Some U.S. states Pause or Roll Back Reopening; Miami Mayor Hopes Masks, Beach Closings Will Slow Virus; Russian Intel Offered Taliban Cash to Kill U.S. troops
MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Surging numbers: coronavirus cases reach staggering levels. Dozens of U.S. states pump the brakes on their drive to reopen. New developments on whether President Trump was told Russian intelligence offered cash rewards to the Taliban to kill American troops. Also, sports in the time of COVID-19. The NBA just announced its plan to play safely. Will other leagues follow suit? We'll let you know what to expect. Hello and welcome to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Michael Holmes.</s>HOLMES: The experiment by many U.S. states in reopening amid the coronavirus may have backfired. Now for millions of Americans, life may be going back on hold. New cases in more than half the country. They're starting to pile up. Several states hit new highs this weekend. It is hard to find a patch of green on that map there, where cases are actually going down. This deals a blow for people hoping to get back on with their lives as now, some of these states are hitting the pause button on reopening or starting to close portions of the economy again entirely. The U.S. accounts for about a quarter of the nearly 10 million cases worldwide and the almost 500,000 deaths. And the situation could be even worse than we know. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, based on antibodies found in blood samples, the real number of people infected may be at least 6 and up to 24 times higher than what is being counted at the moment. Florida is one of the states where cases continue to go up. The Sunshine State hit another record on Saturday, almost 10,000 positive results in one single day. Compare the seven-day averages with Italy, which, as you might remember, was at epicenter early on in the pandemic. Italy way down now. Florida, way up. The governor now is taking action. CNN's Randi Kaye with more from Palm Beach.</s>RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Here in Florida, yet another record day, spiking cases, 9,585, that is the highest number of cases in a single day. The governor still saying that that is because of increased testing. Increased testing from about 24,000 tests a day to 45,000 tests a day. We are seeing higher positivity rates here in the state of Florida, mostly among young people, ages 33 to 35 years old, mostly asymptomatic. But they do hang out a lot in bars and the governor has decided that that was a reason to close all of the state bars which he has done. But the governor has decided not to issue a mandatory order that everybody in the state of Florida wear masks. So he's leaving that up to the local government and local municipalities, saying he will trust people to make good decisions. But we see people out and about here in West Palm Beach, not wearing their masks. So it is unclear if everybody really is making good decisions. In Miami, they've decided to close the beaches in Miami- Dade County, despite the spiking cases coming over the very popular, busy July 4th weekend. The mayor there says he does not want to see a spike on top of a spike -- Randi Kaye, CNN, West Palm Beach, Florida.</s>HOLMES: The mayor of Miami says he believes a spike in cases in Florida come from people gathering in large groups and refusing to wear masks. His city is taking steps to stop more from spreading.</s>MAYOR FRANCIS SUAREZ (D-FL), MIAMI: The numbers we've seen, for example, 2 days ago, we hit the high water mark of 1,500 cases. That's 3 times higher than what we had in late March, early April, at 500 cases. The state of Florida hit 9,600 cases which is 7 times greater than their high water mark of 1,300. So I think Florida, as a state, open bars, we never opened bars in the city of Miami. And the fact that we are closing our beaches now and we are requiring masks and we are now considering stiffer penalties for businesses that do not comply with the rules. These are things we are hoping are going to help us reverse this horrible trend that we are seeing over the last couple weeks.</s>HOLMES: That was Francis Suarez, the mayor of Miami, Florida.</s>HOLMES: Joining me now is Dr. Jonathan Reiner.</s>HOLMES: He is a co-director of the cardiac catheterization laboratory at George Washington University Hospital. Also the cardiologist who cares for former U.S. vice president, Dick Cheney. Doctor, great to have you back on again. Numbers soaring in many states; even the European Union does not want Americans traveling there, despite the vice president speaking of, quote, "remarkable progress." What needs to be done, like yesterday? What would it take, in a perfect world with actual leadership, to bring this back under control?</s>DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Reaching out to the public and getting everyone in this country to wear a face mask when they go out into public, number one. Testing many more patients then we are testing now. Number three, probably in select areas, probably shutting some places down, because the health care systems are really at the breaking point, in places like Texas. So I think we have to have the political will to do all that. We did it before, in the earlier part of this first wave, in places like New York and Massachusetts, New Jersey. And we can do it now. We have to have the political will. We have seen some rumblings of that in Texas and I hope that kind of strong leadership continues.</s>HOLMES: With those case numbers soaring, the hospitalizations, of course, lagged behind diagnosis and deaths lagged behind hospitalizations, are you expecting an uptick in deaths at the moment? A lot of the new cases are young people but they are the carriers for the more vulnerable, right?</s>REINER: That is right. And it sort of depends on the case mix going forward. So we've sort of plateaued with the death rate sort of fluctuating between 600 and 800 deaths per day. Our daily case -- new infection rate is really skyrocketing to over 40,000. So if there is a large proportion of new infections in younger people, the mortality rate may stay where it is now. But as those young people infect older people, the worry is that the death rate will go up. So it's a little hard to tell now. We'll have a better sense in about a week. It takes about a week after someone becomes infected until they get sick enough to be hospitalized. Then often about another week after that until you start seeing deaths. So it is a lagging indicator and obviously is concerned about the death rates starting to take off again.