Coronavirus latest: Tuesday, July 14

Moderna is set to begin a late-stage vaccine trial in late July. This comes as, Dr. Redfield, director of the CDC, said that the surge of cases in the south of the U.S. might have been caused by Northerners who traveled to the southern states for vacation around Memorial Day. Yahoo Finance’s Anjalee Khemlani breaks down the latest news about the coronavirus on The Final Round.

Video Transcript

SEANA SMITH: Welcome back to The Final Round. Let's get to the latest on coronavirus. The director of the CDC is out with some interesting comments today. He was saying that the Northerners heading south for vacation may be to blame for the surge in the number of cases, not the fact that a lot of these southern states are reopening earlier than the rest of the country.

We have Anjalee Khemlani joining us now for more on this. Anjalee.

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Thanks, Seana. Yep, so we had the CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, talk earlier to "JAMA," the Journal of American Medical Association. And what we noticed is that the comments were kind of wide-ranging. It was a wide-ranging interview.

But one of the most interesting parts was, in fact, the comment about Northerners being the reason behind the southern states currently battling the virus. But that really contradicts a lot of other experts saying that it does, in fact, A, have to do with the reopenings, being in bars, being in close spaces, and the fact that many of these states did not, in fact, shut down or have as strict measures in place for as long a time as we saw in the north, northeast.

Meanwhile, we also know that he mentioned masks and said that it is time to have a national mask-wearing policy, because that is proving to be one of the things that they can show, have evidence of showing that it does help to prevent the spread of the virus. There was a recent publication from the CDC that showed, for example, in a salon where they compared mask wearing of two separate stylists and how that prevented the spread, despite these stylists who did test positive for COVID being in touch with clients.

So a lot of this coming on the day of that report, and just really an interesting look at how, as has been pointed out, things are developing in terms of what we know about the virus and its spread. Going back to the original comment about north versus south and how that is coming about, that, of course, is something that experts are still waiting to see more study and analysis done of, because even though he did mention that it could be one part of how this virus did spread so far in the South. Seana.

RICK NEWMAN: Hey, Anjalee. I have a question. I thought I saw somebody from the CDC just today said the fall and winter could be the most difficult period we've ever had in terms of a public health emergency. What-- what are they talking about?

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: So that is actually a repeat of comments that have been made since the beginning of the pandemic, in which the no-- the virus is noted to be easily spread, right, in colder climate-- in colder weather and coincide with the flu season. And so the prediction from the beginning has been that this could be like the flu in that it will come back around and resurge more strongly around that time. So that's concerning experts, because we know that we've already seen the virus continue with the same transmission through the warmer weather.

That was supposed to be the time to have a break and to pull back and-- and to possibly curb the outbreak to make it more manageable come fall, winter. But without that, and with this continued transmission throughout the states, it's going to be a lot harder to do that. And we might see really concerning numbers come those seasons.

SEANA SMITH: And Anj, I also just want to get your take quickly on the news that we got out of Moderna today, saying that its phase III vaccine trials is going to begin at the end of this month. I believe they're going to enroll around 30,000 people. What can you tell us about this and just how significant of a step this is?

ANJALEE KHEMLANI: Sure. That's right on track with what they said they were going to do, which was an estimated start date in July. The 30,000 is exactly the number that most other companies in phase III, which is this final stage of the testing, are going to be engaging and then looking for. And that is why even the federal government has sort of launched this enrollment program to help that along.

And so we're definitely looking for whatever the results are going to be to inform which candidates move forward into distribution, especially when we're looking at that emergency use that everyone has their eye on. So Moderna, being the front-runner, is the first to enter this. We are anticipating at least two others to have some sort of movement this month.

Meanwhile yesterday, the Health and Human Services Department did hold a briefing with reporters and mentioned that through Operation Warp Speed, there are also going to be other vaccine or treatment companies that will be included. We know that they're backing three of them right now, right, Moderna, Novavax, and Johnson & Johnson among them. So definitely looking for more movement now that we've gotten well into the virus and well into the second half of the year.

SEANA SMITH: Anjalee Khemlani with the latest on coronavirus for us. As always, thanks so much for that.