went above and beyond for his country. wilson german was 91 years old. may they rest in peace and in a their memories be a blessing. erin burnett "outfront" starts right now. "outfront" next, reported coronavirus cases are up in parts of the country as the president refuses to set an example, saying he will not wear a mask when he's on camera. what is he afraid of? plus a dire warning tonight. icu beds are running out. one city's struggle that is not letting up. we're going to speak to a critical care doctor who is warning that the patients who are coming in are dying, many of them are young. an employer stugling to compete with unemployment benefits. benefits that actually pay some people more to stay home from work. so how do businesses compete with that? how do you get everybody back? let's go "outfront." and good evening. i'm erin burnett. "outfront" tonight, no mask for trump as cases surge. there are now warnings of a resurgence as the united states

nears the grim toll of 100,000 deaths. instead of setting a powerful example of how to protect others and yourself the president says he will not be caught on camera by wearing a mask. let me start by showing this, the seven-day average, more states report an increase in cases. so when you look at that you can see the increase. you now have 17 states now showing an increase in the number of reported coronavirus cases. 12 saw a decrease. now, if you compare that to a week ago, 9 states had an increase in the number of reported new cases. so that number of states with an increase has doubled in the past week. this is a pretty significant thing to say. the question is why? is this the result of more testing? or do we have a much bigger problem, a potential second wave coming across the country? these are serious questions tonight. and yet today the president was playing political games at best or being simply vain at worst. trump at a ford manufacturing plant in michigan where according to ford policy masks are mandatory. executive chairman bill ford

said he encouraged the president to wear a mask when he arrived at the plant. as you can see, trump refused when the cameras were rolling. >> i had one on before. i wore one in this back area. but i didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it. but i had it in the back area. i did put a mask on. >> that's an absurd thing to say. he didn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it? how about the people who look to him for guidance and example? so he just said it himself. it's about his image. he doesn't want to be seen wearing one. one white house official told the "washington post," "the president sees it as a sign of weakness to wear masks." and cnn has learned that the president is afraid that if he's seen wearing a mask it might contradict his public message that the virus is waning, which brings me back to what i began with. according to the latest data, cases are spiking. and we need to know why. is this testing or a jump in infections? but instead of answering that question, which should be the single most important thing the president's team should be doing right now, the president is not

answering that and is signaling that there is no problem by his refusal to be seen in a mask. kaitlan collins is out front live outside the white house. and kaitlan, i know there was a lot of pressure on the president to wear a mask today. the attorney general of the state of michigan tweeted at him about it. bill ford the executive chairman of the company asked him to do it. but was there any real question as to whether he would wear one for anyone to see? >> i don't think so. certainly not inside the white house. because aides knew the president's resistance to wearing a mask. they got into a back and forth over it before he visited that honeywell facility in arizona over whether or not he should wear one. and the company made clear before he went to michigan today that that was their view, that they did want him to wear a mask, that it was their policy. and they made it pretty clear, as you heard from the chairman, saying today, you know, we encouraged the president to wear one but really it's up to him whether or not the president of the united states is actually going to wear one. what was so revealing today was that the president before had expressed a resistance to wearing a mask and today he made clear he just doesn't want to

wear one in front of cameras, in front of reporters. and that was obvious as he said, you know, he took it off, he had the mask in his hand but he did not want to wear it. and of course the point is that it really distracts from the reason why he was at this plant today. it was to highlight that they turned around and made ventilators when the nation was fearful that they were going to be experiencing a shortage of them. but instead of course places like this ford plant stepped in, started making ventilators and made such a difference. but instead now the takeaway from it is the president's refusal to wear a mask yet again, which now he makes clear is just because he doesn't want to wear one in front of reporters. >> all right, kaitlan, thank you very much. i want to go now to dr. sanjay gupta along with dr. jonathan reiner who advised the medical team under president george w. bush, currently direct of the kath lab at g.w. and dana bash our political correspondent. dr. reiner let me start with you. the president says he wore a mask when no one could see him but he was very plain, i will not wear it in front of cameras

because he doesn't want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it. again, it shouldn't be about the press. it should be about all the people who believed in him and look to him for guidance, right? >> yeah. erin, i used to think that the president's stubborn refusal to wear a mask was basically a toxic mix of arrogance and ignorance. but i think he knows just what he's doing. he doesn't want to wear a mask. he refuses to wear a mask because it conflicts with his narrative, which is we're moving back to normal. not to a new normal. we're not going to try and recover. we're going back to normal. and if he's seen wearing a mask, that's not normal. the problem with that is that every time he ruchzs to wear a mask in public more and more people refuse to wear a mask in public. and then the virus spikes. and then people die. so i really believe that the president's refusal to wear a mask in public has cost many

