Study: Rates of Symptomatic Children with COVID Are Very Low; "Rolling Hot Spots" in Focus as Midwest Sees Uptick in Infections; Tropical Storm Laura Expected to Slam Gulf Coast as Hurricane
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan. Thanks so much for joining us this hour. I'm going to throw some numbers at you but here's the point and the encouraging signs with the fight against COVID. Things are coming down and heading in the right direction. But, of course, with the important context that they are coming down from a very high point. Just under 40,000 new cases reported yesterday. Over the last two weeks, the average number of daily new infections is down nearly 21 percent. Just look at that curve. Only 10 states are now showing an increase there. Many of them in the Midwest, which we will talk about more in just one second. Twenty-three states are seeing a decline. The virus killed another 450 Americans yesterday. But the rolling average of deaths is slowing, slowly falling. And the all-important indicator, the positivity rate, is also dropping. Now at about 6 percent nationwide. So the fight against COVID is having an impact right now. But that is not a permanent state, of course. Just look at colleges across the country. More and more reporting COVID clusters breaking out, leading more and more schools to crack down on students and parties and gatherings. Ohio State is temporarily suspending more than 200 students for breaking the school's coronavirus policies. The University of Kansas is taking disciplinarian action against two fraternizes for hosting parties over the weekend. And the mayor of Tuscaloosa is ordering all bars closed after seeing more than 500 cases pop up at the University of Alabama. Now this also just came out, a new study shedding light on how many children have COVID and don't have any symptoms and what that means for tracking cases and reopening schools safely. CNN's Elizbeth Cohen is joining me now. She's standing by with that information. Elizabeth, this new research was just published out of the University of California, San Francisco. What did they find?</s>DR. ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Kate, these doctors did something really interesting. They looked at children who were at children's hospitals, not for COVID, but for all sorts of other things, for non-COVID reasons. Let's take a look at what they found out. They tested more than 33,000 children who were in for other reasons. They didn't have signs of COVID. Nobody thought they had COVID. They weren't there for COVID. Our of those 33,000 asymptomatic children, 250 of them were positive. Now the number of children who were positive varied by community. In other words, some of these children's hospitals, when they tested those children, but they didn't get a single case of COVID. Other ones, about 2 percent of the children that they tested were COVID. So it varied very much by community to community. Not surprising seeing the COVID rates in this country vary from community to community.</s>BOLDUAN: Absolutely. And these researchers make a really important, I think, and helpful assessment of how they think that this helps communities with regard to many things, including reopening schools safely.</s>COHEN: Right. I think one of the things you have to think about -- and this is something Tony Fauci talks about a lot -- is America is a big place. If you have a lot of COVID in your community, it stands to reason that you will have more children with COVID and you don't know that they have COVID because they're asymptomatic. So schools really have to sort of they don't need to be looking at the national data. They need to be looking at the data in their community. If I knew that, in my community, 2 percent of these children who were tested, who didn't appear to have COVID, but 2 percent of them did, that's going to mean something to me. If I'm stuck in a building with lots of children, I want to know that 2 percent of them might have COVID and aren't showing it.</s>BOLDUAN: Yes. It's kind of a formula, is how they described how you can look at -- look at these reopenings and how it can apply to your community, different applications for different communities. Thanks, Elizabeth. I really appreciate it.</s>COHEN: All right. Thanks.</s>BOLDUAN: So let's talk about focusing in on communities. And regionally is another place we need to focus. Let's focus in on the trends that we are seeing with COVID right now. The northeast, as you remember very well, was the first major hotspot in the United States. Then the Sunbelt, the southern tier of the United States, became the epicenter of COVID outbreaks in the country. Now, it's the Midwest that's becoming the biggest concern it appears. Take a look at this. This shows the story of the south, a steep rise -- you can see that huge rise in cases, and then a decline. But as cases declined in the Sunbelt, you can see the danger ahead in the Midwest with the cases on the rise there. Which does beg the question: Are what we can call kind of a rolling hot spot, are they now the new normal? If so, why? And what's working and what isn't? Joining me right now is Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips. She's a CNN medical analyst and chief clinical officer for the Providence Health System. Doctor, it's good to see you again. So rolling hot spots moving across the country. I've heard it also described as kind of a constant game of Whack a Mole. Do you think that is the new normal?</s>DR. AMY COMPTON-PHILLIPS, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: I think it is the new normal, at least for the near future. And the challenge is that, as a virus rolls into a community, people start doing the things that we know stop the virus, including things like shutting down bars, getting incredibly good about wearing their masks and social distancing. And then as people -- as it's real, as they see their neighbors getting the disease, people are very adherent to the guidelines. As then as things start to wane, people get comfortable again. And you start mingling a little bit more. And, oh, maybe I left my mask at home, oh, well, I'll just go out anyway. And they get more complacent. This waxing, waning in how we live through the length of time that we have to manage is going to be the challenge over the next 18 months or so until we get the vaccine not only made but fully deployed across the country.