</s>HOLMES: What are your concerns? What is the risk of hospitals being overwhelmed again? And what is the state of readiness in terms of PPE, ICU beds and so on? Is that a big concern for you at the moment?</s>REINER: It certainly is. Let's look at Texas. So Houston, which is now the new epicenter of this pandemic in the United States. They have the largest medical center in the world. Texas Medical Center, which has about 60 hospitals. When I checked yesterday, it looked like about 98 percent of their ICU beds were filled. Now we have the ability in the United States and we learned this over the last few months, to create innovative spaces to treat patients in an ICU setting that is not really an ICU setting, like turning ORs into ICUs and all kinds -- and recovery rooms into ICUs. But it is an enormous strain on a hospital. It strains the staff, places the staff at great risk. And hospitals can get to a breaking point. This was the whole point of flattening the curve, spreading out the cases so that our medical system did not get overwhelmed. We barely missed that in places like in New York and New Jersey six weeks ago. And I'm worried about Texas. The difference is that when New York was at its breaking point, New York shut down. New York was shut down. Texas has not shut down. We did hear from the Harris County executive, a request for nonessential people to stay home but it is not an order yet. But we have to see the political will to do that in places.</s>HOLMES: I was just going to ask you about that, leadership, national coordination. You would think it's pretty important in times like these. We have seen that coordination in countries that brought their cases down. In the U.S., testing was lacking from the start. It still is. The shutdown was slow. The restart was fast in many places. There's been pretty much zero federal coordination of anything. It's literally just scrolling through the president's Twitter feed. It's on everything but this. Are you worried about the lack of a coordinated federal response?</s>REINER: Absolutely. When we started talking about opening two months ago, the federal government had a reasonable plan. And it called for states to have 14 consecutive days of downward trend in new cases and declining positivity rates and increasing testing rates and hospital capacity. But look at Texas. When Texas opened, they only had two consecutive days. They barely had two consecutive days of a downward trend. So many of the places that opened were not ready to open and certainly not ready to move towards phase 3. We are paying the price for that now. The problem is that there is an essential conflict of interest between treating this pandemic the way it needs to be treated and running for reelection. And the president is facing this now. In order for him to succeed in reelection, he has to make this go away. He has to pretend that it does not exist. That is why the vice president started his briefing yesterday by saying, oh, everyone has heard now the encouraging news. I have no idea what he was talking about. He is not living in the same world that I am living in. But in order for them to succeed in reelection, they really have to try and get the people of this country to believe that the pandemic is gone, that we are moving on, that it's business as usual. So until we have leadership that is willing to do the difficult things, it's going to be very difficult to put this down.</s>HOLMES: Yes, that is the funny thing about pandemics. It is hard to pretend they have gone away when hospitals are filled with people who are dying. Doctor, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, co-director of the cardiac catheterization laboratory at George Washington University Hospital. As always, a pleasure. Thank you for your expertise, sir.</s>REINER: My pleasure. Have a great night.</s>HOLMES: New developments in the growing controversy over claims that Russian intelligence offered cash to Taliban militants as a reward for killing U.S. and U.K. troops in Afghanistan. The U.S. Director of National Intelligence says he has confirmed that neither the president nor the vice president were briefed on the matter. That statement from John Radcliffe contradicting what "The New York Times" originally reported. Our Nick Paton Walsh has been looking into the story.</s>NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: A European intelligence official is telling me that Russian military intelligence officers made offers of cash rewards to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan if they would kill or attack U.S. or other coalition soldiers. Now it's not clear to this European intelligence official quite what the motivation behind this Russian offer was. But they do believe that these cash incentives resulted in coalition casualties. They're not clear on the date of these casualties, the nature of the casualties or the nationality indeed or their location. But these are startling direct allegations, initially first reported by "The New York Times," citing U.S. officials. I should point out the Taliban have denied any involvement in this</s>WALSH: And also precisely where this leaves U.S. policy in Afghanistan, also too why the president and vice president would not have been briefed as the White House says they weren't, if they received intelligence reports of this nature. Startling revelations about the U.S.' continued presence in Afghanistan and Russia's meddling therein -- Nick Paton Walsh, CNN, London.</s>HOLMES: This just in: one person is dead and another injured after a shooting in Louisville, Kentucky. It happened during a protest in Jefferson Square Park on Saturday evening. Officials say law enforcement performed lifesaving measures on one of the victims but he later died. A short time later, the police received word of a second shooting victim at the nearby Hall of Justice. He was transported to a nearby hospital with non-life threatening injuries. Still ahead on CNN, E.U. countries have not decided yet whether to keep U.S. travelers from coming in. COVID-19 infections mostly to blame. But there is another reason why most Americans are likely to be left out. Plus more outrage over police violence in the U.S. Thousands in Colorado protesting the death of yet another young black man. This one, nearly a year after it happened. We will discuss.