No End in Sight: Coronavirus Spikes to New Records; Trump Turns Rose Garden News Conference Into Campaign Event; Germany Study: Teens Have Low Virus Infection Rate
LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: When is enough enough? New coronavirus case records, more people sick than ever. So why is the hospital data going to the Trump administration before the CDC? We will tell you that and more. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is EARLY START. I'm Laura Jarrett.</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back, Laura. I'm Christine Romans. It is Wednesday, July 15th, Tax Day. It's 5:00 a.m. in New York. So, how long can America keep accepting new coronavirus records without changing course? Breaking overnight, another new single day record for cases in the U.S. More than 67,000 reported Tuesday. Lagging indicators are starting to catch up now. At least 11 states reporting record hospitalizations. More than 50,000 people admitted. Florida, after weeks of record highs, reporting the highest number of deaths to date, 132 deaths in a single day. More than 30 percent of tests came back positive yesterday in Miami-Dade County. More than 30 percent for the death rate nationally is ticking up since the start of July. The head of the Centers for Disease Control is worried about what's ahead.</s>DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, DIRECTOR, CDC: I do think that fall and winter of 2020 and 2021 will be one of the most difficult times that we've experienced in American public health.</s>JARRETT: Also concerns about the integrity of the data used to track the virus. CNN has confirmed that the hospital data will now being re-routed to the Trump administration first instead of going to the CDC. Critics fear the system could be open to political distortion of that data. The model, meanwhile being used by the White House now projects that 224,000 coronavirus deaths by November. That's up from 16,000 from just last week.</s>DR. CHRIS MURRAY, DIRECTOR, INSTITUTE FOR HEALTH METRICS AND EVALUATION, UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON: Two weeks ago, you know, deaths didn't seem to be tracking the big surge of cases but now we know for sure that both hospitalizations which are not affected by the number of tests so that really tells us it's not testing and now we know deaths are surging. In a place like Florida, we've seen this big increase in deaths. So it's very worrisome.</s>JARRETT: Thirty-seven states are headed in the wrong direction still. Yet just 27 have rolled back their re-openings. So, do the math. This virus is simply not contained. Texas and Arizona are getting refrigerated morgue trucks to keep up with the body count.</s>DR. QUINN SNYDER, EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN IN ARIZONA: We find ourselves with our backs up against the wall and we could end up in a position where we have to make decisions who gets a ventilator and who doesn't.</s>ROMANS: California is grappling with a</s>MICHELLE ZYMET, DIAGNOSED WITH CORONAVIRUS: You're not invincible. This is not a joke. This is a deadly, devastating disease that's affecting millions of people across the world. You let your guard just one time, that's all it takes and look, you come home and you infect the entire house. You know, we're five people all infected with the virus and we're the lucky ones that didn't get affected the way my husband John is. But he's fighting for his life, literally every single minute in that hospital.</s>JARRETT: President Trump is still downplaying the pandemic and it could cost him his job. In four states the president won in 2016 and needs to win again, rates of positive tests hover around 20 percent right now. Recent polls show him trailing or tied with Joe Biden in all four of those states. Multiple reports now say Republicans are planning to move several nights of their convention from an indoor arena in Jacksonville, Florida to an outdoor venue. With his re-election prospects at greater risk by the day, President Trump used Tuesday's Rose Garden event billed as a news conference to switch to campaign mode. He only mentioned the coronavirus pandemic in passing, with comments on testing that didn't match reality. And in a CBS interview earlier, the president provided another example of his failure to understand racial discrimination.</s>REPORTER: Would you be comfortable with your supporters displaying the Confederate battle flag at political events?</s>DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, you know, it depends on what your definition is. But I am comfortable with freedom of speech. It's very simple. Whether it's Confederate flags or Black Lives Matter or anything else you want to talk about, it's freedom of speech.</s>REPORTER: Why are African-Americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country?</s>TRUMP: So are white people. So are white people. What a terrible question to ask. So are white people. More white people by the way. More white people.</s>BURNETT: So at least one recent study found more white people are killed by police overall, but that's not surprising since white people make up a larger portion of the population. But the president failed to mention, however, is that those killed by lethal force are disproportionately black. Black men are more than twice as likely to be killed over their lifetime by police than white men.</s>JARRETT: Now to some promising results in an effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine. More research is needed, but the Moderna vaccine developed in partnership with the National Institutes of Health boosted the immune system in all, all of the volunteers who received it in a phase one study. More than half had some mild or moderate side effects such as fatigue, chills, headache and muscle pain, but there were no safety concerns significant enough to stop the trial. A large phase three trial is the next step. That's expected to begin later this month.</s>ROMANS: Yes, certainly, optimism around that Moderna vaccine. Now, the contrast between the pain on Main Street and rally on Wall Street has been stark. Stocks finished higher Tuesday even as big banks warned recovery from the pandemic will be choppy. Look at this, the Dow climbed 556 points. The S&P and Nasdaq also finished higher. Now, the big test is earning season and banks kicked off what's expected to be a really rough one, the worse since the great recession. JP Morgan chase reported a 51 percent plunge for the second quarter profit. CEO Jamie Dimon was cautious saying, quote, we still face much uncertainty regarding the future path of the economy. Wells Fargo suffered a loss of 2.4 billion, its first loss since the height of the Great Recession. Uncertainty about economic recovery has forced banks to prepare for a wave of coronavirus defaults. JPMorgan, Wells Fargo and Citigroup have all stock piled $28 billion all together to brace for loans that may go bust in the months ahead. And Delta Airlines reported the worst quarter in more than a decade. It's burning through $43 million a day. Its CEO warned it will be more than two years before the industry recovers and it is cutting flights again. Goldman Sachs reports its earnings, Laura, in just a few hours.</s>JARRETT: Well, a big primary night for two candidates backed by President Trump. In Alabama, CNN projects former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville has defeated former Attorney General Jeff Sessions who faced fierce opposition from President Trump. Tuberville, I should say, he won. It was not a close race. Tuberville will face incumbent Doug Jones widely viewed as the most vulnerable Senate Democrat this fall. Another Trump candidate president backed, the president's former physician, Ronny Jackson. He also won a GOP runoff for a Texas congressional seat. And in Maine, Democrats picked their candidate to take on Senator Susan Collins in November. The speaker of Maine's House of Representatives, Sara Gideon, winning last night's primary, Christine.</s>ROMANS: All right. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is waking up in the hospital this morning as she recovers from a possible infection. Justice Ginsburg had an endoscopic procedure yesterday to clean a bile duct stent after experiencing chills and a fever. The court's spokeswoman released a statement saying Ginsberg will stay in the hospital for a few days, for further treatment, and is now resting comfortably. We certainly all wish her well as she battles this infection.</s>JARRETT: Of course. Wish her the best. Still ahead, the board of ed in one California county votes to send kids and teachers back to school with no masks. The school districts are refusing to go along with the plan.