</s>BOLDUAN: Yes. And you're answering my next question. But just to put a fine point on it, we've been looking for so long at the Sunbelt, the southern tier of the United States, and how bad it had really gotten. But also now the change. The percentage changed from week to week has dropped by at least 10 percent for the last two weeks in terms of cases. Why is the Sunbelt getting better? What have you seen, from Arizona to Florida to Texas? What are you seeing that's working?</s>COMPTON-PHILLIPS: So I think the measures we are hearing about. The governors in those states actually did start taking the mitigation measures that we have to be able to do to shut down the virus, which includes shutting down those places where you can't wear a mask and still go about your business, bars and restaurants. Indoor dining at restaurants and bars seem to be the social behavior that are really correlated with the highest risk of transmission. So they shut down the bars and restaurants. They started making masks more mandatory. They started increasing rules around social distancing. And, after a time lag, because it takes a little while to get control of this thing once it's out of control, you start seeing the improvements. And those are the proven practices that we need to make sure are consistent as viruses start to creep up in a community. We need to clamp down on those behaviors and then we can, hopefully, stop those peaks from getting too high before we're able to control them.</s>BOLDUAN: Yes. There's a lot of see what we've done here or there to learn what you should be doing right now especially in the Midwest. Dr. Redfield said he's nervous about a third wave hitting the middle of the country. But there's a lot that leaders can learn right now from leaders in the Sunbelt, leaders in the northeast of how to make sure it doesn't spike what we've been looking at. I want to get your take on Elizabeth's reporting. What does it mean if you can get a good estimate of how many children in a particular community are asymptomatic? How helpful do you think this is?</s>COMPTON-PHILLIPS: I think it's a little bit helpful. But to be honest with you, it really is the burden of disease that matters, how many cases per 100,000, and how many tests are positive. Because the more disease in a community, the more likely you will have children who are carrying the germ, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. The challenge is what are those thresholds that allow us to get kids back to school. Do we have testing available for when kids in school get infected -- because it's not if, it's always a when, right --</s>BOLDUAN: Right.</s>COMPTON-PHILLIPS: -- so we can start containing the virus. And do we have mitigation strategies so that if a child comes to school and is infected it won't spread like wildfire through the rest of the school? And so it's good to know, but it is no means the only factor we need to understand.</s>BOLDUAN: It's the factors that, Doctor, you've been talking about all along, that need to be listened to in order to open up safely and when to open up safely.</s>COMPTON-PHILLIPS: Yes.</s>BOLDUAN: Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. I want to turn now to some --</s>COMPTON-PHILLIPS: Thank you.</s>BOLDUAN: -- breaking news on Hurricane Laura. The National Hurricane Center just released a new forecast on the storm and its path. It is expected to become a major hurricane before slamming into the gulf coast. Let's get straight over to CNN meteorologist, Chad Myers. He has been tracking this. Chad, what is the latest you're seeing with this storm?</s>CHAD MYERS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Kate, the Hurricane Center did take the storm and nudge it a little bit to the west, a little bit closer to Houston. And that's concerning because we're 115 miles per hour making landfall and we always say that's plus or minus 10 percent. Could go either way from there. This is a storm in very warm water. Not much here to tear it apart like Marco got torn apart, absolutely destroyed. This is not going to have that kind of shear. And it will make landfall very close to the pass, plus or minus 70 miles left or right. Think how many towns and cities and coastal locations, not so much in Louisiana, along the coast, but how many places that affects in Texas. But it will affect you in Lake Charles. This isn't going to slow down anytime soon. There's not much land between Lake Charles and really the ocean itself, the Gulf of Mexico. Water is over 90 degrees. The inland push of the wind will be all the way to Lufkin, Alexandria, through Lake Charles, all those purple areas. It's 110 miles per hour or more in some spots. So you have to understand the power lines, trees, storm surge will be pushed well inland if it gets to the category 3, plus or minus 10 percent. A lot of rainfall coming down as well. We'll probably see rain somewhere in the 10-inch range. Now this is not Harvey. This isn't going to stop. When this thing gets moving on up into the Midwest, it is going to roll through the Midwest, roll over Nashville, maybe still 30-mile-per-hour winds there. But not stopping like Harvey did. Houston, you are so close to the cone. In fact, Bay City is in it. Houston, Sugarland, you're not. You need to pay big attention. This is going to be a significant damage maker, a significant surge maker in the peninsula. But if it's east of there, that will be the Lake Charles area. If it's west, like some models are taking it farther west, Houston, you are in it. Make your preps now. You probably have 24 hours to do whatever you're going to do. And then the wind will get too strong to put up boards, of course.</s>BOLDUAN: We'll stick close to you, Chad. The next 24 hours will be critical and people are preparing an emergency response getting prepared, especially in the midst of a pandemic. Thanks, buddy. I really appreciate it. Coming up for us, we have Wisconsin now at the center of nationwide protests after police shoot a black man in the back in front of his children. This morning, new details about Jacob Blake's condition. And day one of the Republican National Convention painted a portrait of President Trump that doesn't fit with reality. We'll sort through the fact and the fiction.