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Britain Gives First Doses of Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine; U.S. Reports 15,600+ Deaths in First Week of December; Trump to Hold Vaccine Summit without Two Main Vaccine Developers; Biden to Nominate Retired Gen. Lloyd Austin as Defense Secretary. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired December 08, 2020 - 06:00   ET

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

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Without substantial mitigation, the middle of January can be a really dark time for us.

[05:59:29]

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): If we don't get the rate under control, we will have to go back to shut-down.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: President-elect Biden is poised to introduce his new health team.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are assessing how many doses were ordered, what the timeline is for delivery, and what the current administration's plans are to deliver those doses.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: There is a summit happening on vaccines here today at the White House. Pfizer and Moderna are not going to be present at this event.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The reason he's not talking about the pandemic is he's actually not interested in doing the job of president.

(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, December 8, I believe. Why not? Six o'clock here in New York.

We begin with breaking news. This morning, Britain becomes the first western nation to begin inoculating people against coronavirus. A 90- year-old woman was the first to get the Pfizer vaccine.

Back here in the U.S., the FDA will consider emergency approval of that vaccine on Thursday. If it is granted, Americans could get vaccinated within days, but states say they do not think they will receive enough doses to fully vaccinate top priority people. "The New York Times" reports that the Trump administration turned down

an offer from Pfizer to buy more doses. The administration says that's not true.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So as we wake up this morning, 102,000 Americans are in the hospital with coronavirus. That's a record. It's like the entire population of South Bend, Indiana, in the hospital at once.

An average of 2,200 Americans dying every day. Twenty-two hundred. And for all that death and suffering, the outgoing president is consumed with just one person, himself.

His energy, such as it is, is almost completely focused on throwing out the results of the election he lost. Again, he is literally trying to undermine democracy to overturn an election in public as he holds maskless indoor events in small rooms in the White House.

No public concern over a single life lost, but abundant whining about his own personal political loss.

Overnight, CNN confirmed that the president made multiple calls to the speaker of the House in Pennsylvania about that state's election results. Again, as far as we know, no calls to the family of a coronavirus victim, but abundant masquerading as some kind of victim himself.

This is not leadership. It's theater. Deadly, undemocratic theater.

And breaking overnight, CNN confirms that President-elect Joe Biden will announce the nomination of retired Army General Lloyd Austin to be his secretary of defense. That announcement could come as soon as today.

We begin, though, in the United Kingdom. CNN's Max Foster live in Cardiff, Wales, with our top story and the news of coronavirus pioneer Maggie Keenan. The 90-year-old jewelry shop assistant has made history.

MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. I'm actually coming to you from over the border in Wales, where the vaccinations also started today.

But I can't tell you where I was this morning, because they're keeping the vaccination center secret, concerned that people might turn up outside, queue up and try to get in to get the vaccination.

I think it's fair to say, there isn't the same skepticism about vaccines in this country as there are in other parts of the world, such as the United States.

What I saw was frontline health workers at the front of the queue for this vaccine. Over the border in England, it was over-80's getting priority, including Maggie, as you described there, who made history today as a 90-year-old, the first person in the world to receive the Pfizer vaccine outside of trial. And here's her message for the world today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MAGGIE KEENAN, FIRST TO RECEIVE PFIZER VACCINE: I say go for it. Go for it. Because it's free. And it's the best thing that's ever happened at the moment. So do, please, go for it. That's all I can say, you know? If I can do it, well, so can you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Coming in a close second to Maggie, though, I'll have to tell you, is a gentleman. His name was William Shakespeare, would you believe? What's in a name?

BERMAN: Actually. I figured the third person will be James Bond at the rate we're going.

Max, once people are vaccinated, what do they receive?

FOSTER: They receive a card like this. It's just a card with details of the vaccine on and when you received it. The reason it's getting quite a lot of attention is there's a bit of a debate here about whether or not this may be used as an immunization passport to give you access to places, to jobs, because you can go up to them and say, I've been vaccinated. And there's a huge political debate about that.

There's something concerned that's something stealthy going along here. The government saying it's not. It's just an appointment card.

The other thing I'll point out to you, as well, John, I wanted to say to you, is something that I noticed this morning I wasn't quite aware of, is that the vaccine doesn't come pre-prepared. You have to mix it on site as it arrives within hours. So actually, at the site here, they had to have a team of pharmacists in place, and they don't normally have to do that. So it does show just another level of the logistical challenge in getting this vaccine out.

BERMAN: It is complicated. Right now in the U.K., it's just being administered at hospitals. That will change over time.

I have to say, it is quite a thing, Max, to see this actually happening now. People receiving the vaccine outside the test environment. Such a milestone. Thank you so much for your reporting.

