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Hospitalizations Soar to Record Levels Ahead of the Holidays; U.S. Supreme Court Rejects GOP Bid to Reverse Pennsylvania Results; Traveling Nurses Race to Hot Spots as Hospitalizations Soar. Aired 7- 7:30a ET

Aired December 09, 2020 - 07:00   ET

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


[07:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is New Day.

And this morning, coronavirus hospitalizations across the country hitting an all-time high, nearly 105,000 Americans are now hospitalized. The New York Times reports that more than a third of Americans live in areas where hospitals are running short of ICU beds.

The U.S. now averaging more than 200,000, excuse me, new cases a day. That is also a record. More than 2,500 deaths were reported yesterday. And tomorrow, the FDA will consider the approval of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine.

Also, breaking this morning, regulators in the U.K. are warning people with a significant advisory of allergic reactions not to get the Pfizer vaccine after two health care workers suffered allergic reactions to that shot. So we have Sanjay to explain what all of that means, ahead.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: So this morning, the president still trying to overturn the election he lost in public, but he appears to now have lost one avenue he was counting on, the Supreme Court. The court in one terse sentence denied the attempt to reverse the election results in Pennsylvania.

So which Republican senator or congressman will now come out and say that Joe Biden won the election? Mitch McConnell? Ted Cruz? Kevin McCarthy? Feel free to call. The phone lines are open this morning.

Also new this morning, CNN has reported that President-elect Joe Biden will name two new cabinet members. We will tell you which positions they will fill shortly.

CAMEROTA: But we begin with CNN's Chief Medical Correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, on the breaking news out of the U.K. Sanjay, great to see you.

So, we're all waiting to see what happens after we watch the first people get the Pfizer vaccine yesterday. And now, we have a little bit of information about two of the people who received the vaccine. Here is the press release. As is common with new vaccines, the MHRA, that's the agency, have advised on a precautionary basis that people with a significant history of allergic reactions do not receive this vaccine after two people with a history of significant allergic reactions responded adversely yesterday.

And just to be clear, Sanjay, this doesn't mean the allergies that I'm suffering, the morning allergies that I'm suffering that can be fixed with an allergy pill, this is different. So what are they telling us?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So this is -- this is interesting and I think it's going to -- it would certainly dictate the response, as we roll out this vaccine around the world. They specifically said that people with a severe allergic reaction to medicines, foods or previous vaccines shouldn't take this vaccine. This may be the sort of guidance that sort of evolves over time. They're obviously being cautious.

What we don't know for certain is what exactly the people who had this allergic reaction to, what they were reacting to within the vaccine. It's a different sort of vaccine. So was it something that was actually used to make the vaccine, was it how it was stored in some way? I'm sure that's going to be an area of investigation.

With a significant allergic reaction like this, it typically takes place quickly, within 10 or 15 minutes, which is why for all vaccines, you're typically asked to stay at the doctor's office, it's exactly for this sort of thing. People may develop some chest tightness, they may develop flushing on their skin, oftentimes with an epinephrine or even with something like Benadryl, if it's more serious, you want to use epinephrine, you can basically treat it.

But it is going to be a question sort of going forward now. There's lots of people who may identify themselves as having severe allergic reactions to things, especially if it includes foods, medicines and previous vaccines.

Now, when we were looking through the Pfizer data, I'll just share with you quickly, it is interesting, they did exclude people with a history of significant adverse allergic reactions in the past, within the clinical trial. So now, are going to exclude people going forward in the general population? We'll see. Obviously, that's happening in the U.K.

BERMAN: That's very interesting. I did not know that. So people who may be in this group that have been affected in the U.K., they were not part of the trial. So this may be the first time we are seeing whether people with a history of severe allergic reactions again to that subset, you're talking about medicines, vaccines and foods, we're seeing how they may be affected.

And, Sanjay, just to reiterate this, and, again, the FDA is meeting tomorrow in the United States to determine whether to grant emergency use authorization, they likely will. I want people to be clear that this -- what's happening in the United Kingdom is notable and learn more every day. But in and of itself, not a cause for alarm this is a matter of course for vaccines, yes?

GUPTA: Right. It's common when you roll out new vaccines to have, you know, new adverse effects that may occur.

