U.S. East Coast On Alert For Tropical Storm Isaias; Hurricane Watches Issued as Isaias Heads Toward Carolinas; U.K. Orders Strict Lockdown Hours before Muslim Holiday; India Says it Has Surpassed 1.8 Million Cases
MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: A coronavirus outbreak in part of Australia leads to a state of disaster and a new lockdown in metropolitan Melbourne. And if the coronavirus wasn't enough for Florida, the state's coping with a tropical storm as well that could become a hurricane before making landfall on the U.S. East Coast. Plus TikTok's troubles. Donald Trump threatened to ban the video app in the United States but new developments could change his mind. Welcome, everyone, to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Michael Holmes. We do begin in Melbourne, Australia, which is now under some of the most severe coronavirus lockdown measures to date after a state of disaster was declared in Victoria. The latest restrictions include a overnight curfew and the end of pretty much most recreational activity. This coming after Victoria reported almost 700 new cases of the virus on Saturday. CNN's Anna Coren is live for us in Hong Kong. It's a pretty severe crackdown after what has been really an average of less than 10 deaths a day. But they're not messing around.</s>ANNA COREN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No, they're not messing around, they're taking this extremely serious. And they also understand that what is taking place in Victoria is going to affect the entire country. Certainly, Australia's economic survival and getting back on its feet is going to be hurt severely by this lockdown over the next six weeks. It is the harshest lockdown that Australia has seen during peacetime. A curfew came into effect as of last night, Michael, from 8:00 pm through till 5:00 am. And that will be the case for the next six weeks. Only one family member can leave the house to go and buy groceries. You are only allowed to travel within five kilometers of your home to go grocery shopping. Schools will be closed, universities closed. No childcare except for essential workers and vulnerable children. This is going to be tough going for Victorians. Certainly for Melburnians who have been having these restrictions for the last now four weeks. And then for the premier to come out last night and announce that it has not gone far enough, that the government cannot get a handle on the situation, that they need to move to this harsh lockdown stage four restrictions. So, Michael, they are going to be going through this for the next six weeks. My sister, she lives in Melbourne, and she's a mother with young children. And everyone is struggling. They thought they were doing the right thing, but there are so many people who are not doing the right thing. The government was releasing statistics that found that one in four people who had COVID-19 had tested positive. When officials came round to knock on the door, they were not home. People who had been tested for the virus waiting for results, more than 50 percent of them were still going about their normal lives, still going to work. And that is why we've seen this huge outbreak in aged care facilities where workers have continued to go to work thinking that they just got the flu, that they're a little bit sick. When, in actual fact, they are spreading the coronavirus. And this is something that the premier said, obviously, people are not taking it seriously enough. We need to impose these harsh rules, harsh measures, so that we can stop the spread, stop this crisis. Michael.</s>HOLMES: All right, Anna. Thanks very much. Crackdown in Melbourne. Thanks. Anna Coren there, in Hong Kong. Here to discuss further is Professor Sharon Lewin who is director of the Doherty Institute in Melbourne, Australia. Good to have you on, and your expertise. This full lockdown, how concerned are you and authorities there?</s>DR. SHARON LEWIN, DIRECTOR, DOHERTY INSTITUTE: A pleasure to be with you. Well, there's a lot of concern in Victoria and particularly in Melbourne as we've seen numbers of cases increase progressively over about the last five weeks. There's been some interventions and the numbers of new cases has slowed but they haven't yet reduced. And that's what causing some alarm here.</s>HOLMES: When you look at the restrictions in place there and you think about New Zealand went to stage four restrictions when there were 90 cases a day. And it did take them a month to bring the virus under control, although they did, obviously. How long do you expect this to last for these restrictions to make a difference?</s>LEWIN: Well, I think once you bring in a restriction, you are limiting transmissions. You should see that the numbers start to fall within about a week or seven to ten days. Now that, of course, won't fall to zero but what we really want to see is a progressive decline in numbers of new infections. And that may well be in place now, we are estimating for about 6 weeks.</s>HOLMES: What was the cause of the uptick? Australia worked hard on things like contact tracing and lockdown -- if I understand it correctly, a lot of these cases can't be traced back to a source, right? They're sort of mystery cases. What happened?