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Worsening Pandemic Grips Trump Presidency a Week Before Election; U.S. Averaging 70,000 New Cases a Day; Supreme Court Rules Wisconsin Can't Extend Mail-in Ballot Deadline. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired October 27, 2020 - 06:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It just took weeks to make Amy Coney Barrett now the ninth Supreme Court justice.

[05:59:20]

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): This nominee will be a political asset for our candidate.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: The White House held an event celebrating that confirmation. You did see people wearing masks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I thought it was insane that they didn't learn their lesson from the first super-spreader event.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The average number of new cases in the U.S., nearly 69,000 a day.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We're at the highest baseline we've ever been. It's not good news.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I mean, I got it and I'm here, right?

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Trump said that we're learning to live with this COVID. No, he's asking us to learn to die with it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, October 27, 6 a.m. here in New York. Election day is one week away.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: One week left to vote.

CAMEROTA: That's right. That is exactly right.

BERMAN: We're both right in this case. But I'm more right.

CAMEROTA: Only today are we both right.

BERMAN: I'm more right.

CAMEROTA: The Trump and Biden campaigns hitting the road to make their final pitches to voters against the backdrop of a pandemic. One expert says we are seeing an exponential spread of the virus.

This morning, 43,000 Americans are hospitalized. Twelve states are seeing record hospitalizations. Five states reporting a record increase in new cases.

The U.S. is now averaging nearly 70,000 new cases a day. Despite this, President Trump held another super-spreader event last night to swear in his new Supreme Court justice.

But unlike last month's nomination announcement, this time guests were wearing masks, most of them, and were socially distant. I don't think this is what we're seeing on the screen. Though that is not the case at the president's campaign rallies, which is what we are seeing.

Health officials in Minnesota report at least 23 new cases linked to Trump campaign events last month.

BERMAN: So another way of looking at the frightening coronavirus numbers. Yesterday was the highest number of cases ever reported on a Monday.

Just one week left to cast your vote in the 2020 election, because I'm more right than Alisyn. More than 62 million Americans already have voted. That's simply historic.

And this is the moment of the campaign where you can tell what is happening by where it's happening. Joe Biden is going to Georgia today, a state no Democrat has won since 1992; a state he doesn't need to win the election.

He's going to Iowa later in the week, another state he doesn't need. He is on Electoral College offense.

The president heads to the Midwest today for events that include a stop in Nebraska, where a single electoral vote is in the balance. So you can tell he is very much on defense.

And breaking overnight, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively shortened the deadline for when ballots can be received in the crucial state of Wisconsin. The affirmed a decision that ballots must arrive by election day, not postmarked, but they have to arrive by that day.

Many other states allow ballots to arrive for days after.

We're going to begin our coverage with CNN's Sara Murray, live in Philadelphia. Obviously, Pennsylvania the swingiest of swing states, saw both candidates in the last 24 hours there. SARA MURRAY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Super swingy here, John. As you guys

pointed out, we are a week out until election day. We saw the president yesterday already taking something of a victory lap as he was swearing in his newest Supreme Court justice.

But it is impossible for him, for his allies to escape the pandemic still raging in the U.S.

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MURRAY (voice-over): -- second coronavirus outbreak at the White House, President Trump held an event to swear-in Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

While guests were more socially distanced and required to wear masks, the event looked similar to the September super-spreader gathering in the Rose Garden, after which the president and at least a dozen others in attendance tested positive.

Missing from the night, Vice President Mike Pence, who still traveled to Minnesota for a crowded rally Monday, just days after multiple members of his team reportedly tested positive for coronavirus.

The president's Supreme Court celebration the same day as his three- stop tour across Pennsylvania. Trump using campaign rallies without social distancing and few masks to continue to lie about the pandemic beginning to ease, as the country sees the most new cases in any week.

TRUMP: We're rounding the turn. You know, all they want to talk about is COVID. By the way, on November 4, you won't be hearing so much about it. COVID, COVID, COVID.

MURRAY: Also in Pennsylvania, former Vice President Joe Biden making an unannounced stop and condemning Trump's handling of the coronavirus crisis.

BIDEN: The bottom line is Donald Trump is the worst possible president, the worst possible person to try to lead us through this pandemic. I don't think he just -- he either doesn't have any idea what to do or he just doesn't care.

MURRAY: As the Trump campaign plans to visit states like Michigan and Arizona this week, Biden announced he'll be on the road, too, splitting the map with his running mate Kamala Harris to cover more ground in battleground states and beyond.

BIDEN: We're going to be traveling, continue to travel, but the big difference between us and the reason why it looks like we're not traveling, we're not putting on super spreaders. We are doing what we're doing here. Everybody's wearing a mask and trying as best we can to be socially distanced.

