Coronavirus latest; Senate hearing on outbreak prep

Tonight, Americans quarantined in California are demanding better supervision after a patient who was removed from quarantine and tested positive for the corona virus was mistakenly released and rejoined the group, possibly sickening others separately. New York City health workers removed seven people under observation. Airlines canceled 85,000 flights. to and from China World Health Organization issues new warning tonight this virus attacks all humans no one is immune this as current and former US health officials line up before four members of the US Senate urging We will start to see those

outbreak

s emerge sometime in the next two to four weeks.

Also, how can one patient infect so many so easily, sometimes that individual can infect ten fifteen twenty thirty more, that's called super spread events and tonight an infected patient who just tested positive a few days ago tells us how. feels from his isolation room in a Japanese hospital. Additionally, the tests for this disease are accurate enough to be relied upon in this CNBC special report. The

coronavirus

outbreak

begins right now. Here's Tyler Mathison and, as always, Meg Tyrell is with us. tonight, welcome Meg, we'll get back to you with new reports on the virus in a moment, but first, folks, here are your

latest

numbers as of 7:00 p.m.

On the East Coast, in the last few minutes a 14th case has been confirmed in the United States, this one in San Diego, which is the second case in that city and not a huge jump in

coronavirus

cases in the last 24 hours that we are up. the 45,000 mark with 1,100 deaths so far and take a look at this, a company in southwestern China has built a tunnel to spray disinfectant on employees of an industrial complex before they come to work. It takes about 20 seconds per person. Health officials were called to the Capitol today to testify about how the U.S. is

prep

aring for a possible outbreak.

I don't think we should be planning for the two cases we've been seeing so far in the United States. I think we need to plan for something bigger. I think we have to plan for the possibility that we have thousands of cases, we are seeing a clustered outbreak of a significant scale in Asia, we don't have that situation in the United States today, so we are very alert, I don't think we are alarmed at this time. moment, but we need to focus on what the next step is if we can't contain who is being tested and if asymptomatic or mildly ill people don't show up or get tested, then obviously we're missing the rest of the iceberg.

I'm joined by Meg Terrell of CNB c-- and former FDA Commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who attended today's Senate

hearing

, can thank you very much Tyler and Scott, of course they were testifying there, we heard some of the sound today, what do you think was the most important message you heard from the colleagues on the panel with you and then I was trying to communicate to Congress, well, I think there's a consensus building right now that we're likely to see outbreaks here in the United States and that we should rely on diagnostic testing to try to uncover those cases. .

Before they become large outbreaks, there will be some person-to-person transmission in the community in the United States. We probably have cases that have surpassed the various efforts we made to try to keep travelers out of the country and we need to identify them quickly sooner. We have a larger reach, we're capable of doing that, but we need to lean in and start testing people now. Are you surprised, Dr. Gottlieb, that there haven't been any more cases in the US so far and when would you expect to start seeing a blossoming if I can use that word cases, yeah, well, right now we're really dependent on having enough cases to that there are people identified in hospitals basically with severe illness and reported to the CDC, because we don't have a diagnostic in place where we're testing people who have unusual cases of pneumonia, we're really only testing people right now who have symptoms of the corona virus and who recently traveled to China, so if it depends on people being clinically observed as suspected cases, it will need hundreds of cases before there are likely to be enough unusual cases of pneumonia in any hospital to alert hospital officials. to call the CDC.

Well, we just got the news. Gottlieb, uh, in the last few minutes and confirmed numbers in Hebei province of 14,000 new confirmed cases there and 242 new deaths, what does that tell you? The 242 new deaths are deeply concerning because it's a big jump in deaths and you know you suspect that some of them might be people who had died previously and are now being categorized as having died from the virus. The 14,000 appear to be some of the suspected cases that are now being diagnosed clinically, so what China has said seems to have said is that they are no longer waiting just for a confirmed case subject to a diagnostic test that if someone shows clinical signs of coronavirus and it is confirmed by a CT scan that you have changes in your lungs compatible with your virus, they are going to call you a positive case, so they seem to have moved a proportion of the 20-something thousand people who were suspected cases yesterday to confirmed cases today and Scott, you've been telling us that, of course, while the China numbers are important, Looking to other places now in other countries where we're seeing sustained spread, tell us about your concerns in other places like Singapore.

Well, China is now an epidemic, we know that and it continues to spread in China despite their efforts, truly historic efforts to contain the spread. I'm concerned right now and what I think we need to look at is what's happening in Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, where there appears to be community transmission, perhaps sustained community transmission in Singapore, and those countries are probably three four weeks ahead of where we are. It's going to be in terms of the spread in those nations, so I think we need to look at those countries to see what's happening there as a harbinger of what could potentially happen here and we need to

prep

are for that.