</s>LEWIN: Well, first of all, just to be really clear. These numbers, these increases in new cases have really only happened in one part of Australia. So this is not running out of control across Australia. This is just in one particular state, Victoria, and predominantly the city, the capital city, Melbourne. And in our first wave of coronavirus cases which we experienced in late March similar to the rest of the world, most of those infections were from travelers that returned to Australia, and we had very little community transmission and very aggressive testing and tracing really dating right back to February and March. This time, we were throughout May and June, quarantining all visitors to Australia. They were all in hotels paid for by the government for at least two weeks. And what happened in Melbourne were some breaches in quarantine, transmission from people in quarantine to the security guards actually in those hotels, and then spreading amongst communities linked to those security guards. And it all started emerging about five weeks ago, sort of in early June. And progressive incremental strategies were implemented. First of all, restricting the number of people in your house then locking down 10 suburbs of Melbourne then mandating mask wearing. And what we've seen with each of these interventions is that the numbers of new infections are still increasing. We've also had outbreaks in some industries like abattoirs which are quite common around the world. We've seen also outbreaks in housing projects. So we're seeing different communities being infected, which are a lot more challenging now. Community transmission, people in high density living.</s>HOLMES: Yes.</s>LEWIN: So the problem (inaudible) up.</s>HOLMES: I guess -- it's interesting. I was doing some comparison today on deaths in Victoria versus a U.S. state like Florida, which is a real hot zone. Florida is three and a half times the population of Victoria, but 20 to 25 times the daily deaths. And in Florida, the schools are going to reopen, distancing and mask wearing is patchy, to say the least. To that point, what difference can public cooperation and government action make in a situation such as this?</s>LEWIN: Oh, look, the goals of what we're trying to do in Australia right now are very different to what I'm seeing happening in the U.S. The goal here is certainly flattening the curve and reducing deaths -- and we've had just over 100 deaths in Victoria, which is still alarming. But we really want to get cases right down so that we're in step with the rest of Australia, which is currently experiencing less than 20 cases a day in other parts of Australia, and several states having absolutely no new infections. So the goal here is to really squash this right down to levels so that we're consistent with the rest of the country.</s>HOLMES: It's a country that did well with coronavirus. And looking at the actions being taken in Victoria, a lot of U.S. states -- well, they could learn something, I guess. Professor Sharon Lewin, good to see you. Appreciate it. Thanks so much for that.</s>LEWIN: Pleasure, thanks very much.</s>HOLMES: Hurricane watches are being issued for parts of the Carolinas as tropical storm Isaias is projected to make landfall there in the coming days. Alerts have been issued up and down the eastern sea board in advance of the storm's projected move northward. Isaias is bringing heavy wind, rain and rough tides to Florida's Atlantic coast. But meteorologists say by the time it makes landfall, it could strengthen and become officially a hurricane once more. Meteorologist Pedram Javaheri is tracking the storm. He joins us now with more. What have you been seeing?</s>PEDRAM JAVAHERI, AMS METEOROLOGIST: Well, models suggest this has a very good potential here to strengthen just a little bit. And, Michael, it's not going to take much. About three to four miles per hour more than where it is right now. That'll designate it back into a category one hurricane. But really the impacts are going to be nothing different than what is expected to happen within the next 24 hours when the system makes landfall across portions of the Carolinas. But here we go. Fifty miles or 80 kilometers, just east of the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida. The concern is as the landscape across this region kind of turns toward the right, the storm system will run out of time to try to pull away from the coast. We know the wind shear, or winds aloft begin to kind of shred the system apart and allow it to weaken a little bit. But, of course, the Gulf Stream is north of this area. So you'll notice as the system migrates north, we think some time around the late night hours of Monday into the overnight hours there of Tuesday morning there, you could see the system make landfall near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It's right there around the border of South and North Carolina where landfall is most likely. And again, either as a tropical storm, a strong tropical storm or potentially a weak hurricane that'll bringing wind around 70 to 75 miles per hour, upwards of 120 kilometers per hour. And then