MURRAY: Former President Barack Obama will campaign in Florida campaigning for the second time in four days later today, in support of Biden, who will be in Georgia for his own event, expected to make a closing pitch for national unity. BIDEN: You know me. I am not overconfident on anything. I just want to make sure we can earn every vote possible. That blue wall is going to be -- has to be reestablished.

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[06:05:09]

MURRAY: And we are here in Pennsylvania, where it is the last day to apply for a mail-in ballot. And if you want to do the one-stop shopping, it is the last day to apply and to cast your ballot early.

We are going to see Melania Trump here in the state later today. President Trump is going to be in the Midwest. Joe Biden is going to be in Georgia. It is the final stretch. Everyone is out there.

BERMAN: Yes.

MURRAY: Back to you, John.

BERMAN: It's on. All right. Sara Murray for us in Philadelphia.

MURRAY: It's on.

BERMAN: Thank you very much.

And it's on in the midst of what really does feel like one of the worst stages yet in the coronavirus pandemic. The highest number of cases ever reported on a Monday. Those are usually the slowest days. Nearly 67,000 new cases reported overnight. The country is now averaging nearly 70,000 cases this week.

Twelve states are reporting record hospitalizations. That's not because of testing, that's because of sick people.

CNN's Adrienne Broaddus, live for us in Chicago. Illinois seeing a surge in cases and hospitalizations.

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, John.

Illinois is like much of the remaining parts of the country. In the last seven days there have been more new cases than any other period during the pandemic. This morning, 37 states reporting a surge in new cases.

And across the country, health experts are concerned about that trend, fearing if it continues, the hospitals will be swamped.

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BROADDUS (voice-over): The country continuing to move in the wrong direction, adding 60,000 new coronavirus cases on Monday and hospitalizations nationwide at the highest level since mid-August.

DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: I think we're right now at the cusp of what's going to be exponential spread from parts of the country.

BROADDUS: Dr. Anthony Fauci underscoring that the country never fully emerged from the first wave.

FAUCI: Till now we're at the highest baseline we've ever been, which is really quite precarious. So, you know, it's kind of semantics. You want to call it the third wave or an extended first wave. No matter how you look at it, it's not good news.

BROADDUS: In El Paso, Texas, a hospital under severe strain. A spokesperson for the University Medical Center of El Paso tells CNN, quote, "We're at the highest point we've ever been."

Tents have been set up outside the hospital to assist coronavirus patients with less severe cases. And non-COVID-19 patients are volunteering to be airlifted to other parts of the state for treatment.

JACOB CINTRON, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER OF EL PASO: The increase in the number of COVID positives was much higher, obviously, than expected. But nonetheless, the area hospitals, along with ourselves, have added approximately 250 additional beds.

BROADDUS: In Idaho, more people are currently in the hospital with coronavirus than at any other point in the pandemic. The governor rolling back the state's reopening plans, which includes limiting the size of gatherings, but not instituting a statewide mask mandate, despite the surge.

In Colorado, more than 2,200 new cases were reported Monday, the state's highest level since the pandemic started. The city of Denver warning another stay-at-home order may be necessary. Colorado currently has a statewide mask mandate. It's set to expire in a couple of weeks. The governor hasn't yet decided whether to extend that order.

GOV. JARED POLIS (D-CO) (via phone): There's a public health order that we issued that limits social gatherings to ten people or less and, very critically, no more than two households. So if people do need to feel the need to socialize, we totally understand that. But not a neighborhood block party.

BROADDUS: In the northeast, New Jersey seeing a rise in new cases. In Newark, nonessential businesses will be closing by 8 p.m. for the next two weeks starting today.

GOV. PHIL MURPHY (D-NJ): And we need to stop the rise of the curve and push these numbers back down and, folks, only we can do it together.

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BROADDUS: And here in Illinois, the governor issuing more restrictions starting tomorrow for parts of the state that continue to see a surge. He's also telling folks in Illinois not to let their guard down. This, as we head into the flu season -- John.

BERMAN: All right. Adrienne for us in Chicago. Adrienne, thank you very much.

Cases skyrocketing from Newark, New Jersey, to Idaho. You can't get further apart than that, but it's the same story. Hospitals overwhelmed. And a new study which raises questions about how long vaccines, if approved, might last. That's next.

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[06:13:49]

CAMEROTA: OK, so here's where the U.S. is this morning with the pandemic. Thirty-seven states across the country are reporting a rise in new coronavirus cases. The U.S. is now averaging nearly 70,000 new cases a day.

In El Paso, Texas, hospitals are being overwhelmed. One hospital there setting up emergency isolation tents in the parking lot for overflow patients.

