good evening. i'm erin burnett and welcome to a special edition of "out front." tonight a potential breakthrough in fighting coronavirus. the fda planning to announce the emergency use of remdesivir after promising results from a's clinical trial. dr. anthony fauci suggesting that this is a breakthrough. >> it is a very important proof of concept because what it has proven is that a drug can block this virus. we think it's really opening the door to the fact that we now have the capability of

treating -- and i can guarantee you as more people, more companies, more investigators get involved, it's going to get better and better. >> results from this preliminary trial show that recommemdesivir improved recovery time for patients in the hospital. while fauci admits the drug did not show a statistically significant benefit in whether patients actually died as of yet, i just spoke to a doctor involved in the remdesivir trial. he is much more optimistic. he said the expectation is that the more data they have coming through is going to show a statistically significant improvement of people living. news of the latest scientific advance against the virus of the dow soaring today up 532 points. all of this is in the context of americans dying. tonight more than 60,000 americans have died from coronavirus. it is more than a quarter of all deaths around the world. "out front" now, i want to begin our coverage this hour with a

coronavirus patient who was treated with remdesivir. chris kane was put on oxygen right away when he got to the hospital march 9. his wife told us he was in such bad condition she thought he was going to die. he got his first dose of the drug the next day and was released four days after that. and, chris, welcome to the program. i mean, it's pretty incredible. you go into the hospital. your wife actually thinks that you're not going to make it. and you get this drug. do you think this was the key to your recovery? >> well, i didn't -- when we first got checked in there, they didn't allude to any other options at the point. when the doctor approached us and said, hey, we have this test drug, would you be interested? and described it. it was certainly something we thought about when we got there. needless to say i was really happy with the results. >> so, what was your condition when you received the drug? i mean, we heard your wife's description. how would you describe your condition when you went into the hospital and when you started on remdesivir? >> probably about five or six

days prior to that i was running 103-degree fever. i had a lot of -- my chest was compressed. i had a lot of trouble breathing. so it was -- i was feeling terrible. it was really difficult to move around or anything like that, so and it had been that same way day after day which is where it was starting to worry me. >> so when you go in on march 9th, march 10th you start receiving remdesivir. you're home by the 14th. i mean, we all know so many people, right, once they go into the hospital, they're in for quite sometime, whether it's on oxygen or then actually being intubated. how quickly after you started getting the drug did you feel dramatically better? >> i'd probably say two days, 48 hours. i mean, the first day i'm thinking, hey, i'm not feeling worse for once when i woke up. and then the next morning when i woke up, my temperature was a

lot lower. i was always waking up with a fever in the morning. and then when i had to get up and walk across the room, i had trouble walking. that was the first day i was walking. i depth haidn't have as much br. it still hurt, but, hey, i'm in a better spot than i was two days ago. >> look, obviously this is going to be pretty incredible if it was because of the drug. do you know, chris, how many doses you got, the dosage amount? this is what they're really trying to test now. >> yeah, i was on -- i was actually on a five-day plan or five-day doses. i got a dose, an iv every morning for five days. and i believe there was a ten-day program also, but i mean at the end of four days -- i mean, i was still feeling the effects of corona, but to the point where the doctors felt like, hey, tomorrow one more dose and then you can go home. >> and then you did go home. and how are you doing now? did you have any sort of, you know, fallback or was it from

then just pure improvement? >> yeah, no, i think i'm back to healthy. i went to my regular doctor a few times and they did a chest x-ray. and when i went in there, i had a lot of cloudiness and pneumonia and stuff like that inside my lungs. when i went and saw my regular doctor a few weeks after i got out of the hospital, they said it looked like my lungs were completely clear and they didn't see any scarring or anything like that. so i'm feeling, i'm feeling dramatically better right now. >> wow, all right. and pretty incredible, too, that you're saying no scarring, that it really was a full recovery. i know so many people have a fear even when you do recover, you can have that scarring and damage to the lungs. chris, i really appreciate your time. thank you. >> thank you. appreciate it. >> and "out front" now, dr. jonathan reiner who advised the white house medical team under president george w. bush and currently the director of

the cardiac cath lab. you obviously just heard chris keane's story. dr. fauci says this data shows clear-cut significant positive effect in terms of the time to recovery. it certainly sounds in the case of chris that that was a very quick recovery. >> yeah, so, finally a little bit of sunshine in a dark time. how nice. well, it's hard to know in any individual patient's response what the effect of the drug was. but the good news is that we now have a large, almost 1,000-patient placebo-controlled randomized trial that shows us now that this drug has efficacy. so time to recovery significantly improved. and they almost met the statistical requirement, although the trial wasn't really powered for it, they almost met the statistical requirement for mortality benefit.

