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Moderna's COVID-19 Vaccine is 94.5 Percent Effective; Pandemic Raging Across the U.S. as Trump Blocks Biden Transition; Biden-Harris Advisors to Meet with Drug Companies This Week; Coronavirus Surge in the U.S. Puts a Major Strain on Hospitals; U.S. Stocks Poised for Record Highs After Moderna Vaccine Update. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired November 16, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:01:05]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Good Monday morning, everyone. Glad you're with us, I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

We begin this morning with breaking good news in the hunt for a coronavirus vaccine. Drug giant Moderna just released the first analysis of its vaccine and says its phase three trial tested on tens of thousands of subjects shows the vaccine is a remarkable 94.5 percent effective. We should note Moderna is a joint project with the National Institutes of Health. It's very similar to Pfizer's vaccine early data results.

More on when it may be ready for the public, you and me, in just a moment.

The promising news comes as the nation faces its worst days so far in this pandemic. Nearly 70,000 people were hospitalized with the virus on Sunday, more than ever before in this country, 15 states reporting record hospitalizations, the nation just topping 11 million confirmed infections.

HARLOW: Right. And when you think about that 11 million number consider this for context. It took the United States 98 days after the first known coronavirus case here to reach a million cases. That was back in April, but it only took six days for us to go from 10 million to 11 million cases in the last week. All of this is what is prompting state and local officials to reissue tougher restrictions to try to curb the spread.

It's also pushing members of the president's own Coronavirus Task Force to urge him to work and work now with President-elect Joe Biden. They warned that a transition delay could put the distribution of a vaccine when it's ready at risk.

There is a lot of news on this front this morning, so let's begin with our senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.

Good morning, Elizabeth. So Moderna's vaccine even more effective than Pfizer's already good number?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Actually, they look like they're about the same. Pfizer said more than 90 percent effective, Moderna is saying 94.5 so they're very, very close to one another.

These numbers are so stunning, Jim and Poppy. People were hoping for 60 percent effective, 70 percent, 80 percent was like a dream, so to see these numbers is really incredible, plus in both cases there were only mild or relatively mild side effects, nothing serious, and in the case of Moderna's vaccine it doesn't require any special handling. You can put it in a freezer that doctor's offices and pharmacies already have. It's the same temperature as what we have in our freezers at home.

You can put it with your ice cream, of course you shouldn't, but that's the temperature that they're aiming for which makes things a lot easier. So let's take a look at what Moderna's numbers look like. They did a phase three clinical trial and 15,000 people were given a placebo. That's just a shot of saline that does nothing. Months went by, 90 of those people became sick with COVID-19.

Now an equal number, another 15,000 people were given the vaccine and among those study subjects only five became sick with COVID. And what's really notable here as well is that of those five who became sick with COVID, none of them became severely ill, but when you look at the folks who received the placebo who got no protection basically, 11 of those folks became severely ill with COVID.

Now Moderna just heard about this data yesterday afternoon. An independent data and safety monitoring board gave them a call and told them the good news. I spoke yesterday with Dr. Tal Zaks. He's the chief medical officer at Moderna.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: Tell me how did it feel to hear that number, 94.5 percent?

DR. TAL ZAKS, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, MODERNA: Elizabeth, it's one of the greatest moments of my life and my career. It is absolutely amazing to me to be able to develop this vaccine and see the ability to prevent symptomatic disease with such high efficacy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: Now, Pfizer and Moderna both still have to apply to the FDA for authorization on their vaccines.

[09:05:04]

I spoke last night with Dr. Anthony Fauci. He said that he thinks that shots could start going into arms in the latter part of December -- Jim, Poppy.

HARLOW: That's really great news. And we need it at this Monday morning. Elizabeth. thank you for that. Now let's get to some sad news and that is the surge across the

country of infections, the situation particularly dire in the Dakotas where both COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths are spiking.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Remember when folks said this was just a big city disease infection? Clearly not.

CNN's Lucy Kafanov is in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, this morning.

Lucy, several states in that area, large rural communities, seeing a similar jump in cases.

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. I mean, the numbers, Jim and Poppy, are terrible all across the country. Dozens of states seeing a record number of hospitalizations, across the U.S. 13 straight days of more than 100,000 cases and the deaths on Sunday the highest that we've seen since May.

