only thing that breaks the link.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FIELD: All right. Dr. Craig Spencer is one of the doctors who went to the hot zone trying to help people affected by the virus. He is back here now being treated at Bellevue Hospital. His virus entered the next stage. He is showing more symptoms and we're told that he's getting anti-viral treatments and plasma treatments and officials at this hospital point out those are both treatment that's have been successfully used to cure other Ebola patients treated at other hospitals here in the U.S. -- Alison, Victor.

BLACKWELL: All right. Alexandra Field there in Bellevue Hospital in New York -- thank you so much.

KOSIK: The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. says she wants to show Americans they don't have to be afraid of Ebola. Samantha Power landed in Guinea this morning, her first stop to the three West African nations hardest hit by the deadly virus.

CNN's Erin McPike joins me from the White House now.

Erin, what message do you think the ambassador is trying to send here and what is she looking to accomplish on this trip?

ERIN MCPIKE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is really symbolic. She simply wants to send the message to U.S. government workers that they can go to these countries affected in West Africa and not get Ebola.

It's much the same message that President Obama was trying to send on Friday when he hugged nurse Nina Pham in the Oval Office. That he could do that. She is fine. He, too, is not going to get Ebola.

Then, the second message is that other countries need to get involved. She, of course, as the ambassador to the U.N., works as the ambassador to the U.N. works with all the other nation ands Secretary of State John Kerry has been on a mission for weeks now saying that other countries need to get involved, because this could be a much bigger problem if they don't, Alison.

KOSIK: What will the ambassador be doing in west Africa? Is she going to have direct contact with some of these Ebola patients?

MCPIKE: That remains to be seen. So far, from the announcement that we have, she's not necessarily going to be meeting with Ebola patients. But she will be meeting with U.S. health care workers there on the ground and also with the U.N. effort that is there, also government officials who are there. Mostly coordinating the effort and seeing these national Ebola coordination centers, Alison.

KOSIK: Now, some top law makers are calling for a travel ban on flights from West Africa. Here we have Power going there. She's going to have to come back, obviously. Do you think this is a rebuke to those calls?

MCPIKE: It may be on some level. The bigger issue, of course, is sending the message to other countries that they need to get involved, as we discussed. But she does say in a recent interview with NBC News, "We cannot take measures that we're going to impact our ability to flood the zone. We have to find the right balance between addressing legitimate fears that people have, and encouraging the incentivizing these heroes."

But the other thing I would point out, Alison, is that Ambassador Power is based in New York City. And the big question is, even -- whether she comes into contact with Ebola patients or not, she certainly will come into contact with people who have had those contacts. Will she then be quarantined when she returns, Alison?

KOSIK: That was exactly -- you took the question out of my mouth. I was just going to ask you that. So, we shall see. Erin McPike, thank you.

BLACKWELL: All right. Let's get more now on these Ebola travel restrictions as we saw that exchange between Erin and Alison. Let's talk with Dr. Amesh Adalja. He joins us now by phone from Pittsburgh.

The first question I have for you, doctor, and thanks for being with us this morning. The CDC suggests that the new quarantine will discourage health care workers from going to Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone. What do you think?

DR. AMESH ADALJA, EBOLA EXPERT (via telephone): I definitely believe that's going to be the case. It's already a daunting task to go over there and to fight this battle at its source, and now they're going to be subject to 21 days of quarantine if they return to several states that have now enacted these quarantines. So, it really makes it a much bigger proposition that these individuals have to think about if they're going to go.

BLACKWELL: Let's play this from the other angle then. From what we're hearing from the governors of Illinois and New York and New Jersey, we heard in Alexandra Field's piece a health expert say that quarantine is the only thing that breaks the link. So, if you know, and we do know that direct contact with patients who have Ebola is the only way people can contract Ebola, why not wait the 21 days of the incubation period just to be safe? Why is quarantine a bad idea?

ADALJA: Because during the incubation period, those individuals, even if they're incubating the virus, pose no risk to other individuals because you're not contagious until you actually have symptom. And these patients aren't just out there on their own. They're

part of the monitoring program. They're in contact with the state department and authorities. Quarantine doesn't add anything to that. All it does is actually make it much more difficult for people to come home.

BLACKWELL: So, what would you advocate for? What would be happy medium here?