very impressive. so a feel-good moment. i felt really happy for tony fauci today. he looked buoyant. >> he did. he sort of looked in some regards. he did make a point it was not statistically significant in terms of improving whether people lived or dad, right, the mortality point that you make. i had a doctor involved in the study on the last hour. he seems to feel that as more data come out and that that data is in the offing the next couple weeks, it will meet that statistically significant hurdle. does it look to you, given what we saw, which was 11% mortality before the drug, 8% after, not statistically significant, but those were the numbers, that they will clear that hurdle? >> yeah, i think it's very possible. look, that was a 27% reduction in mortality. that's a big number. these patients were sick. so these are hospitalized

patients who have -- well, you see from the trial they had a 13% mortality treated with placebo. so more than one in ten of these folks will die. so that almost 30% reduction is clinically significant. i think eventually we'll come to find from this study or another study it is statistically significant. but i think what we're starting to see now, this is not the end. this isn't even the beginning of the end. but it just might be the end of the beginning where we're starting now to see some therapies that can positively impact outcomes for folks who are sick and get admitted to the hospital with covid-19. >> so as a doctor right now, you know, there is a big question on how quickly they'll be able to get fda approval, an emergency approval. sanjay was saying he believes they will be able to, and certainly the bar for that was pretty low when it came to the antibody tests. would you give right now, though, dr. reiner, this drug remdesivir, what you've seen to a patient of yours with the virus right now? >> i would, because it fulfills

the criteria that we require for all therapies. it's been studied in a well-conducted randomized double-blind clinical trial, and it shows both efficacy and apparent safety. look, the devil is in the details. we need to see the manuscript and we need to see all of the data. but this top line result looks really good. and gilead has already produced over a million doses of this drug. they did this three weeks ago. they ramped up production which i think is very far-looking, taking quite a bit of risk. and this i think is going to be made straavailable in very shor order to eua to every hospitalized patient with covid-19. >> just to make a point, it's not approved for anything else. this isn't off-label. hydroxychloroquine was known, its positives and negatives. this is news. does this give you any caution in the sense of something going so quickly from a trial to, you

know, mass use? >> absolutely, which is why trials need to continue. there are multiple trials looking at how to use this drug, when to give it, which patients benefit the most from it, which patients should you perhaps not use this drug. we'll need to acquire data even post-approval. but it is an exciting first step and it's only really a first step. but, yeah, i would use this now. this will become, as dr. fauci said today, this now becomes the new standard of care for hospitalized patients with covid-19. a nice moment. >> all right. dr. reiner, thank you. >> my pleasure. >> next, the breaking news, president trump lashing out at his own campaign manager amid slumping poll numbers over his handling of the pandemic. we have new reporting coming out this hour. plus the top economic advisor saying the u.s. could see a depression era unemployment number. the president has a rosier

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confident financial plans, calming financial plans, complete financial plans. they're all possible with a cfp® professional. find yours at letsmakeaplan.org. tonight president trump downplaying the need for testing for the virus just two days after releasing his plan to ramp up testing. >> we've done incredible with the testing and you'll see over the next coming weeks -- mike,

you may want to speak about that a little bit. but over the next coming weeks you'll see some astonishing numbers. i don't know that all of that's even necessary. >> that is not consistent, though, with trump's medical experts. >> we absolutely need to significantly ramp up not only the number of tests, but the capacity to actually perform them. >> we have to realize that we have to have a breakthrough innovation in testing. >> so she says you need a breakthrough to get anywhere and the president says it's going to be so astonishing we won't even need the tests we have. they're not on the same page on this issue and it comes as we are learning the president is clashing with his campaign manager over sagging poll numbers amid the coronavirus outbreak. jeremy diamond broke that story and is "out front" now. jeremy, the president clearly concerned about his reelection prospects. he brings up the election and his popularity and his ratings at the briefings when he was