Well, let's get into some of those numbers. Now across the country we have 44 states reporting a rise of some sort in infections. In the past week alone states like Idaho, Wyoming, Iowa and South Dakota reporting a positivity rate of more than 40 percent. Here in South Dakota it's a staggering 58 percent if you look at that past week. The state also reporting nearly 2,000 new cases a day over the past week and hospitalizations have been skyrocketing and that's frankly taking a toll especially on the medical staff.

We just talked to one doctor here who says, you know, the doctors are doing OK, they're trained to do this job, the nurses are well-trained, too, but they are so overwhelmed because of the amount of patients they have to look after. The patients are sick with COVID do require more care and that's taking an emotional toll on a lot of these frontline health care workers.

Now when it comes to the state of South Dakota, the governor has chosen -- the Republican governor has chosen a rather lax approach. There is no statewide mask mandate, there is no, you know, shutdowns or wind downs of the economy of any kind. This as cases continue to rise, and that really is taking a toll. We're seeing that in these high numbers, these high statistics.

South Dakota breaking records in almost every level and, you know, anecdotally I can tell you we've been in the state for the past day. Not a lot of folks out on the streets wearing masks. The governor says it's up to the people to decide but we're frankly not seeing them do that.

Jim, Poppy, back to you.

SCIUTTO: When will people learn? Lucy Kafanov, thanks very much.

Let's speak now to Dr. Amy Compton-Philips. She is the chief clinical officer at Providence Health System in Seattle.

Doctor, always good to have you on.

DR. AMY COMPTON-PHILIPS, CHIEF CLINICAL OFFICER, PROVIDENCE HEALTH SYSTEM: Thanks.

SCIUTTO: So we've had two good bits of news in the last several days on vaccines, Moderna and Pfizer. For folks watching at home, how soon can you and I and our families expect to -- obviously doctors come first, but general population, what's your sense of when this will become widely available, these vaccines?

COMPTON-PHILIPS: Well, I really believe it's going to be in probably end of Q1 of 2021. And the reason that is, is, you know, we have to get it for health care workers first and first responders, the people who if they get it not only themselves go down and can't take care of the public but also can pass it on to other people. And so really phasing out how we get it to health care workers and then to high risk people and then into the public is the path forward.

HARLOW: Talk about this being an MRNA vaccine, both Moderna's and Pfizer's, and that's important because one has never been approved before. So if these get FDA approval, how significant is that? You've talked about this maybe indicating where the future is for vaccines in general.

COMPTON-PHILIPS: It is a great thing. You know, something that has been kind of lost in the fact that, you know, we've been unable to control this virus here in the U.S. is that the science, getting to the vaccine, getting to the therapeutics has been astounding. The MRNA vaccine hasn't been done before, and so this is a new method of creating a vaccine where a small amount of genetic material is covered in a nano particle, and then injected into a person and then the human body actually makes the thing, makes the antigen that the response is created to. So it's a simpler manufacturing technique and it allows us to go fast in vaccine development.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

COMPTON-PHILIPS: And so this is huge.

SCIUTTO: All right. So the sad fact is that the president expresses no interest in tackling this surge in new infections around the country and it's more than two months before -- by the Constitution he's got to hand the keys over to Joe Biden. Where does that leave the president-elect and his team in terms of taking action to hem in this spread?

COMPTON-PHILIPS: Unfortunately now is the time we need action and it's more than a couple of months, as you said, for us to have a change in administration and the change in national leadership.

[09:10:09]

And so at this point we're in the same place we've been since, you know, January of 2020 where governors have to take the lead and so I do hope that we can continue. There is light at the end of the tunnel. It's just that the tunnel is really treacherous between here and there, and we have to, have to, have to get control of this virus to save lives between now and the time the vaccine is developed. HARLOW: The U.S. surgeon general, Jerome Adams, said something this

weekend that was striking. Let me play it and get your reaction on the other side.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JEROME ADAMS, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: COVID seems to spread much more easily than the flu and it causes much more serious illnesses in some people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: We knew or I knew the latter part of that. I didn't know the first part. So this COVID spreads even more easily than the flu?

COMPTON-PHILIPS: It seems to, and it's the reason why we are wearing masks during COVID season and we don't wear masks during the normal flu season. That people particularly because there's so much less immunity out there in the public not only can spread it to others but also receive it much more easily and allow it to get into the respiratory tract and cause disease.

HARLOW: It's always --

SCIUTTO: Masks work.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: They work.

HARLOW: Hundred percent. Dr. Amy Compton-Philips, so good to have you. Thanks a lot.