lives. i think he's responsible for deaths when he doesn't wear a mask. >> is not jay >> sanjay, it's a pretty powerful thing dr. reiner just said. he didn't wear a mask on that michigan trip where anyone could see him. he didn't wear one as he met with african-american leaders. others in the room at that point weren't wearing masks either. we presume they got the test before they were around him, which has a double-digit false negative rate. the president then walked around the factory with no mask on. he said he was tested and the people around him were tested. but again, these rapid tests we know there could be inaccuracy of what, up to 15%? >> even higher than that according to some studies. and as you'll see in those images the people around him were tested and what are they doing? they're still wearing a mask. and i should point out that three of the public health officials, top public health officials in the country who may have also been exposed at the white house, the same thing the

president has been concerned about, which is why he's been taking this medication that has no evidence that it works, not only are they wearing masks when they're in public but they're mostly in some form of quarantine. same exact scenario, potential exposure at the white house. the three top public health officials for the country wearing masks and typically some form of quarantine. the president obviously not in quarantine, not wearing a mask. it doesn't make sense. luckily, we poll around the country, most americans see the value of masks. i think 80% say they wear it at least some of the time. hopefully the message is still getting through but i think dr. reiner makes the point. that will erode. >> the president at one point held up his mask to show he had one and said it looked very nice. there is a big part of this that

seems to be just simple vanity. >> vanity and stubbornness. you covered donald trump long before we did it in politics. you covered him in the financial world. you noim and his personality probably as well as all of us. and that's a big part of this. a lot of it is what dr. reiner said and what sanjay was alluding to, that the president doesn't want to kind of fly in the face of the political argument that he is making that it's okay for the country to reopen, we're ready to go. he said it out loud. he went before the cameras and said i don't want to give you the satisfaction, you reporters, of me putting on a mask. that is his innermost feeling and a large part of what is driving this. i'll tell you that while the president was doing part of the

tour of the plant where he did wear a mask i got a text from a source telling me that he was wearing a mask and i was kind of waiting to see if there was any chance he would then go before the cameras and keep that mask on. not just by not wearing it but by saying it. >> there was a report from columbia university said that said if the united states had begun social distancing one week earlier than we did at least 36,000 lives could have been saved. it's a report. it hasn't yet been peer reviewed. the president was asked about it, though, today and here's how he responded. >> columbia's an institution that's very liberal. it's a -- i think it's just a political hit job, you want to know the truth. >> he said it's a political hit job. yesterday he talked about a study on hydroxychloroquine his own administration had sponsored. it was a scientific peer-reviewed study.

he called it phony, said it was a trump enemy statement done by people who wanted to make political points that were not friends of the administration. what's your reaction to this? and is there anything political in something like these reports? >> we spoke about this last night. and we all predicted that whenever the president encounters any kind of science, and epidemiology is obviously science, that he disagrees with he's going to call it a political hit job or phony. look, the columbia study is heartbreaking because it tells us what a lost people have suspected, which is if we had closed a little bit earlier there would have been fewer deaths. but this study suggests there would have been almost 36,000 fewer deaths if we closed a week earlier. there was this really brilliant paper that came out of m.i.t. about a month ago that painted this really compelling portrait of the virus spreading through

new york via the subway. and when new york finally closed by the subway ridership dropped by 90% and that's what finally helped put the virus out in new york. so what the study shows is that this kind of intense social distancing and staying home works. but if you look at what the president does when he doesn't wear a mask, he doubts all of the benefits of social distancing. but we're going to see this going forward. any data he doesn't like is a political hit job. it's incredibly destructive. it's dangerous. >> sanjay, last night you were talking about how the cdc ordinarily would be sort of culling through this data coming out of the states and letting us know when you say cases are going up is that how many more tests are being done in this state, like give us a sense of what's going on. but we're not getting that instead we know 17 states have an increase in coronavirus, reported coronavirus cases. that's double the number of states that had that -- had an increase about a week ago.