holding them on a daily basis. so what happened? >> reporter: well, erin, the president isn't growing concerned, he's growing unnerved by his 2020 reelection prospect. three sources familiar with the matter are telling me, erin, the president's frustrations boiled boiled over with during a conversation with his campaign manager. he berated him for the poll numbers, even threatening to sue him at one point. it's not clear how serious the president was about that threat. some sources have suggested to me that it was perhaps a joke. but what is clear, erin, is that the president is growing increasingly unnerved about his reelection prospects. remember, this coronavirus pandemic has really upturned the road map for president trump to win reelection. it took away his biggest calling card which was, of course, the economy. >> so, jeremy, you're also reporting this outburst at brad

parscale came after the president was briefed by his advisors, in a briefing -- the briefing to him was warning him that those daily white house briefings were maybe not good for him. what did they tell him from your reporting? >> reporter: that's right. so two days before the president erupted at parscale, the president had a phone conversation with parscale as well as the rnc chairwoman mcdaniel and some other top advisors. basically these advisors were, number one, presenting the president with some new polling data, some internal polling data that showed the president for defeat in key battle ground states, trailing behind the former vice president joe biden. and they also showed him some granular data looking at how swing voters felt about the daily combative news conferences and what these aides were trying to do was convince the president to scale back some of those briefings because they were showing this data that said swing voters really did not like the president's performances during these combative news

briefings. this was, of course, just the latest effort by some of the president's aides and white house allies to convince them to scale back the briefings. it was the day after the president received the briefing when he was really, i'm told, pooh-poohing a lot of the data he was shown. the president had perhaps his most self-defeating briefing yet when he suggested that perhaps disinfectant could be ingested to cure the coronavirus. it was the next day when the president was still steeped in all of the criticism from that briefing that he erupted at parscale, but since then, of course, erin, we know the president has been scaling back those news conferences. that day on friday he didn't take any questions. the next day he didn't hold a briefing at all. we know the president has managed to find an outlet for his views, taking questions from reporters in the oval office, for example. >> all right. thank you very much, jeremy. "out front" now, peter gregory, cnn presidential historian. david, it's pretty interesting,

the president loved those briefings. he lived for them. he kept talking about his ratings and saying how great they were. then when presented with the fact that they may be hurting him, erupted at frankly one of his most loyal and effective players in brad parscale. >> yeah, it's striking but not surprising. i don't know any president under these circumstances in an election year who wouldn't be incredibly unnerved at the crisis that's in front of you, and then having to face the voters. it's just very, very difficult. this president is not a professional politician. he's very transparent in what he thinks day to day, and he wants to command the airwaves. he always wants to be in front of the american people. everything is about him, not even the government. and, you know, so, yeah, he erupts when he gets bad poll numbers. the reason is he won't listen to people who have been trying to say, mr. president, don't say crazy stuff because that's bad

politically. any leader shouldn't say things that are unfounded in reality or in facts. and certainly not the leader of the free world who is trying to manage a global pandemic, a crisis that's killing people on this scale. that's what -- that erratic behavior is getting him into trouble, making promises that he can't keep. he's not responsible for all of this. he'll be graded, in effect, or assessed by his reaction and by the government's reaction and his handling of it. where he really gets beyond the lines by saying things like about the disinfectant is what gets people really questioning his judgment and his temperament at these times. >> look, judgment and temperament, people have their views on that, but this is a moment where all of a sudden you realize your willingness to dismiss that or not may matter more than you thought. maybe that's the question people are facing. because, doug, the reporting jeremy had about the outburst at

his campaign manager shows 55% of americans disapprove of trump's handling of the coronavirus. that number has risen from 49% who felt that way in march. so we'll see where that goes, but obviously that is a significant jump in a very short period of time. so, doug, how much do you think this crisis is weighing on the president's chances for reelection? >> well, i think trump's unrachling befounrach unraveling before our very eyes when he does these conferences, he seems to have a empathy depth disorder. i've not seen a president speak to people on the front lines to talk and tell the stories about doctors and nurses, medical experts and what they're really trying to do. he constantly is putting the whole story on himself and you can't trust what he says. i grew up in ohio in the midwest, and he's sinking in the polls there. a lot of it is because he doesn't seem to have an open heart. what he's worried about is

himself and i can see why he blows up during the polls -- having bad polls. we said about f.d.r. during world war ii he had a first-class temperament which brought us through the war. there are no examples of f.d.r. blowing steam and yelling at people in an abusive way to the point trump threatened his own campaign manager in the jeremy diamond story to sue him because he doesn't like what the polls are saying. this is a president that has a big problem in the midwest. he's been dissing the michigan governor. he sent pence to mayo clinic to not wear a mask in a weirdo charade. the states are showing the swing voters aren't turning trump. >> erin, can i add -- >> go ahead, david. >> talking about f.d.r., doug knows more about this than i do. as a student of history, we know from the time of the great depression when americans had great faith in f.d.r., not