We have a lot ahead still to come. President-elect Biden's team set to meet with vaccine makers like Pfizer this week. Still no meeting, though, with the outgoing administration. How does that all impact our COVID response right now? We'll talk about it.

And President Obama speaking out in a new interview, his message to President Trump, do what is right for the country and concede the race. We'll have more from that interview next.

SCIUTTO: And Georgia's largest county has finished its hand recount of the election results as President Trump continues to falsely claim fraud in that state and elsewhere. We're going to have Georgia's lieutenant governor, a Republican, to discuss. That's just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:15:00]

HARLOW: Welcome back. So hours from now, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will deliver remarks on the economy and economic recovery. This comes as we're also learning that the Biden transition team's top scientific advisors are going to meet with Pfizer and other vaccine --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

HARLOW: Makers this week.

SCIUTTO: CNN's Jessica Dean, she's following the Biden team in Delaware. Jessica, in effect, the Biden team is proceeding with the transition without the current administration's help on COVID, on economic issues, et cetera. Are they confident that can do the trick?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, they're trying as hard as they can. They are doing what they can around the parameters that are in front of them, a reminder to everyone that the transition process has been stalled because the president has not conceded and the federal office that needs to sign off on the formal transition process has yet to do so.

Which means the Biden transition team still cannot contact federal officials, the White House Coronavirus Taskforce, any of these people that they need to be talking to, to coordinate their response to the coronavirus pandemic.

And that's critical for a number of reasons. Number one, you want a seamless transition, but now, we know that there will likely be vaccines that will be available, and they have to distribute those vaccines, which is an incredibly large complicated project. They want to be getting started on it right now. Incoming Chief of Staff Ron Klain talked a little bit about this yesterday. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RON KLAIN, CHIEF OF STAFF OF PRESIDENT-ELECT, JOE BIDEN: We now have the possibility, we need to see if it gets approved, of a vaccine starting perhaps in December-January.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Right --

KLAIN: There are people at HHS making plans to implement that vaccine. Our experts need to talk to those people as soon as possible so nothing drops in this change of power we're going to have on January 20th.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: So, they know that is the task before them. Right now, they're doing what they can, as you mentioned. The scientific advisors for the transition team will be meeting with drug makers including Pfizer and others this week, trying to begin to work out a plan for a vaccine distribution. Again, it's going to depend on a vaccine.

Some of them may need to be stored in colder temperatures, there may be multiple doses, things like that beyond also just getting it out to millions and millions of people and coming up with a process for that, you guys. We also know that the Biden transition team really hoping to zero in on things on day one. Things like more production of PPE, more contact tracing, better testing, these are all things they need to be talking to federal officials about, and right now, they simply can't do that. Poppy and Jim.

SCIUTTO: Jessica Dean with the Biden team, thanks very much. With us now, Brittany Shepherd; national politics reporter for Yahoo and David Swerdlick; assistant editor for "The Washington Post", good to have you both on. David, the Republican excuse, if you want to call it that or argument for indulging the president's false election fraud claims had been, let the legal process play out. Now, the Trump team is losing virtually across the board in these cases here, yet the president continues to call fraud. Is there a new timeline that you can see for GOP lawmakers to publicly accept the election results or are they on for the ride now?

DAVID SWERDLICK, ASSISTANT EDITOR, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yes, good morning, Jim. Look, as you said, the Republicans have not convinced any judges in any of these contested states that they've got a serious case, and yet most of the Republican leadership is indulging in the president, coddling him really. But when you're talking about President Trump's ego and his willingness to do things that serve him rather than the greater good, there is no limit.

[09:20:00]

I think you've got that hard out of inauguration day, but because of the pandemic, there is no time to waste. And while the president tweets and golfs, clearly the Biden-Harris transition team is saying, look, we've got to go on about the business of at least trying to govern so that when they hit their first 100 days, they'll be able to do as much as they can, and in part, that means doing things that Jessica was reporting on, possibly meeting with pharmas, trying their best to get that access to people currently working on the pandemic so that they can move forward as quickly as possible as cases rise across the country.

HARLOW: It is amazing, Brittany, that even just on Friday, nine of the Trump team's legal cases were either dropped or dismissed. Nine of them. I mean, as Jake Tapper put it aptly this weekend, they can't sue straight. But despite this pretty much, as Jim said, Republicans are standing by the president on this. President -- former President Obama was asked about it on "60 Minutes" last night, here is what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm more troubled by the fact that other Republican officials who clearly know better are going along with this, are humoring him in this fashion. It is one more step in delegitimizing not just the incoming Biden administration, but democracy generally.