we see this spike but do we know? it seems to me this should be the most important thing for the administration to answer. is this the spread of infection or is this more testing? do we know? >> no, we don't know. and we were promised that we would sort of get this data, that it would go through a national sort of registry, in that case at that time the cdc, and it would be sort of quantified and contextualized for us so we would be able to answer those exact questions, how much of this is because of testing, how much of this is because the number of people becoming infected is going up, that the virus is spreading more and more. we were supposed to get that in the beginning. the cdc was providing that. it went to the states. and at some point it all became sort of a mishmosh. people are counting things differently. they're using different types of tests. we're getting these varying trends. sometimes the data has been outright manipulated, maybe accidentally, perhaps not. we don't know. it's really, really hard to read into these things. and also, erin, i just want to

say along those same lines going back to the columbia study, i found that outrageous really, calling it a liberal hit job. this is a full-on assault on science. we've seen glimmers of this over and over again. but that really took my breath away, what the president said today about columbia. we should keep in mind as well that in south korea, which is a much smaller country i realize, their first patient was diagnosed on the same day our first patient was. they have had 11,000 people infected and fewer than 300 deaths, erin. not 3,000. not 30,000. fewer than 300 deaths. so yes, it would have made a huge difference had we done these things earlier. i think that is very clear. and we didn't. hopefully we learn this lesson going forward. >> yeah, that data i think with korea hopefully hits home to a lot of people. those are the numbers. and i appreciate all of your time. and sanjay will be back at the top of the hour for the global coronavirus town hall that begins tonight at 8:00. "outfront" next, icu beds running out and many patients under the age of 40 in critical

care. an icu doctor in montgomery, alabama is out front in what has become a dire situation. plus warnings of a case spike in major cities like miami and houston. what does that mean for hundreds of thousands of kids out of school there? i'm going to talk to the superintendents of both of those major school systems. and a disaster unfolding in brazil. they have set a record for deaths in a 24-hour period. it's where the cases around the world seem to be growing the fastest. we're live at a hospital there.

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breaking news. the mayor of montgomery, alabama sounding the alarm as cases suddenly spike in his city. the mayor warning hospitals are overstretched and that if you need an icu bed "you're in trouble." i'm going to speak to an icu doctor in montgomery in a moment. first here's nick watt with the latest as states reopen across the country. >> reporter: cities like houston and miami should brace for a covid comeback according to new modeling that monitors how well we're social distancing as we reopen. >> the degree to which some areas have moved too quickly or have not been vigilant with regard to individual behavior we are starting to see some evidence of resurgence. >> reporter: largely in the south, they say, hospitals in montgomery, alabama reporting they're nearly out of icu beds. >> the number of covid patients that they were seeing was not only increasing but that people were coming in in worse shape.

i think it's in part due to the fact that we opened up the economy too soon. >> but we're also seeing some optimism in other areas that appear to be moving more cautiously. >> reporter: that early hot spot, king county, washington opening slowly and the new case count is still falling. >> now is not the time to tempt fate and pull back completely. >> reporter: right now there's a spike in south america as cooler weather and winter nears. and then when the southern hemisphere is over i expect it will reground itself in the north, cdc director robert redfield just told the "financial times." says he can't guarantee there won't be another lockdown this winter. and on the information needed to contain this virus he says the truth is regularly, the data is delayed, and it's incomplete. at least four states say they're combining viral and antibody test results for their case counts, potentially muddying the picture of where and how this

virus is spaed spreading. those food bank lines tell a different story. the impact of lockdown. nearly half of adult americans are now living in a household that has lost income. according to a census bureau survey. and 10% reported often or some of the time not having enough food. >> he's going to point out the pews and the confessional. >> reporter: religious services are back today in new york. catholic leaders laid out their plan. sanitizer at the door, online worship still encouraged. >> so we will move slowly but surely to get the maximum participation as quickly as we can. >> reporter: what happens next is largely up to all of us individually. >> and if people take the right precautions, you don't necessarily need to see a rise in the number of cases. >> reporter: erin, the mayor of montgomery, the one that's running out of icu beds, also preaching a message of individual responsibility. today telling his city our cases

have doubled in the past month, our deaths are going up. remember all that social distancing and hand washing you were doing? keep doing it. he was even thinking about putting a shelter in place just for the city. but a spokesman has since clarified to us that they believe only the governor has that authority. erin? >> all right, nick, thank you very much. i want to go straight now to dr. david thrasher. he's a critical care doctor at montgomery pulmonary consultants. and obviously the mayor of montgomery, dr. thrasher, is saying you're in trouble if you need a hospital bed right now talking about this doubling in cases. what is happening? >> well, we have had a dramatic increase in case load over the last several weeks. we do have icu beds available. one of the big hospitals we've converted two of our normal regular icus into covid-only icus. all the hospitals have floors that just house a covid positive that don't need to be on ventilators.