because he had all the answers, but because he was there. they had real confidence in his empathy and in his leadership and his commitment. you know, the president is talking about a lot of things that does resonate with the american people, this tension between public health and getting the economy going again. that resonates with a lot of people who want to get back to work and need to get back to work. but he detracts from that when he talks about disinnext ants, what a great job he's doing, when he goes after reporters. even the people who don't like the president, lots of those. swerving way beyond the lanes and is not focusing. he doesn't seem to have a sense that as the leader of the country and of the free world, there are certain things he shouldn't speculate about. that's what gets him into trouble. >> right. this is a moment, again, where people have been afraid of life and death and what's going to happen in the world that we all live in. it is a moment where what you say matters and can't just be dismissed. again, that's when a moment what you say there matters so much.

we also hear, doug, when vice president pence speaks, for example, he always prefaces his talk with the leadership of the president. we hear that from all the c.e.o.s when he brings them out to the podium. the president's son-in-law, jared kushner, is taking it a step further. here's how he describes the president handling. >> we've achieved all the milestones that are needed. the federal government rose to the challenge and this is a great success story. >> and so jared kushner said, doug, on the same day that the united states death toll surpassed 60,000, at best, tone deaf. >> completely tone deaf. it's at 60,000, more than vietnam war now. but very soon you can add 9/11, katrina, oklahoma city bombing, might not be as many as vietnam and korea combined. jared kushner made a fool out of himself going on the "fox and

friends" morning show. he talked about whiney people doing their -- the internal lockdown crowd. i don't think it's about internal lockdown crowd. people are trying to do what's safe. we have particularly so many veterans and senior and assisted living places that are dying. you read stories -- cnn were putting people that were close to producers and camera men that are dying. everybody now is losing somebody due to covid-19. and kushner needs to be, again, talking in a more empathetic way. optimism is great, but not blind optimism when you have distorted facts. and that's what's been coming out of the trump crowd. >> thank you both. >> we just need results. we don't need people spiking the ball declaring victory. if you listen to people closest to this, our governors, they're the ones who are least political and most focused on the practical facts of what needs to happen to ultimately prevail. >> all right. thank you both.

>> sure. >> thank you. >> the pandemic crippling many farmers and the food industry in iowa. the rich effects of this could be felt nationwide. a special report, california has a bigger population than new york, but the number of deaths and cases in california is much lower than new york. so, why is that? like the world standing still. but if you look to the land, it's a whole different story. from farms to backyards, wheels are turning. seeds are being planted. animals are getting fed. and grass is growing. and families are giving their all to the soil because no matter how uncertain things get, the land never stops. so to all those linked to the land, we say thank you. we're here for you because we all run together.

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>> that opinion is shared by small business owners who agree. this downturn is unlike anything they have ever seen. miguel marques is "out front." >> reporter: auction day in iowa, bob larky used to call them out six times a month. now down to one. >> the last month, i know how many we sold. we sold 1,425 head. >> reporter: less than half what you normally sell? >> oh, yeah, less than half. >> reporter: larky has been auctioning cattle for 60 years. >> you can lose money for so long. sooner or later you have to say whoa. >> reporter: have you ever seen anything like this in the market? >> i've seen lower drops, but nothing like this that affects everybody. >> reporter: with processing plants losing workers to the coronavirus, there is a bottleneck between producers and retailers. it must be frustrating because you're seeing what people are paying in the super markets and you're seeing those prices go up, but you can't sell

cows. >> right, right. >> reporter: what's happening? >> yeah. [ laughter ] that's what i want to know. what is happening? >> reporter: johnson typically sells five to 800 cattle every week. how many have you sold in the last month and a half, two months? >> we have sold nothing in the last five weeks. >> reporter: he'd lose hundreds on every cow as they can't be delivered to slaughter houses with the coronavirus sharply reducing the work force. the pandemic crippling the food chain and retail business alike. >> it's really bumpy right now. >> reporter: ben bram is a fourth generation clothier in da buick. he's preparing to open but unsure what to expect while iowa never told its residents to stay home, it did close all but essential businesses on march 17. the full week before that you were already feeling the full effect? >> oh, my gosh, yeah. >> reporter: how much was business down before the effect? >> 70, 80%. >> reporter: what?