ADALJA: What we're doing right now, what the CDC guidance is with active monitoring where people monitor themselves for 21 days in conjunction with the Health Department actively keeping track of the individuals and making sure this is going on. That's the way to do this, because you don't get symptoms. You have to think of Dr. Spencer's case as the plan working well, because his circle of contacts is very minimal, three, compared to -- compared to, for example, Mr. Duncan who had a much larger circle of contact.

So, this is -- what we're doing now seems to be adequate. These quarantines, and they're not universal because Atlanta and Dallas don't have the same restrictions, don't make any sense and not really motivated by any kind of understanding of the transmission dynamics of this virus.

BLACKWELL: Yes, Dr. Amesh Adalja, thank you for joining us this morning. Talk about not making sense. My question is, and hopefully, we can get someone on the show to answer this, you know, to put these people who come back from these three countries into some type of mandatory quarantine for treating Ebola patients, why not put -- if that's protecting public health, why not put the Americans who are working in these hospitals caring for Ebola patients into quarantine, too? I mean, it's not like the disease is any deadlier coming from it is coming from Dallas.

Dr. Amesh Adalja, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

ADALJA: Thanks for having me.

KOSIK: Deadly school shooting in Washington state has students and families asking one question, why did he do it? Why did he kill his friends?

BLACKWELL: And same sex marriage will be recognized by the federal government in six additional states. Why Attorney General Eric Holder has made this historic decision.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOSIK: A community in Washington is trying to come to terms with the horrifying shooting at a Marysville High School. We know two of the victims were cousins of the shooter Jaylen Fryberg and that the other three victims were girls. One was killed and two in critical condition in the hospital.

Susan Candiotti joins us live from Everett. Susan, what have you learned about the shooter's relationship

with his cousins, two of whom were shot?

SUSAN CANDIOTTI, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Alison. Yes, good morning.

The grandfather of them says that, yes, indeed, the shooter shot his own cousins. He is at a loss to even explain it. He said they were all very close. They lived nearby each other. They used to hang out together. And, in fact, even went to a recent dance in which the shooter in this case was named the homecoming prince.

He says that -- the grandfather says he wants to speak with the family about it. He forgives the shooter but, again, no one can explain this.

And in terms of the motive, that, too, remains a mystery. If authorities know exactly what happened, they're not saying it. It might have to do with a reported breakup that shooter recently had with a girlfriend or possibly a recent suspension from the school.

In the meantime, on Saturday, students were leaving flowers behind at the school. Police allowed them to go back and collect their belongings. But it is very difficult to make sense out of the senseless as families try to explain what happened to their children. And I spoke with the mayor about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAYOR JON NEHRING, MARYSVILLE, WASHINGTON: I put my arms around them and hug them. I hadn't done that on their way out the door to school that day. And I think -- you know, you've got some families that their kids aren't coming home. And that's what comes through your mind. You just want to love on them and hug them. One of the things is just to say, hey, if you need something to talk about, don't hold it in. And talk to us about it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CANDIOTTI: And I'm sure there will be a lot discussion about that. The school remains closed and all activities canceled this week -- Alison.

KOSIK: Susan, we learned that there's a teacher at the school being hailed as a hero. She apparently tried to stop the shooter. Do you have any more details about that?

CANDIOTTI: Well, the police haven't described only what happened only to say this female teacher in fact tried to stop the shooter at some point, tried to prevent this carnage from going on. Obviously, she didn't succeed. And police say he wound up shooting himself. But we did reach out to her to ask her about it. And she declined comment at this time saying she didn't wish to discuss it at the moment.

KOSIK: OK. Susan Candiotti, thank you.

BLACKWELL: Seventeen minutes after the hour now. Let's get you caught up with the "Morning Read".

KOSIK: A federal official tells CNN the CDC is, quote, not happy about mandatory quarantines now in place in New York and New Jersey. The 21-day isolation period applies for health workers and others returning from West African countries hit hard by Ebola. Illinois has a similar. How the rules will be enforced, that is still an open question.

Attorney General Eric Holder says the federal government will now recognize same-sex married couples in six more states, bringing the total to 32, plus the District of Columbia. This follows the Supreme Court's decision to decline to hear any pending cases on the issue. The latest six are Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, North Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming.