[06:05:03]

This morning 47 states in the U.S. are seeing coronavirus deaths rise. Look at that map. Everywhere in red on that map, just so you know, is seeing an increase in deaths week to week, more than 10 percent. The deep red is higher than 50 percent.

In Massachusetts, hospitals are now scaling back elective procedures to handle the influx of patients.

CNN's Alexandra Field, live at a hospital in Worcester that's now taking patients -- Alexandra.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey there, John. Good morning.

Look, hospitals all across the country need relief right now. And that's what's happening right here in Massachusetts. They've actually reopened a field hospital at a convention center that was used earlier in the pandemic. It is again accepting patients from all over the state in order to take pressure off of other hospitals. That as we see hospitalizations hit another record high across the country.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FIELD (voice-over): A race against time in the United States as new daily cases of coronavirus surge, straining many health systems.

DR. PETER HOTEZ, DEAN, NATIONAL SCHOOL OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: This is where death rates really skyrocket, is when you start overwhelming ICU staffs. I mean, they're exhausted already from the whole year.

FIELD: Here in Massachusetts, this field hospital in Worcester's already accepting patients.

GOV. CHARLIE BAKER (R-MA): Even with these additional resources, we can't afford to continue to strain the hospital system at this rate.

FIELD: Starting Friday, doctors will no longer perform any elective procedures that can be safely postponed within the state.

Across the U.S., over 102,000 people are hospitalized with the coronavirus. In California, as elsewhere, it's not only about finding hospital beds, but also having enough staff to care for the sick.

CARMELA COYLE, PRESIDENT AND CEO, CALIFORNIA HOSPITAL ASSOCIATION: The limiting factor, the most important factor here in caring for people who have the COVID-19 disease, are the nurses, the staff. That's what's short, and that's what's different this time around than it was during our summer surge.

FIELD: Michigan extending its restrictions on some businesses and gatherings for 12 days.

GOV. GRETCHEN WHITMER (D-MI): Right now 79 percent of all hospital beds are occupied. We cannot risk overwhelming our hospitals further.

FIELD: And as the United States nears 200,000 new coronavirus cases per day, Dr. Anthony Fauci warns that number could only increase in the weeks to come.

FAUCI: The blip from Thanksgiving isn't even here yet, so we're getting those staggering numbers of new cases and hospitalizations before we even feel the full brunt of the Thanksgiving holiday.

FIELD: In New York City, where almost 200,000 elementary students returned to in-person learning, the governor says indoor dining will be suspended across the state unless hospitalization rates stabilize. CUOMO: If we don't get the rate under control and you are going to

overwhelm your hospitals, we will have go back to shut-down.

FIELD: Even with vaccines expected soon, health experts say now is not time to relax.

DR. CELINE GOUNDER, BIDEN TRANSITION ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER: While there is light at the end of the tunnel, the tunnel is not short. And that if we do not double down now on the masks and the social distancing, we really will continue to see transmission.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FIELD: Officials in every state are working on their plans to distribute Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, which will hopefully receive that FDA emergency use authorization sometime later this week.

Meanwhile, though, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar is assuring that tens of millions of Americans will be vaccinated by inauguration day, January 20 -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Alex, thank you very much for all of that reporting.

So President Trump will hold a summit today to try to tout the development of a vaccine, but representatives from Pfizer and Moderna are not planning to participate.

CNN's Joe Johns is live at the White House with more. Why is that, Joe?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Yes, you're right. Big event here at the White House. They're calling it a vaccine summit. We're going to see some of the top officials in the United States government involved in rolling out the vaccines. Some of the companies involved in it. We're going to be -- hear from some of the president's favorite governors are going to be here.

But it's also notable for who's not going to be here. That includes Moderna as well as Pfizer, the companies that created these vaccines.

So why is that? The government says those companies are involved in the emergency use authorization process going on this week, as a matter of fact, and it wouldn't look right.

That's certainly true, but it's also true that there is a report in "The New York Times" today indicating that, in fact, these companies including Pfizer, Pfizer especially, did not give the government a bunch of this vaccine, a huge quantity of this vaccine, because the government said it would not buy it.

[06:10:04]

The government denies this report in "The New York Times" but also says it wouldn't have been prudent to use government money on a vaccine that they didn't know, at the time, whether it would work or not.

The president also is expected to sign an executive order today prioritizing vaccines for Americans. This is part of his America-first initiative. Not clear at all how he's going to accomplish that. No teeth in this executive order.