>> yeah. it's like right now people got worried and afraid. >> reporter: he's not alone. data from safe graph which tracks anonymous cell phone data nationwide indicates a sharp decrease in economic activity across iowa more than a week before most businesses were ordered to close. data from nearly 43,000 locations across the hawkeye state show a steep drop in foot traffic in everything from retail stores to manufacturing plants. the pandemic stifling consumer confidence, disrupting markets from agriculture to retail to restaurants. what is your expectation for how life comes back to places like da buick? >> i believe it's going to come back slowly. people are going to be very -- i think people will start eventual eventually coming back and they'll sit maybe outside. that's what i would be more comfortable with. >> reporter: as they head into tourist high season, the question is everywhere, when will the pandemic be tamed and how long will the economy be disrupted?

now, the governor here in iowa has ordered that certain counties start to reopen in the next couple days. the question is, will people come back? the governor has also said that if you are on unemployment and refuse to go back to work, you risk losing those benefits. there are a couple problems there. if they have an underlying health issue, living with elderly or kids at home, they might not want to go back and might not have to go back. the bigger question beyond all that is are employers going to want all their employees rushing back to work? they're not entirely sure so far. the customers are going to be there. >> that would be the biggest question. miguel, thank you very much. i want to go to gary cohn who served in the economic council under president trump. you heard him say shop owners took a 70% to 80% hit before the shutdown. reopening alone may not change much of that. it's willing whether people are

willing to go back. how to take the fear out of going to normal life? >> erin, thanks for having me. this is an interesting conundrum we have put our american citizens in. for the last 35 to 40 days we have literally heard nothing but orders to stay at home, only leave your house to go buy the bare essentials of life that you need and return home immediately. now we're starting to tell people, no, ignore what we told you, go out and reenter the economy. that mental transition is going to take some time. there is a natural adjustment period there to go through. i think people will adjust as they see people entering the economy. they themselves will want to get out there. this is not an overnight phenomena. people will be more comfortable going into smaller retail establishments where there are one or two customers inside

versus larger retail so they'll open first. as they get comfortable with that, they'll be more comfortable going into a retail establishment with four or five people. this will be a natural evolution. but if we don't start the evolution, we won't get there. >> right. it gets harder and harder to break the fear. i understand your point. so in terms of the economic impact of this, i mean, i guess it's fair to figure at this point we don't even perhaps know how bad it will be. we did learn today that the economy contracted last quarter. we knew that, but we got the formal confirmation. the biggest problem since the great recession. it's going to be worse next quarter. i want to play for you, gary, what white house economic advisor has been saying about the gdp number and unemployment and what the president has been saying. >> that will be just the very tip of the iceberg of few months of negative news, it's unlike anything you've ever seen. >> we're looking at an unemployment rate that approaches rates during the great depression. >> we're having one of the best

periods in terms of stock market. we're going to go like a rocket ship once we get back to business. >> why the dramatically different messaging do you think, gary? >> i agree with kevin hasset and what he's saying about unemployment. in fact, we're seeing it. we're seeing it real-time. we see unemployment claims every week in the u.s. economy. remember originally small businesses and all businesses in america went to the stay-at-home orders, and that meant for many small businesses they instantly laid off their work force. that was the only prudent and rational thing to do. since that period of time we've now had the government come in with sweeping policies where they're trying to replace income with the ppp and other programs that we have in place. as the ppp money gets into the system, remember that 75% of that money that companies receive has to go back to pay wages for your employees. so those employees that were

terminated by small businesses, when the money is back, those employees need to be hired back and those companies need to pay those wages out. hopefully people will regain employment and they'll come back into the work force. so i do agree initially we were going to see very high unemployment numbers. the stock market in itself looks at other indicators. the stock marked is very forward looking, where unemployment numbers are literally real-time. we see them once a week real-time. in fact, we see lines real-time of people lining up to get unemployment claims. obviously we're concerned about all those unemployed americans and we're very sympathetic for them. the stock market is forward looking. it's trying to figure out where we're going to be a year from now or two years from now. it's the forward value of what companies are going to look like. >> right. and, of course, we don't know what it's going to look like so it's hard to read anything into it right now. when you and i spoke on the show a few weeks ago, gary, we were talking about antibody testing.

