Pence Leads First Coronavirus Briefing In Nearly Two Months; E.U. Investigating German Watchdog Over Wirecard Scandal; Three Meat Packing Plants In Wales Are COVID-19 Hotspots.
ASHER: Hello everyone. I'm Zain Asher. There's more QUEST MEANS BUSINESS in a moment when we'll ask the virologist why meat processing plants in Europe and the U.S. have become major hotspots for COVID-19 outbreak. Our single tweet from rapper Kanye West sent gap shares soaring more than 40 percent. Before that though, these are the headlines for you at this hour. The U.S. set a record of 40,000 new coronavirus cases on Thursday that already eclipses what many officials called the peak of the outbreak in April. But those numbers seem likely to keep rising as many states go forward with reopening plans. U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, meanwhile, says the country is opening safely and responsibly. Those comments came at the first coronavirus task force briefing in nearly two months. Pence added that he'll be visiting some of those states soon starting with Texas on Sunday. The IMF warns the recession in Latin America and the Caribbean will be even worse than expected this year. But now says the economy will shrink nearly 9-1/2 percent citing for tracted coronavirus outbreak. That would be the region's worst recession on record. The European Commission is calling for a probe into Germany's financial watchdog over its supervision of Wirecard. The payments company has been plagued by a $2 billion accounting scandal and filed for insolvency on Thursday. Meantime, the auditor E.Y. is under fire for failing to request Wirecard's bank statements in Singapore for three years, that's according to Financial Times. Fred Pleitgen is in Berlin for us. So, Fred, just explained to us how on earth could this company Wirecard actually get away with leading everyone to believe they had $1 billion in cash when they clearly didn't? How did so many people not pick up on this?</s>FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, that certainly is the big question that a lot of people are asking here in German, a lot of people are asking around the world and you're absolutely right. I think one of the key things is that Ernst and Young, the company that audit and has been auditing Wirecard is under a lot of fire. There's a group representing financial investors here in Germany. They actually filed a lawsuit against Ernst and Young saying that they had been telling the auditor for years that there was something wrong at Wirecard and simply hadn't gotten any sort of reaction.</s>PLEITGEN: And of course, we do have to recall that there were also two Financial Times investigations that found that there was something wrong there as well. And up to at least until last year, it doesn't seem as though that rang anything like alarm bells at E.Y. Now</s>ASHER: Yes. I mean, if shareholders can't trust companies, like E.Y. accounting firms to do their jobs properly, then what can they trust and just walk us through how much damage this done -- this does just in terms E.Y.'s reputation?</s>PLEITGEN: Well, I think -- I think it certainly has done a lot of reputation, certainly, just from some of the reactions that we've been getting to our reporting. There certainly are a lot of people who are quite emotional about all this and quite angry about all this. But again, it's a bigger thing. I mean, obviously for Ernst and Young it is something that a lot of people are saying just simply isn't right and simply shouldn't happen to a company of that magnitude and of that size. But if you look at also here in Germany, the financial regulator here is also saying and I think the exact words that this is one of the biggest catastrophes that they have ever seen also, because of the way that the regulators oversaw a lot of things that were going on as well. And again, this might cause some serious institutional reforms here in this country as well. That's how seriously they're taking it. That's how much they believe this could do damage to the image of Germany. Of course, one of the things that we talk about a lot is that the confidence in Germany as a financial marketplace, but generally also as a country to do business in stems from the fact that they have regulators that work that they have rules that work. So certainly, the Germans do not want to see that to be dented in any way, shape or form. So they stay, they're going to look at this very hard and take action very quickly, Zain.</s>ASHER: Fred Pleitgen live for us there. Thank you. Some German officials say people should pay more for meat to reflect its true cost of production. The government there is looking at the Meatpacking industry after a major COVID outbreak linked to one plant. These facilities have become coronavirus hotspots around the world. CNN's Anna Stewart visited a plant in Wales to find out why.</s>ANNA STEWART, CNN REPORTER: It's the third meat factory in a small country of Wales to register a coronavirus outbreak in recent weeks. This one at the 2 Sisters Poultry factory is the biggest. 200 cases so far. That's dwarfed by an outbreak at the Tonnies meatpacking plant in Germany, where over 1500 workers have tested positive for COVID-19 leading to a local lockdown more than 360,000 forced to quarantine. It's a worrying trend in meat processing plants and slaughterhouses across the world. Despite many adopting COVID-19 safe measures, PPE and social distancing where possible.</s>JAMES WOOD, INFECTIOUS DISEASE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE: So, temperature is something that there is a feature particularly cutting plants. It's harder to have a cold temperature in national slaughter lines. But one of the features of the slaughter lines is the fact that they're very noisy places. People have to stand close to each other and sometimes shout in order to make themselves heard. And all these things can promote the risk of spread of infection.</s>STEWART: In the U.K., more than two-thirds of sectors workers are from other European countries. In the U.S. and Germany, migrant workers make up around a third of the workforce. Back in the town of Llangefni, home to the closed poultry plant, the streets are practically empty. Many of the workers their families and their contacts are still self- isolating at home. It's a small town and always everyone we spoken to, you know, somebody that is affected. The biggest concern has been that employees who felt sick early on in the outbreak didn't stay home as they couldn't afford to.