northbound it goes into say Wednesday and Thursday into a very densely populated corner of the United States. But here's why we think strengthening is possible. The Gulf Stream just ahead of this particular feature. So even though the winds want to shred it apart, the Gulf Stream will fuel it from below. And you'll notice high pressure nudging this, trying to pull it away from the United States while we have the jet stream trying to push it farther towards the east. So it's kind of stuck between these two zones. And we know the storm surge, as often is the case, is the biggest threat of any tropical systems making landfall. People fall in love with the wind speed, even with the rainfall amount; it is that coastal impact right there with the storm surge that could be two to four feet from Edisto Beach towards Charleston up towards Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Keep in mind, Monday is a full moon. Which means the astronomical high tide for the entire month of August takes place there within the next 24 hours. I'll tell you what, the system expected to move ashore right around this time when the high tide takes place. Which should be 9:00 p.m. around Charleston, six-and-a-quarter feet. In Wilmington, about five feet at 10:30 p.m. Factor in an additional two to four feet on top of that, flooding certainly going to be a probability across these areas. And rainfall, as the system moves closer to land, makes landfall on Tuesday into the early morning hours. The heaviest rainfall come down across this region of the Carolinas into the Delmarva. You factor in winds of 50, 60 and 70 miles per hour, Michael, we know power outage is going to be very much a concern. And of course, with life during a pandemic a lot of these power outages, especially as you head in towards a very densely populated area of the Northeast could be delayed as far getting power restored when trees do come down. So this is really an incredible scenario developing when it comes to a land-falling tropical system, a pandemic. And, of course, people are being urged to evacuate at the time you're supposed to try to keep distance. So really, it's going to be interesting how everything plays out.</s>HOLMES: A lot of moving parts. Pedram Javaheri, thanks so much. Good to see you. Now the storm is compounding another emergency, as we were saying, already devastating Florida. The coronavirus cases there. And they continue to spike. Also, health experts fear super spreader events could come from those people riding out the storm in shelters. CNN's Natasha Chen shows us how officials are dealing with both of those dangers.</s>NATASHA CHEN, CNN U.S. CORRESPONDENT: So far, Isaias has not caused a whole lot of problems for Florida. It's been moving very slowly here and here in Daytona Beach, people aren't expecting the worst of the storm to hit until overnight local time. But emergency management officials have been prepared. They opened a few shelters on Sunday in case people needed them but closed them back down after seeing not a lot of people show up. They did prepare for this situation of having a tropical storm, a possible hurricane during a pandemic. Typically, families will be given a certain amount of space in each shelter. They're giving families more space this time, that reduces the capacity in each of the shelters. Which also means they have prepared for the possibility of needing more shelters available in case the storm becomes very severe. We talked to the emergency management director yesterday in a war room, which is typically filled with people, filled with first responders, but they're all taking care of this virtually at this time. Here's what he said about the bizarre nature of two threats at the same time.</s>JIM JUDGE, DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: It's weird. Because we -- they're our friends. And we do enjoy getting together and problem solving. So once we get into the event tomorrow, once we have a few people in here and we're looking at the evacuations and the transportation and then solving the problems that are going to come up -- because now we've got to on a computer, get on a phone to be able to get a hold of people to do those things -- when I can walk across the room and solve that problem immediately. It may take a little bit longer. And we're going to go through it.</s>CHEN: Other ways in which COVID-19 and the storm are overlapping through these emergency officials, some of the testing sites by these counties on the eastern coast of Florida had to temporarily close as the storm passes. And those are expected to reopen early next week. Now while this storm was downgraded to a tropical storm for Florida, hurricane watches were issued Sunday evening for the Carolinas north of us. So that will be the focus in the days ahead. Natasha Chen, CNN. Daytona Beach, Florida.</s>HOLMES: A much-needed unemployment benefit has ended, and millions of Americans are worried about making ends meet. Ahead, we'll see where the negotiations stand on a new stimulus plan. Plus, the coronavirus death toll still rising in Brazil. But parts of the country seem pretty unfazed. Why some Brazilians are ignoring health warnings. We'll be right back.