But it does raise an important issue, and that is the question of whether there's going to be enough vaccine to go around, given the demand across the world. The administration essentially saying there's nothing to worry about here, but as you know, the administration has said that before, and it didn't always work out during the pandemic.

Alisyn, back to you.

CAMEROTA: OK, Joe, thank you for all the reporting from the White House.

So, as the United Kingdom launches its vaccination program today, Senator -- Republican Senator Ron Johnson has invited a vaccine skeptic to testify today in the Senate. Why is he doing that? That's next.

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[06:15:17]

CAMEROTA: Breaking news: Britain becoming the first western nation to launch its vaccine program this morning, immunizing a 90-year-old woman who reports she feels great.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, meanwhile, warns that the middle of January could be, quote, "a really dark time" for the United States. The first week of December has seen almost 16,000 deaths here in the U.S. and more than a million new cases.

Joining us now is Dr. Peter Hotez. He's the Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and co- director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.

Dr. Hotez, great to see you. I'm just curious about your take on the split screen here. So Britain, vaccinating its first patients, and this morning, today, here in the U.S., Senator Ron Johnson is holding this hearing with a doctor who is not an infectious disease specialist. I believe she's an internist. She is a skeptic of vaccines, but she believes strongly in hydroxychloroquine, which the FDA, as you know, retracted their emergency use authorization, and that's what she will be touting.

HOTEZ: Yes. It's quite a contrast.

Well, first of all, congratulations to the British people getting their first vaccines for COVID-19. That's really exciting, because this is what we're going to need, ultimately, to get our way out of this awful epidemic and pandemic. On the United States side, our Virbac committee will be meeting, I

think, December 10. That's on Thursday, so in a couple of days. And hopefully, the USFDA can begin releasing vaccine through emergency use authorization maybe a day or two after that. So maybe by this weekend or early next week.

And it comes not a moment too soon, because we're looking at pretty soon reaching that same milestone, tragically, of 300,000 Americans would have lost their lives in this epidemic by next week. So it's just beyond heartbreaking.

But again, in the U.S., we still continue to court conspiracists. We still continue to court the anti-vaccine movement, inviting -- I think -- I think this person represents the APS, which is -- it's not the American Medical Association. It's -- I think it's a far-right political group of about 5,000 physicians, maybe other healthcare personnel that, you know, I -- I haven't heard of this group in a while. I remember in the past they were discrediting links between HIV and AIDS, saying that AIDS wasn't really caused by the HIV virus. And linking abortions to breast cancer. All sorts of crazy things.

And -- and you know, the point is Congress has -- the U.S. Congress has access to the world's greatest scientists. I mean, any -- any one of the national academies, you know, including myself, would be more than happy to come to Washington to speak to Congress. We would do it -- we would do it at our own expense.

And rather than tap someone from the National Academies of Medicine or National Academies of Science, they bring in conspiracy theorists and -- or conspiracy theorist groups. It makes absolutely no sense.

You know, one of the stories of this, Alisyn, is -- of this -- of this epidemic is going to be that, yes, the coronavirus killed, so far, 300,000 Americans, but it was enabled by anti-science groups that -- that downplayed the severity of the epidemic; touted spectacular cures like hydroxychloroquine, which don't work; which tried to attribute COVID deaths to other causes so that people didn't believe this epidemic was real. They thought COVID-19 was a hoax, especially in the middle part of the country where I am. So it's ultimately death by COVID-19 and death by anti-science.

BERMAN: Yes. Look, this doctor who's testifying today says -- says there's no evidence that masks, lockdowns or social distancing work.

I actually think this says much more about Ron Johnson and the Republicans holding this hearing than it does about this fringe group. You can find a fringe group anywhere. But this tells you what Ron Johnson is thinking about and where his head is here.

Other major news overnight. The "New York Times" was the first to report, Dr. Hotez, that the White House did -- chose not to order more than 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine when it had a chance over the summer.

The White House disputes elements of this story, but basically, they did 100 million. They wanted an option to order more later, but right now, Pfizer is saying, Look, we've got orders in from other parts of the world. We can't accommodate more than the 100 million you've ordered right now. What do you make of this story?

[06:20:00]

HOTEZ: Well, it makes sense in the sense that this technology is still brand-new, the MRNA technology. And it's -- this -- it's still not a mature technology in ability to scale up manufacturing.

I mean, for example, our vaccine, which is a recombinant protein vaccine, a much older technology, in India, with our collaborators at Bio-E, they're producing 1.2 billion doses, I think, without breaking out into much of a sweat. So that's the advantage of some of the older technologies.

This is a new technology you can get to the clinic very fast. But in terms of the ability to scale up, it's -- it's not as robust at this point. So I think we may have missed an opportunity there.