so we are keeping -- at one hospital we're keeping an icu available for strokes and heart attacks. you can't convert the whole hospital to covid only. but we are tight on the covid beds. one of the hospitals tonight has no icu beds available. now, having said that, we'll frequently use emergency rooms and other areas for icus, particularly in the winter months. you can get an icu bed or an icu setting. but it is getting tight. the numbers have dramatically increased. last weekend my partner ran 140 patients over the weekend. that's twice the volume that we normally have. as of tonight our group is having about 132 patients. and 110 of those i believe are covid patients. >> so these numbers are pretty stunning. and i know that you're talking about that you saw this surge happening even before the kind of broader reopening in the

state. i know you also, doctor, have concerned about the type of patients coming into your hospital. who is coming in? what sort of profile are you seeing? i know there's a lot of questions out there specifically about the age? >> sure. across alabama, not just montgomery, about 40% of the nation's -- excuse me, 40% of the patients or cases with covid-19 are from age 25 to 50. another 25% are from 50 to 65. and another 25% over 65. clearly the number of deaths are greatest in the 65-plus area. but having said that, we unfortunately have lost several, too many patients young. in the 30s or even younger. it affects everybody, and that's where everybody needs to realize it's a real problem and nobody is immune. >> well, there drasher, i appreciate your time.

and i hope people hear this as just the cautionary tale of how terrifying this is, how quickly it can come and how everybody -- everybody is at risk. thank you very much. and "outfront" next, schools installing plexiglas in south korea to keep students safe. is that something that could happen in this country? superintendents at two of america's largest school districts are out front. plus businesses struggling to get employees to come back to work. and part of the problem is that many of them are being paid significantly more, double on unemployment. i am totally blind. and non-24 can make me show up too early... or too late. or make me feel like i'm not really "there." talk to your doctor, and call 844-234-2424.

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tonight a new model says some major cities and states that opened too soon are in danger of seeing case spikes including miami and houston. also those cities happen to be home to this country's fourth and seventh largest school districts. hundreds of thousands of kids. so what does this mean for their decision to get kids back to school? back to school for sure in the fall, right? "outfront" now, alberto carvalho. he is the superintendent at miami-dade county public schools which has 345,000 students. and the interim superintendent

of the houston independent school district gunita latham. she oversees about 210,000 students. i appreciate both of your time. superintendent carvalho, let me start with you. you've said you're determined to open for the fall, you're going to have a reopening plan coming i guess in the next five weeks, or by the end of june. what are you look at now? is that back in person five days a week full day or is it some hybrid? what are you thinking right now? >> erin, number one, thanks for the opportunity. look, we're all navigating these uncertain times. and good leadership at this point quite frankly anticipates a number of scenarios and builds a reopening plan that contemplates the evolving nature of this virus over the summer. we are hoping for a very opening of school with teachers and students in schools. obviously under modified conditions with greater social distancing between students. accessibility to food and

cafeterias probably is a no go. food will be delivered to the classrooms. but we will utilize also a number of platforms that have been successfully used in miami. to be able to create hybrid learning environments following cdc guidelines and the local advice from our health department. we are not ruling out any option. we are contemplating a number of contingency plans as this virus evolves over the summer, and we'll be able to pivot to the best possible way of teaching kids without compromising their health or their safety. >> so superintendent lathan, i know you're looking at options for the fall as well. i just saw this image, it sort of stood out. south korea, plastic partitions are being used to help students practice social distancing. xs on the table show young children where they can't sit. in denmark students studied statistics in a graveyard as part of a push to move classes outdoors. look, some of these things may seem extreme, but are these the

sorts of things that you would consider to resume in-person classes, this sort of extreme social distancing? you can put a plastic partition in front of a teacher. are these things on the table? >> hi, erin. thank you for the opportunity tonight. yes. everything's on the table currently. because we want to ensure that our staff and our students can return to school full-time but everyone is safe. we're looking at all options, indoor and outdoor classroom opportunities. >> so i want to ask you all about how it's going so far. superintendent carvalho, you gave the parents of students a survey to see what they think about online learning. look, i'm a parent of public school children as well. you've got some really amazing teachers out there. but the online learning is really hard for kids and they're not learning as much as they would in the classroom. i think that's just a fact. what have parents told you? >> our survey was to determine three things. number one, the challenges and difficulties that parents were facing.