</s>PADDY MCNAUGHT, UNITE REGIONAL OFFICER: These people are all paid. They don't have sick pay schemes in place. So when people have a slight temperature or something that could be related to COVID-19 whether it's a slight cough or slight temperature, people have been less likely to take time off and isolate.</s>STEWART: 2 Sisters say unions like unite are leveraging this crisis to improve work as conditions. And added that all their staff are now on full pay since the factory is shot. There's a confluence of factors at play. As outbreaks continue to crop up at meat plants across the world. There are concerns about the safety of the workers and their communities. Anna Stewart, CNN Llangefni, Wales.</s>ASHER: The world is taking a closer look at conditions in the world slaughterhouses and processing plants. In the U.S. facilities and dozens of states are under siege by the virus. Since the pandemic began, there have been thousands of confirmed cases tied to plants. China is working to assure people that their meat products are safe. A major outbreak in Beijing is believed to have again begun at a meat market too. And in Germany, residents of</s>DR. ANGELA RASMUSSEN, VIROLOGIST, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: That's an excellent question and it's clearly something that's happening all over the world. And I think that it's largely because of some of the issues that your correspondence just raised. The conditions in these plants for workers enable super spreading events to occur. And then they have inspired workers to come to work while they're still sick. In this case, this virus is also transmitted when workers are pre- symptomatic or asymptomatic, so people can be coming to work potentially contagious and not know that they are, in fact infected. When you combine that with people working in environments where they are very close together, where they may be yelling or shouting and producing large quantities of respiratory droplets, which is the primary mode of transmission of this virus. It's really a recipe for disaster. And when you have these factories or plants and communities where everybody is associated with the plants, virtually every household has somebody who might be working at the plant or is in contact with people there. It's really a recipe for that virus to move beyond the plant into the widespread community and have community transmission be established there.</s>ASHER: And how much of a factor is say cold temperatures and also just the lack of -- in some cases lack of an adequate air filtration system?</s>RASMUSSEN: So cold temperatures may have an effect. There is -- there is research that indicates the temperature and humidity both play a role in how long the virus can persist in the environment. But I would think that the air filtration as well as the worker conditions probably play a larger role. And that is because we do know that this virus is primarily transmitted by respiratory droplets rather than fomites or contaminated surfaces. So, the thing to remember here is that viruses are transmitted by people. Viruses don't like to live in the environment, they really can't live in the environment on their own for a long period of time. So anytime you have a lot of people that are spending a lot of time together in close physical practice, proximity, producing these respiratory droplets, you have an increased risk of transmission.</s>ASHER: So, what do you say to people who are now concerned about whether or not their meat is safe?</s>RASMUSSEN: I think that that largely is a pretty minimal risk for several reasons. One, as I just mentioned, this virus is much more likely to be transmitted from close physical contact with another person. That's not to say that it's impossible to transmit it from a contaminated surface or piece of meat, but it's less likely. The other thing is that we know that when virus is on surfaces and presumably on meat or wrapping materials that the meat would be packaged in it declines and infectiousness over time and fairly rapidly. Within 72 hours, there were substantial decreases in infectious titers of this virus on plastic surfaces. So by the time that meat makes it -- its way from the packing plant to your grocery store and is then purchased, there's likely to not be very much virus on there if there was any in the first place.</s>RASMUSSEN: And any residual virus that might be there that risk can be further minimized by practicing good hand hygiene after handling your groceries.</s>ASHER: So, what needs to change some of these meat processing plants just in terms of testing, contact tracing, quarantine rules, you know, staying six feet apart from the next employee. What needs to change?</s>RASMUSSEN: All of those things need to change. So, these -- the people running the meat processing plants need to ensure that their workers are able to physically distance from one another, they need to make sure that they're equipped with a proper personal protective equipment. And in this environment, that means at minimum, a mask and gloves. Ideally, you would want a more protective mask like an N95 particulate respirator. In addition to that, the meat plant workers themselves needs to have more protections. They need to have sick leave. They need to be able to stay home and isolate or quarantine themselves if they suspect that there has been exposure and there needs to be increased testing capacity. Furthermore, here in the U.S., oftentimes interventions were not undertaken until after there was already widespread transmission within a plant or the community surrounding it. And that's really too late. These plants need to be implementing these measures before they start having an uncontrolled outbreak to make sure that everybody both in the plant and in the community around it is as protected as possible.</s>ASHER: Dr. Rasmussen, thank you so much. Still ahead. Gap banks big on an upcoming collaboration with Kanye West. We'll have full details ahead on Yeezy's Friday. That's next.