BLACKWELL: Tech news now. Mission accomplished for SpaceX's Dragon spaceship. The unmanned spacecraft landed in the Pacific ocean after a four week resupply mission to the International Space Station. Dragon brought back potentially ground breaking experiments on how humans can thrive in long duration space flight.

KOSIK: In sports, more than 3,000 students who enrolled in faith classes at the University of North Carolina will likely get to keep their degrees. That's according to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools which is reviewing its scathing report that accuses of prestigious university of carrying out academic fraud for at least 18 years in order to keep students eligible to play.

BLACKWELL: Up to 50 homes in Pahoa, Hawaii, might be forced to evacuate because of this, it's lava from the Kilauea volcano that is heading their way. Hawaii's governor has already asked for presidential disaster declaration. This lava is 2,000 degrees. It's threatening to destroy the roads, and the homes, schools anything in its path.

KOSIK: ISIS fighters appear to be trying out new ways of attacking their enemies. And there are reports they may be using chlorine gas. We're going to tell why you U.S. officials are concerned.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOSIK: "The New York Times" is reporting that Western ISIS captives are tortured before being beheaded. American James Foley, the first Western hostage to be beheaded by ISIS on camera had been singled out for particularly harsh treatment. "The Times" says it compiled the information by interviewing five former hostages, local witnesses' relatives and colleagues of detainees.

BLACKWELL: Meanwhile, a new report says that ISIS fighters are using chlorine gas to attack Iraqi officers.

KOSIK: And the U.S. is concerned they may have gained access to Iraq's old chemical weapons storage.

CNN Pentagon Barbara Starr has details. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Alison, Victor, a potential new threat for the 1,400 U.S. troops in Iraq.

(voice-over): Iraqi forces being rushed to medical care after possibly being hit by chlorine by ISIS forces 50 miles north of Baghdad. According to media reports, it happened last month.

JOHN KERRY, SECRETARY OF STATE: These allegations are extremely serious. And we are seeking additional information in order to be able to determine if we can confirm it.

STARR: Reports indicate the men were quickly released from the hospital. CNN has been unable to independently confirm the attack.

Chlorine by itself is not considered a chemical weapon but it can be poisonous. It can also be delivered by a weapon such as an artillery shell.

Earlier this year, the U.S. and other countries concluded Syrian civilians were attacked by regime forces with chlorine and reports persist of other attacks.

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: It's more of a defensive and more of a psychological weapon than anything else. The effects of chemical -- to a soldier on the battlefield will cause them to do nothing but want to stop fighting and go for self- preservation.

(EXPLOSIONS)

STARR: After almost three months of air strikes and more than 630 bombing runs over Syria and Iraq, optimism on the strategy is tempered.

CHUCK HAGEL, DEFENSE SECRETARY: The reality is that ISIS has controlled and still does control a significant amount of ground in Iraq.

(GUNFIRES)

STARR: U.S. military officials briefing reporters acknowledged it could be months before Iraqi forces are ready to launch a major counter offensive and years before they can finally take back full control of the country.

HERTLING: In order to launch an effective offensive operation, soldiers have to have trust in their commanders. That's nonexistence in most of the Iraqi army now.

STARR (on camera): And ISIS is going back to a tried and true tactic, laying roadside bombs in key areas now where the Iraqi forces are trying to launch those counter attacks -- Alison, Victor.

(END VIDEOTAPE) BLACKWELL: All right. Barbara Starr at the Pentagon for us --

Barbara, thanks.

KOSIK: And count them up, four states are now cracking down on people who may have been exposed to Ebola in outbreak zone in West Africa. Why the federal agency in charge of the Ebola response is, quote, "not happy about it".

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KOSIK: Bottom of the hour now. Welcome back, everyone. I'm Alison Kosik.

BLACKWELL: I'm Victor Blackwell.

Federal officials sell CNN the CDC is, quote, "not happy" about mandatory 21-day quarantines now in place in New York and New Jersey. Rules affect people who may have been exposed to Ebola in the West African outbreak zone or treated patients with Ebola to be more specific. Illinois has a similar rule, and now, Florida is mandating twice daily monitoring for anyone returning from the Ebola parts of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.

KOSIK: Meantime, the fiancee of a New York physician now being treated for Ebola, she is back home.