Joining us now, CNN political correspondent Abby Phillip and Dr. Peter Hotez. He's the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

OK, Dr. Hotez, I want to start with you. Here's -- you know, obviously, new cases is one thing to look at, and then hospitalizations are an entirely different thing. And so here's where hospitalizations are this morning. Record hospitalizations are in the dark blue. So, look at all those states who are having to deal with that nightmare.

DR. PETER HOTEZ, DEAN, NATIONAL SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Yes, that's right, Alisyn. We're heading into a dark place for our nation over the next few months. The number of new cases continues to rise. We're in the 70,000s every day, new cases per day. We'll be at about 100,000 new cases per day, Dr. Fauci's original apocalyptic figure that he worried about, probably by last month. I think that's a real possibility that we have to face.

[06:15:10]

And again, it's not just the new cases. It's the hospitalizations. It's the -- and it's the positivity rate. All indicators are showing that our nation is plunging into a -- into a terrible space.

And unfortunately, we're doing this without much help or acknowledgement by the federal government. We heard from Mark Meadows yesterday that there really hasn't been a COVID-19 national response. And this means that it's going to fall to the governors.

My -- my thinking today is that the legacy of all of the governors of this country is going to come down to the next few months and how they respond and what they do to save lives.

Because the default is awful. The Institute for Health Metrics projects 511,000 American deaths by February 28. And this will fall on the governors, because we've been abandoned by the executive branch of the federal government, or much of it. And so it's up to the governors to put in these mask mandates, to really look at how to prevent hospital surges when the death rates really go up, and how to maintain social distancing. And this is how their time as governor is going to be defined, over the next four or five months, I predict.

BERMAN: On the subject of leadership, on the subject of messages that might make a difference, Abby, it's really interesting. Dr. Deborah Birx, remember her? Well, she's still working at trying to stop the spread of coronavirus. And she's been visiting cities all over the country.

And she visited Bismarck, North Dakota, the other day. And it was fascinating what she said. I'm going to read it to you here. She says, "Over the last 24 hours as we were here and we were in your grocery stores and your restaurants and, frankly, even your hotels, this is the least use of masks that we have seen in retail establishments of any place we have been. And we find that deeply unfortunate, because you don't know who's infected, and you don't know if you're infected yourself."

So that's a localized message that she delivered when she was there, Abby. But what kind of a difference would it make if that's the message we heard from the top from, say, the president who, instead, is going to these giant rallies that could very well be super-spreader events?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, it's pretty simple. Had the president not made mask wearing a political statement, we wouldn't be in this position.

The reason that we're in this position is because President Trump used mask wearing as a political cudgel against Joe Biden.

The White House is still doing it. The chief of staff, Mark Meadows, just a couple of days ago, just yesterday, actually, used the mask as part of a way of mocking Joe Biden, by saying that Biden is waving a white flag and waving a white mask.

At this point, this far into the -- into the pandemic, it's really just -- there's no justification for that kind of thing. But that's why we're in a situation where large swaths of the country don't believe in mask wearing. They view people who do wear masks, potentially, as being ideologically different, culturally different from them. That didn't have to be that way.

And at this point, though, John, I don't know that there's anything that President Trump can do about it. I think that's why you see him doubling down on this message. They've already committed to this path. And now I think it's just for -- a matter for the voters to decide how they want to -- how they want -- which path they want to choose.

CAMEROTA: Hey, Dr. Hotez, I want to talk to you about what's happening in El Paso. You're in Texas. And there's this -- the mayor of El Paso did a two-week analysis of where their outbreak stemmed from, you know, basically contact tracing. And I think that it turns some of our thinking upside down. So I want to get your analysis of this. What they found of looking at 2,400 cases, from October 6 to October

20, was 37 percent of them came from big-box stores. People having gone to big-box stores. Twenty-two and a half percent came from restaurants. Nineteen percent came from travel to Mexico. Ten percent parties and reunions. Seven and a half percent from gyms. Only 4 percent from large gatherings.

OK, that's, to my thinking, that is different than we thought. I mean, I would have put that upside-down. Large gatherings, number one percent. Big-box stores? You know, they space you out in line, you know, by six feet. You're not clustered right next to somebody at a big-box store. How can this be happening?

HOTEZ: Well, it all -- it all gets down to your use of face masks in public settings, and this has -- still has not permeated the culture of a large part of the state of Texas.

So if you're going into box stores and no one has masks on, and I've seen that in many cases, then that's -- you're still going to get COVID-19.

[06:20:02]

And there is a lot of virus in the atmosphere, in the aerosol, and -- and that's why we're going to have to really look at what is going to happen to El Paso over the next few weeks.

I'm so worried about these hospital surges that we're seeing. I don't want to reproduce what we saw in south Texas over the summer.