Look, John, we're going to need at least four or five different vaccines in order to vaccinate the -- most of the population of the United States or to reach that 60 to 80 percent threshold that we estimated, with a group at City University of New York, is needed to interrupt transmission of the virus.

So these first vaccines, the MRNA vaccines, are -- are a great start, but we're going to need at least three or four other vaccines to add on top of those. And I hope we can move on that pretty quickly.

CAMEROTA: I mean, Joe Johns was basically saying just now in his report that they felt it wouldn't be prudent to order more back in the summer, before they knew if it would work.

Now, mind you, they did order 96 million hydroxychloroquine doses that they're now sitting on in the national stockpile and they spent millions of dollars on. Quickly, Doctor.

HOTEZ: Yes, but it doesn't make any sense, Alisyn, because, you know, the whole point of Operation Warp Speed, right, was to manufacture at risk. That was the term that government officials were always using. We're going to scale up production of these vaccines without knowing if they work or not, because if we have to wait until the end, then things will move too slowly. And that was the whole -- that was the whole reason for the warp speed part. It's not the length of the -- it's not short-changing the clinical trials. It's manufacturing at risk.

So by definition, you knew you were going to have to purchase vaccines without knowing whether or not they were going to be effective. And fortunately, it's turned out both Pfizer and Moderna are. And I think the others will be, as well. So -- so there's some piece missing to that story that I don't quite understand.

CAMEROTA: Dr. Hotez, really interesting. Thank you very much for all that information.

HOTEZ: Thank you.

BERMAN: All right. President-elect Joe Biden will nominate the first black man to lead the Defense Department. We'll tell you about retired General Lloyd Austin next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:26:42]

BERMAN: Breaking overnight, sources tell CNN that President-elect Joe Biden will nominate retired Army General Lloyd Austin to be defense secretary. If confirmed, Austin would be the first black Pentagon chief.

CNN's Jessica Dean live in Wilmington, Delaware, this morning. This is an historic nomination, but there will be hurdles along the way, Jessica.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, there's a lot of things to unpack here, John. Good morning to you.

We are learning that President-elect Joe Biden will tap retired Army General Lloyd Austin to become his next secretary of defense. Austin was previously the commander of U.S. Central Command, and as you mentioned, if he is confirmed by the Senate, he would be the first black man to serve in this post.

Now, he's also going to need a waiver from Congress, because he's only been retired for four years, and federal law states it has to be seven. These are rare, but they did issue one to James Mattis during the Trump administration, so that's something that's going to have to work its way through Congress and the Senate, once that confirmation process gets underway.

We're told that Biden reached out to Austin over the weekend, offering the job. He accepted. He'd become the top contender last week. And what it really came down to, like so many of President-elect Joe Biden's choices so far, is their relationship.

Biden, we're told, simply felt comfortable with him; trusted Austin; and felt like they could work together very well. Of course, that's a very important thing, relationships with Joe Biden, and in this case, it turned out to be the same way.

We are expecting a formal announcement of Austin very soon.

We're also told to expect more announcements throughout the week. So we expect to hear more economic picks as early as tomorrow. That could include the U.S. trade representative and commerce. More domestic cabinet picks likely by Friday.

As for attorney general, that's a big one that everybody is waiting on. That likely won't come until next week at the earliest -- John.

BERMAN: All right. Jessica Dean, keep us posted. Seems like we're learning much more every day. And the pace is picking up. Joining us now, CNN political analyst Margaret Talev. She's a politics

and White House editor for Axios. And CNN political commentator Errol Louis. He is the political anchor of Spectrum News.

Retired General Lloyd Austin, he led CentCom. He was the commanding general in U.S. forces in Iraq. And this is an historic nomination, to be the first African-American leader of the Pentagon, Erroll.

And Joe Biden filling out his cabinet in ways that is making history, frankly. Janet Yellen to be treasury secretary. But the Austin pick comes at a time when there were people in the African-American community calling on more black nominations at the highest levels of the cabinet. Your take?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's right. This is at least in part, or should be viewed at least in part, as a political response to some of the pressure that was coming from the head of the NAACP and others, a lot of black political allies of the president, who said that, We helped take you over the top as far as winning the election on November 3. We now would like to see you acknowledge that by having top-level picks in your cabinet who are African-American. This seems to be one of them.

There is this other history-making aspect of it, though, which is a little bit of a nagging obstacle, which is the fact that we don't have military leadership of the Pentagon. We have civilian leadership at the Pentagon. It's the law. It's a policy. It makes a lot of sense. There have been real problems in this country in the past when you have military and civilian leadership clashing over the direction of our military policy.