secondly, we're actually probing the types of schooling, parents' expectations about next year. what they will be able to tolerate and that which is unacceptable. we very early on reached a 100% level connectivity. and we've been averaging about 92% daily student attendance. but i agree with you. look, teaching and learning is best in a classroom with a caring teacher in front of students. however, that needs to be balanced out against safety and health concerns. that's why we are doing everything we can to anticipate a regular school opening. but under a number of different changes. for example, not only modifying the physical environment, utilizing what were used as common areas like gymnasiums and cafeterias to allow greater distance between students utilizing those as classrooms. but also utilizing technology. for example, there's nothing that prevents a classroom of 20

students from convening on monday with 12 students physically present with the teacher, the rest of them zooming in to the classroom and then alternating it. staggering the arrival and departure of students to alleviate a little bit of the concentration. and then have common sense practices like cyclical washing of hands and intensifying the sanitizing cycles in schools. >> superintendent lathan, you know, it's interesting superintendent carvalho was saying 92% of his kids have engaged with online learning. i know your numbers are similarly high. you say only 5% did not engage at all online. but that's 10,000 students in your districts. just to give a sense. this is a lot of kids. i know your district estimates that 70,000 of your students don't have internet access at home. here in new york about $600 million worth of ipads being given out. that's all fine and good. but you know, is all this going to be utilized? are you worried that there are students who could really fall

far behind and it is not something that will be caught up? if school doesn't reopen in the fall. >> as an educator and also as a parent i'm very concerned about the 10,000 students that we've been unable to reach. but i'm also concerned about the students that have engaged in our hsd at home learning platform because like i said nothing replaces face-to-face instruction with a teacher. but we are prepared as a district to continue with virtual learning in the fall. we are also prepared to intervention plans for awful of our students to catch them up and also to push them further ahead. >> and how will you do that? >> we will do that through -- whether it's virtual tutoring, face-to-face tutoring. also we're providing mental health support for our students. emotional support. we have wraparound specialists that are connecting our families to resources. over 140 of our campuses have a full-time devoted wraparound specialist. we'll add an additional 16

wraparound specialists in the fall. also i'm excited to announce that we will be launching a mental health hotline within the next several days that our parents will be able to reach us 24 hours a day, seven days a week. >> all right. well, i appreciate both of your times very much. i know this is unprecedented times and terrifying times. i know we all want our kids in school. thank you so much. and next, nearly 40 million americans are now out of work. tonight the senate left for the weekend without passing legislation that would have given businesses more relief. plus brazil breaking a record. more than 20,000 cases in 24 hours. this is now becoming one of the biggest hot spots in the world. the country's president continues to mock the virus, calling it a little flu. we're live in brazil tonight. whn we stress out and spray. well, we used to. new ortho home defense max indoor insect barrier kills and prevents bugs for up to a year without odors, stains or fuss. new ortho home defense max. bugs gone. stress gone.

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tonight another 2.4 million americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits, which brings the total to nearly 40 million since the pandemic began. but now employers are facing another problem, getting their employees to come back to work. kyung lah is out front. [ phone ringing ] >> hello?

>> how's it going? my name is andrew and i'm calling from reliable staffing. >> reporter: as businesses look to reopen, job recruiters like andres nunez search for people to take the jobs. [ phone ringing ] yet one out of every five calls he makes -- >> they don't want to come out. they don't want to come out because the price isn't right. >> reporter: how does unemployment fit into that piece? >> people would rather just get the unemployment. >> reporter: because in many cases it pays more. unemployment benefits average more than $350 a week nationwide in state benefits. plus an additional $600 per week in federal stimulus funding. >> before unemployment i was lucky to make between $250 and $300 a week. >> reporter: this recent college graduate who asked her name not be used was laid off from a bowling alley in ohio in march. her untaxed unemployment is three times her old take-home pay. >> i've been able to pay off my car three months early. >> you are making more money not