at the time it seemed like it could be really crucial, right? you know you had it, you could go back to work. you talked about it being an imperative part of reopening the economy. since then we have learned more about the tests and frankly there are some very serious accuracy issues at this point. so what is your view now of what a return to work will be? in this case i'm talking about people who are currently working at home. what is a return to work going to look like? >> so, erin, hopefully those antibody tests will get better. >> yes. >> in our medical community and our scientific community is doing an amazing work on trying to improve those tests and testing and vaccines. so let's hope that that happens. but as we return to work here, when we try and open the economy slowly and methodically and still being very concerned about a re-outbreak or reoccurrence of the covid virus, we need to bring people into the work force. the clip that you played from

the governor of iowa is very important. as many of these companies try and reopen, they're going to try and get their employees to come back to them. there is an opportunity cost to come back to work. right now if you're collecting unemployment, you could be getting 100% of wages or 100% plus in wages. remember, you may have kids at home, so you're not paying for child care. you don't have kids going to school, so you need to take care of your kids. if you're going back into the work force today, you may get your wages, but you have to deal with your children. you may have to pay child care or support for your children. you have commuting costs. you have all types of additional costs. so the opportunity cost of going back into the work force today is extremely high. so as the governor said, if you're not willing to go back in the work force, the governor may cut off some of those benefits to change that equation of what the opportunity cost to stay home is verse versus the opportunity cost to ri enter the work force.

>> when all this comes in terms of the spending here, the government has already spent more than $2 trillion to stimulate the economy. frankly there is no end in sight. they're going to spend until they don't need to spend. there is no problem borrowing the money. it's essentially free, except nothing is free in the long term. could all this spending with really no concern for the price tag lead to a bigger economic crisis? >> erin, you said it yourself. it may look free and it may feel free today, but we are creating a longer-term problem that could turn into the next crisis. i say could turn into the next crisis. we are going to put another 2 or 3 or 4 or $5 trillion of deficit into the united states. we could end up with 25, $27 trillion of deficit. we have to finance that deficit. to the extent that the world allows us to do that, we have no problem. but if we get to that horrible

horrific point where the world no longer wants to finance our debt and we cannot self-finance with savings in this country, we then have another crisis on our hands where the u.s. cannot borrow money and interest rates in the united states go dramatically higher, which has a immediate impact on every homeowner, every auto loan, every mortgage, and every student loan in this country where the rates on those loans are going to go dramatically higher and we're going to have a real impact on our economy. >> all right, gary cohn, thank you very much. a sobering thing to consider but an important one obviously given the debt is now greater than the size of the entire economy, which is a big red flag. thank you very much. i appreciate it. >> thanks for having me. >> tuomas i hawo massive statesp to reopen. california and florida. why are they doing better than states in the northeast? and jeanne moos on couples

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tonight florida and

california, two of the country's most populous states, are planning to reopen. when you think about it, these are huge states with huge cities. how do they have more success containing the spread than hard-hit new york? tom foreman has that story. >> reporter: two coastal states, both drawing oceans of travelers, home to massive populations, and wildly different in their approaches to containing covid-19. in california, the earliest reports of the virus spurred the first stay-at-home order in the nation. on march 19th. >> if you are presumed to be positive or you're waiting for a test result, you need to immediately notify your close contacts so that they can begin to quarantine themselves. >> reporter: the most populous state clamped down on restaurants, public events and spaces. the result, a surprisingly low 48,000 cases in a recent assessment. about 1900 deaths, and plans to relax restrictions.

>> we believe we are weeks, not months away from making meaningful modifications. >> reporter: florida took a different path. the third-most populous state did not push residents to stay home till april and did not move to shutdown huge spring break crowds on beaches. with so many older medically vulnerable citizens, epidemiologists feared a huge outbreak. but the current count again, an unexpectedly low 33,000 cases, approximately 1200 fatalities. in parts of florida, too, are poised to reopen. >> we're making progress. we need to continue to put people back to work. >> reporter: both of those states have fared much better per capita than much smaller massachusetts, connecticut and new jersey which racked up considerably higher horrific infection numbers, and topping them all. >> new york state is now the epicenter. >> in new york the death toll reached a new high. >> new york remains the u.s. epicenter. >> reporter: with almost 300,000 cases and more than 23,000 deaths, new york is by far the