So we may have to implement strict measures, which would include -- especially around social distancing, especially around having mask mandates.

And it's not just El Paso. If you look at what's going on in New Mexico now and Las Cruces and all of the border towns, we're looking at a very ominous situation.

So what we're seeing now in the middle of the country is, it's spreading across the northern part of -- part of the nation. In Minnesota, in Iowa, the mountain west. But also now, in El Paso and New Mexico. And pretty soon it's going to be over the entire nation unless we can get, as I said, the governors to really double down and make up for the lack of a federal government and implement all of those measures that we need to do.

BERMAN: Dr. Hotez, one more question. There's this study out of Britain, and I think it is important and people need to hear from you on it, which has to do with the amount of antibodies in your body after exposure to coronavirus, after you necessarily have it.

And what they found in the study in Britain -- this was just published -- was the amount of antibodies has diminished appreciably over about a four-month period. You have less of it in your body. And antibodies, obviously, such an important factor in building an immune response. What does that tell us about how long you might have an immunity if

you've had coronavirus, or how long you'll have an immunity if you're vaccinated, ultimately?

HOTEZ: Yes, this is a study of 350,000 people in the U.K., where the original -- it was done over the summer. The original antibody positivity rate when they started they study was 6 percent. It declined to around 4.5 percent.

So antibodies do wane, in terms of the amount of antibody in your system. It may not be such terrible news, because as Akiko Kurosaki (ph), immunologist at Yale, and others have pointed out, we still have those individuals who have been infected with the virus, still have memory B cells, long lasting T-cells. So they may quickly respond if there's a reinfection. It doesn't necessarily mean they're totally susceptible. But the point is, we don't know for sure. So that's point one.

Point two is, even though those individuals have lowered antibody levels, the fact that they've seen this virus before probably means they're going to respond pretty well to the vaccine. That's my hope.

So this is why we're going to have to vaccinate both previously infected individuals and individuals who have not yet been infected.

And the hope is, even if antibodies wane after the vaccine, that we'll also still have those memory B-cells and T-cells. But one of the things that we don't know, John, is these are brand-new technologies in the vaccines coming out of Operation Warp Speed, at least the first ones. The MR&A vaccine, the adenovirus-based vaccines. So we have no long-term experience with these vaccines in human populations.

And so what everyone is wondering is what's going to be what's called the durability of protection? How long that protection will last. And it may not only depend on the level of antibodies. It will depend on those memory B-cells and T-cells. So there's going to have to be a lot of situational awareness over the course of a year in whether individuals need to be boosted again with those vaccines or whether it's the same vaccine or a different vaccine.

CAMEROTA: Dr. Peter Hotez, thank you very much for all of that information.

Abby Phillip, stick around, please. We have more questions for you. Because there was a Supreme Court ruling last night that will have a major impact on voting for Wisconsin. And it's a blow for Democrats. That's next.

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[06:28:02]

BERMAN: Breaking overnight, the U.S. Supreme Court weighing in on voting in the crucial swing state of Wisconsin, effectively shortening the deadline when ballots must be received by. The court affirmed a ruling that ballots must be received by election

day. Not postmarked on election day, but received by then. That's a shorter deadline than many states, which allow the postmark to be the standard. And they count ballots for days received after November 3.

Kristen Holmes joins us now live with the very latest here. This could lead to many ballots being thrown out, even if they are mailed before November 3.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. I mean, the bottom line here is that thousands of ballots could potentially be affected in a critical swing state.

So let's talk about what exactly happened here, because it's the same issue we saw in Pennsylvania, but a different outcome in the Supreme Court.

So in Wisconsin, Democrats had asked for a six-day extension, to be allowed to count ballots six days afterwards as long as they were postmarked on or before election day. The Supreme Court, in a conservative majority, 5-3, rejecting that request. Now, of course, in Pennsylvania they granted that request.

The notable difference here was Chief Justice John Roberts siding with conservatives in this case versus the more liberal-leaning justices in the Pennsylvania case.

So what makes the two cases different? Well, to the people who are actually affected by it, probably not much. But to Chief Justice Roberts, there was a huge difference.

In Pennsylvania, this had been allowed by state courts and had gone up through the state court system. In Wisconsin, this ruling was from a lower federal court judge. And according to Roberts, he said that this case represented -- represented federal intrusion on state lawmaking practices.

But, again, could potentially affect thousands of votes. And the Wisconsin Election Commission, they know that. They blasted out a warning shortly after this ruling, telling people this deadline for absentee ballots is quickly approaching. Make sure that you get your ballot in. And of course, that's what we're telling all of our viewers. Make sure you vote. Vote early, vote often.

BERMAN: Well don't vote often. Vote early.

HOLMES: Yes, don't vote often. Don't vote often, just vote early.