working. what is -- what do you think about that? >> it's lessening the stress of going back to work. >> reporter: exposure to the virus is the biggest concern, she says, as the economy reoh reopens. >> if the bowling alley calls and says we want to hire you back but you have this option of unemployment, which one do you choose? >> that's actually a hard question. this is the first time i felt financially stable. in a long time. but then again, i'm very much the type of person where i like to feel like i'm earning my money in the same way. everyone has in my mind a right to live comfortably and not have to worry. and i think this level of unemployment money is allowing that to happen. >> how are you doing, guys? >> reporter: but that doesn't employers like josh sauter. >> i have employees that won't return my calls. i had one employee show up and quit two days later. >> reporter: sauter runs a drunken crab in north hollywood, california. when we met him at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis he had

just laid off 75 employees. >> i'm worried about having a heart attack to be perfectly honest with you. >> reporter: today his diagnose room sits empty. carry-out only. unemployment verification requests are delivered by the handful. >> okay. would you like ranch with your cajun fries? >> reporter: a few employees are back. as far as the others? >> the amount of money that people are make on unemployment right now quite honestly is more than what we were paying them before. >> reporter: do you feel like you're competing with unemployment? >> no question. i don't blame them. but we do need workers to come back eventually. this is a limited amount of money that you will receive for a limited amount of time that will run out. >> reporter: that federal stimulus money, the $600 per week, is set to expire at the end of july. and the woman you heard from, the unemployed woman you heard from in that story, says that this entire experience, erin, has taught her that her wages are simply not high enough. neither are the wages of a lot of hourly employees like the

ones who work at this theater, especially when you consider college loans and health care. erin? >> all right, kyung, thank you very much. i want to go to jason furman, former chairman of the council of economic advisers under president obama. jason, look, i think that young woman there was just being honest and doing what economically anybody would do, right? if you're going to be paid three times more by unemployment benefits, you're going to take that. that is the rational thing to do. that was actually the point of the whole thing, was to keep people home. so what do you do, though, now? >> look, erin, i think the biggest issue is we don't want people to go off a cliff at the end of july where all of a sudden it goes from $600 to zero dollars. the biggest problem in our economy is still that there aren't enough jobs for people, not that there aren't enough people motivated to get those jobs. we should -- we can phase it down. there are steps we could take to improve on it going into august. but it's important that something continue. >> right. something continue.

larry kudlow said today, you know, talking about the last recession, he said we learned, i quote him, "that increasing and k3e7bding unemployment benefits are disincentives to work. i'd rather people went back to work." it sounds like what you're saying is perhaps you would bring them down, you just wouldn't eliminate. >> yeah. with a 3% unemployment rate i would worry that unemployment benefits were keeping people from working. with a 15% unemployment rate, the problem we have now is there aren't enough jobs and if you cut the benefits too much people will have less purchasing power. that will hurt the economy and there will be fewer jobs. so absolutely, continue this but start tapering it down, phasing it down, maybe changing the form. but we need to continue something. >> right. and you have to identify, right? the people who are choosing between two things. you want to encourage them to take the job, right? >> yeah. i mean, ideally you do something like if you're on unemployment you're going to get 90%, 85% of what you were getting on the

job. you'd have an incentive to go back. plus you get the benefits of the workplace. and people are nervous. they want to be in jobs. they want to be in jobs for the longer term. a formula like that i think would work better than this extra $600 a month for the next phase -- $600 a week for the next phase of the recovery. >> all right. jason, thank you very much. >> thanks for having me. and next, it's home to a record number of new cases, crippling hospitals, not enough protective equipment, and a president who has been mocking the virus. what's happening in brazil is stunning, and we are live there tonight. and michigan facing multiple crises. a massive flood now forcing 10,000 people to evacuate. feel the cool rush of new claritin cool mint chewables. powerful 24-hour, non-drowsy, allergy relief plus an immediate cooling sensation for your throat. feel the clarity and live claritin clear.