hardest-hit state. in raw numbers and person foreperson. why is the northeast home to more than half of u.s. covid-19 deaths? while the region quickly followed california's lead with stay-at-home orders, there is some evidence compliance may have been less robust, add in the population density of major northeast cities, and the fact that no part of the country relies more on crowded public transit, and that may have been the true formula for disaster. all this is largely speculation at this point, but that's one reason epidemiologists want hospitals to keep as careful record as they can of who shows up, where they have been, and who they had contact with so they can try to recreate a viral map of sorts of covid-19's deadly travels. erin? >> all right, tom, thank you. and i want to go now to dr. david ruben, he's a doctor, codirector of the policy lab at children's hospital of philadelphia. and i know, doctor, you've been

creating a lot of models, tracking forecasting outbreaks across the country and also talking about this issue that we're that we're posing, right? and specifically how it is that the virus can spread not only -- you know, more effective at spreading in dense area, that's obvious to all of us, but why the death rate is also higher in those areas. why would that be? >> well, you know, i think there's -- you know, it's been a long-held principle in infectious diseases that inoculum is important in terms of severity of disease. we've seen it in other viral infections. we know the second children in households who have chicken pox infections in one child, often the second child gets sicker than the first. we've seen even an analysis of a previous influenza epidemic in 1918 that suggested that the greater number of people individuals were exposed to had

been infected, more likely they had severe disease. so we're just at the early stage here of getting evidence that sars-cov-2 was present. >> when we look at those health care professions, it's a fascinating point when we talk about the viral load, how important, and this is an important for how we got here and also how this country's biggest city is going to get out of this. and that is, how big of a problem was the new york city subway? >> i think it's a huge problem. when you compare places like florida or california to new york city. i mean, areas in south florida were conferred advantages that new york city did not have. they're not as densely populated. they don't have these large mass transit systems with crowding on

the platforms. and, you know, they're also warmer. our newer models, and we have forecasts coming out later this week, will reveal stronger temperature effects as we're heading into the spring. they're not enough to mitigate all the transmission of the virus. but they're certainly helping places like florida. when you put it together, you have areas of south florida where most people live in single family dwellings, there's not a large mass transit system, and they're conferred the advantage of those warmer temperatures. >> dr. rubin, thank you very much, a lot there to think about. i appreciate your time. >> thanks. next, jeannie on virtual weddings that have gone, shall we say, viral. with everything going on, we've had to alter our classroom settings. we have to transition into virtual learning to make sure that the education is continuing. (vo) verizon and "the new york times" are offering 14 million students free digital access to "times" journalism. when bugs move in we stress out and spray.

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tonight, tying the knot and saying "i do" on video chat. here is jeannie. >> when lockdown means you can't walk down the aisle, when friends and family can't gather to hear, consider saying "i thee zoom wed." bride and groom invited guests who introduced themselves, drank and ate up to the moment of the ceremony.

the mother of the groom in the uk wore a fascinator. friends of the bride dressed fancy on top. a shoe design er and a worker i finance were among the first new yorkers to marry via zoom after the governor gave the green light. >> no excuses anymore, you're married. >> these two newlyweds nuzzled and kissed during our interview. >> your lawfully wedded wife. >> i do. >> note the quarantine hair. it was great practice for marriage after dating for 3 1/2 years. >> we'll look back and laugh and realize there is a light and that we can get through things

together. >> it may not sound like the language of love. but there's nothing mute about this romance. >> i think he said, you know, now you may kiss the bride. >> i screamed. you can see my video, i screamed. >> i can now pronounce you husband and wife. kiss the bride. >> there were cheers, toasts. but some guests complained. >> some of us missed the kiss. >> don't worry, they're more than making up for that. >> that was great. >> jeanne moos, cnn. >> i love you. >> new york. >> and everything in the whole world seems to be happening on zoom right now. chris cuomo is ready to take it over. our coverage continues now with you, chris. you doing zooms?

>> can't stop love, erin. what do i have to zoom for? i do this. this is my zoom. have a good night. i'm chris cuomo and welcome to "prime time." federal guidelines to slow the spread is set to expire tomorrow. no state appears to have met the benchmark to reopen, that is 14 straight days of declining number of cases. not one state has met it. the president's leadership in this moment, i'm not really sure about needing testing after all. really? for the love of logic, just two days since pence said we should all be proud about the step-up on testing, when will the doublespeak end? no wonder people look to the governors for guidance. what is the real deal on research on a covid treatment?