This democracy doesn't work if we don't have an informed citizenry. This democracy doesn't work if we don't have responsible elected officials at other levels who are willing to call the president when he's not doing something right, call him on it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: What's the long tail impact of it, Brittany beyond this transition?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

BRITTANY SHEPHERD, NATIONAL POLITICS REPORTER, YAHOO NEWS: Well, Poppy, I think a lot of it is what President Obama was saying. How the rest of the world is going to be viewing a Biden-Harris administration and America writ large.

Because of course, there's impacts on coronavirus legislation, we hear the Biden campaign is knocking their heads against the wall of really trying to get in through the front door, and not having to back channel or having to hit their books and try to call everyone they can.

I mean, look what happened just on Sunday, there was a really big Asia trade deal which China was the main one at the negotiating treat -- table, and a lot of people in that deal were U.S. allies as South Korea, Japan. The Biden campaign right now is shut out of those conversations, they're shut out of being back channeled on briefings. And a lot of authoritarian countries might look at the U.S. and say, oh, they're going to be able to be bullied around, to be pushed around by an outgoing president in the lame duck portion. And I think it makes a lot of Democrats --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

SHEPHERD: Very nervous because what are they inheriting? I think that is just the large question that makes them a bit terrified.

SCIUTTO: David, the irony is, right, when Biden takes over January 20th, the country will be in the depths sadly of a massive surge in this virus, but at that point possibly, just a couple of months away from relief in the wide availability of perhaps more than one vaccine at this point. Pfizer, Moderna, we'll see what stands with others. Might he expect an uptick, right, in those first few months of his administration, sort of getting to the other side of the worst of this?

SWERDLICK: Yes, Jim, I think there is a couple of things at play. I think we are expecting an uptick, hopefully it will be less than we expect, but that's what people should brace themselves for.

And the Biden-Harris administration is going to be focusing on this issue in their first 100 days, if not their first year, especially until that vaccine comes online, which means that the American public has to get ready for the fact that this is going to be issue one, not, you know, environmental laws or tax law or tinkering with Obamacare. It's going to be all hands to the pump on this.

The good news for the Biden-Harris administration as you said is, one, it's starting to look like there's good news on the vaccine front from the pharma community, but in terms of what the government will have to do to roll out the vaccine and distribute it once it does come online, the silver-lining might be that there are so many people in the Biden- Harris transition and probably in the administration who have experience in government, in contrast to the way that the Trump administration was set up. These are people who went through H1N1, Ebola, the gulf oil spill, they've dealt with --

SCIUTTO: Yes --

SWERDLICK: Crisis before and that's going to be important.

HARLOW: You were, Brittany, in Delaware over the weekend covering the president-elect and his team. A really interesting headline out this morning from Arlette Saenz that you witnessed, I'm sure is that about half or a little more than half of the transition team is diverse.

And I asked about this in the context of how important it is to have diversity in crisis, right? When you're talking about black and brown communities that are more adversely affected from COVID. How do you think we're going to see that play out as we work on getting people vaccinated?

[09:25:00]

SHEPHERD: Well, Poppy, you're right. It's so important, especially when we're talking about coronavirus, right? Because front line and side-line communities are affected disproportionately, those folks are mostly non-white.

You're going to hear pushing from advisors, I think even from Kamala Harris herself, that there might be PSAs with, you know, folks who are reaching out to people of color, saying, you know, maybe don't be afraid of the vaccine, here are ways that you can go out -- and connect folks to resources because I think a lot of people who are information scarce are also folks who are low income, might be people of color and might already be distrustful of the science that's coming out. So I think they're really going to try to close that gap in the next couple of months.

HARLOW: Yes, OK --

SCIUTTO: There's been a deliberate attack on the science, right, from the highest levels of government for months now. Brittany Shepherd, David Swerdlick, thanks so much.

SWERDLICK: Thanks.

SCIUTTO: Well, Texas is seeing a record number of new coronavirus infections as well. Hospitals there quickly running out of available ICU beds. We're going to take you there live coming up.

SWERDLICK: We are also moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street this Monday morning. Futures are mixed at this point, but stocks poised to hit record highs of course, this on the Moderna news, saying that their COVID-19 vaccine is highly effective. Investor optimism over vaccines helped propel stocks on Friday as well. We'll keep a close eye on the opening bell, stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)