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find a lexus for every road at lexus.com experience amazing at your lexus dealer. new tonight, brazil setting a new record for deaths in a single day with confirmed cases now topping 300,000. staggering figures that have propelled latin america past the united states and europe for the most new cases worldwide. it comes as the brazilian president has consistently downplayed the threat of the virus, even attending massive

rallies. nick paton-walsh is out front. >> reporter: sao paolo, the biggest city and hottest spot for the coronavirus in brazil, but deathly quiet. outside in fact, it spells the worst because this huge i.c.u. has run out of beds. what's startling here is the peak is well over a week away from hitting brazil, and already this enormous i.c.u. is full. and in between the beds there is a growing sense of anxiety, fear really, about what lies ahead. doctors here have heard president jair bolsonaro dismiss the disease as a flu. one of their nurses died two days ago. inside this room is one of the team's doctors on a ventilator

and another tested positive today. >> never before like this time because we have never lost a colleague in this intensive care before. yes, that it's not a flu. it's the worst thing we have ever faced in our professional lives. >> reporter: are you worried for your life here? >> yeah. yes. >> reporter: it's a virus that stifles and silences. suddenly here there is commotion. one patient, a woman in her 40s, has had cardiorespiratory failure. the doctor's heavy pulse is the only thing keeming hping her al. after 40 minutes it's clear she can't survive. the tubes are disconnected and she's wheeled out. the space will be needed. it all happens so fast.

a scene so distant from presidential rallies, masks now common much of the time. but wealth put before health. we have to be brave, he says, to face this virus. are people dying? yes, we don't regret that. but many more are going to die if the economy continues to be destroyed because of these lockdown measures. in the hills above sao paulo are not ready for a recession, though. endless fresh graves for the dead who also seem to never stop arriving. in brazil, the numbers are already staggering and it's clear, it's not the entire picture because testing simply isn't as widespread as they would like. but everywhere you go, you see the people understand this is just the beginning. now, the numbers in the last 24 hours, awful frankly. 1,188 dead.

that's a record for brazil. they crossed the 20,000 dead mark in total, and nearly 20,000 new cases. that's pretty much a daily occurrenowe we're seeing. latin america increasingly becoming the global hot spot three days in a row. it's had more new cases than the united states and europe has had. something startling here. it feels morbid, erin, deserted. the peak is probably a week or two weeks away. back to you. >> state the obvious. thank you very much, nick payton walsh. sad, erie. next, 10,000 people displaced in michigan as the state is grappling with the growing coronavirus cases now. 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

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"the return of loud" "nascar is back, and xfinity is bringing you the best seat in the house." tonight 10,000 people out of their homes during a pandemic. ryan young is out front.

>> kind of erie, you know? you're right in the middle of the pandemic, but, you know, you come here. >> reporter: about 11,000 evacuated across central michigan. 100 of those people forced into this shelter in mid land high school, waiting for the water to go down. >> i've seen other floods, but not like this. >> reporter: this is why. intense rain caused the nearly 100-year-old edenville and sanford dams to breach tuesday, sending water crashing downstream. >> it was actually a small house floating in the river, a blue house that was going down river. it was tragic the amount of people affected by this. >> reporter: parts of the city of mid land, michigan, under water. businesses and homes flooded. stop signs are below the surface, and kayaks paddle down the streets. >> it's heartbreaking. >> reporter: these drone pictures is the first time lanhee mills has seen his house since the flood. >> i came here expect being the worst and i saw it. >> reporter: would you be back, do you think you'll rebuild? >> have to.

>> reporter: but the disaster may have been preventable. the federal government warned for more than a decade the edenville dam could not handle a massive flood. and in 2018 it revoked the owner's license to operate it. a local task force was given a preliminary permit to take over the dam. but for now, the shelters are trying to keep people who can't go home safe while avoiding spreading the virus. >> we have a very senior population here, so the consequence, i was not going to come for lack of of a better word, a new york nursing home. we're taking extra precautions. >> reporter: everyone's temperatures are checked at the door. surfaces are constantly scrubbed down, and beds are cleaned. you can see stickers like this one that say "clean." the reason why is when they put the bedding together, they make sure they wipe it all down with clorox, use fresh sheets and they want to make sure each one is indicated so they know it's safe. so far shelter organizers say

they have not seen anyone with symptoms of the virus. though across michigan, the number of cases continues to go up while midland waits for the water to go down. brian young, cnn, midland, michigan. >> and thanks to ryan and thanks to all of you for joining us. cnn's coronavirus town hall starts now. ♪ ♪ >> hello, welcome. i'm anderson cooper in new york. >> i'm sanjay gupta. i just noticed i don't have a teleprompter. sorry about that. this is cnn's town hall coronavirus fact versus fiction. we are being simulcast all over the world, cnn international, cnn espanol, cnn.com. this is our 12th town hall. in as many weeks doing this. it's the first time with all 50 states i think lifting virus-related restrictions in one way or another. >> this is happening without a coordinated federal plan for reopening, we should point out, testing or contact tracing for that matter.