[07:05:00]

And I should point out, both of these health care workers recovered fine, they're doing fine, but there are new adverse effects that typically appear.

One thing we don't know is we don't sort of know the denominator here, how many people were actually vaccinated. So what percentage of people this likely affected? We'll have to sort of figure that out. And I'm sure it's going to be a topic of discussion at the FDA advisory committee tomorrow as well.

Also, you know, are there other sorts of strategies going forward for people who have had significant adverse reactions? Is it just going to be, look, this is not a vaccine for you? Is it something where you say, you can pre-treat with Benadryl or something like that, we don't know. That is something that happens.

There are, you know, adverse reactions even to the flu shot. Typically, it's because people may have a pre-existing allergy to eggs or something like that. With this mRNA vaccine, it's made in a different way, so we have to better understand better what exactly people are reacting to and how to best address that. We don't know that yet.

And if you're starting to basically say, anybody who has significant allergies to foods, medicines or vaccines in the past, we're going to have to better define that. What specifically constituted a severe allergy? Did someone develop significant allergic symptoms within a few minutes of receiving the vaccine? Did it involve tightness in the chest, flushing on the skin, people develop stomach upset? What was it exactly?

As we get more of those details, we'll certainly share them with you. But I think that would provide more context for people out there who are starting to think when they might get the vaccine.

CAMEROTA: Definitely, Sanjay. I mean, you and I have talked about this in the past. I've done a lot of reporting on vaccine hesitancy, and this is just all some people need to hear, because they're already skittish about getting it, and even though a reaction to a vaccine is literally one in a million. I mean, Dr. Offit just said that those are the numbers that might have some sort of severe allergic reaction, that's all they need to hear to kind of pump the brakes.

And so us being transparent and talking about it and finding out that it can easily be rectified and that these two health care workers are fine, that's, I think, really helpful. And one question, does -- do these new findings possibly change the FDA approval that we're expecting tomorrow for the emergency authorization?

GUPTA: I think that's a really important question, you know, for this authorization tomorrow. My guess is, it's not going to change that authorization or change the likelihood of that authorization. We don't know for certain, obviously, what's happening yet. But I think it's going to factor into the discussion.

Obviously, you've talked to Paul Offit. He sits on these advisory committees. But I think one of the things that's going to be important is exactly what you're saying, Alisyn, is to address the significant vaccine hesitancy that already exists by really, really defining exactly what happened here, not shying away from it.

Something happened, the two workers, they're doing fine. I don't know, maybe you know, whether or not they received epinephrine or Benadryl or what they received that might give some context into how significant these allergic reactions were, but also, what is it going to mean then for people going forward?

Should -- if somebody has had any kind of reaction in the past, should they be pre-treated with Benadryl or something like that to basically, you know, mitigate or reduce the likelihood that they'll have another allergic response? We're learning, right now, real-time, as we go along, as we see this -- you know, what will be one of the largest vaccine rollouts in our history go out, we've got to define these things very, very carefully.

BERMAN: Look, we don't know the answers to those questions yet. Hopefully, we'll learn. This just happened a short time ago. This new information is coming to light by the hour. And I suspect we'll learn more by tomorrow when the FDA does meet.

Sanjay, I want to talk about where we are exactly today, which is 105,000, nearly, Americans hospitalized with coronavirus. That's a record. There was a big jump overnight in new hospitalizations, which is a real concern to me, because this is one of the metrics that can't be fudged and is a real sign of things to come. 2,500 new deaths reported overnight, which, again, for a Tuesday, it's so high, because these numbers tend to rise over the course of the week. So that's where we are. Things are bad and getting worse in the short-term.

President-elect Joe Biden announced his plan for what he intends to do about this, starting on January 20th. He says he will call for a 100- day mask mandate. That's not forcing everyone to wear a mask, but it's requiring masks in federal buildings, calling on state governors and mayors launch mask mandates, he's going to try to open schools. And then the interesting thing is distribute 100 million vaccines, try to administer about 100 million shots in the first hundred days. Your take on this plan.

GUPTA: Well, you know, this is a sort of solid plan that we've been hearing about in fragments over the last several months. I mean, you know, it's sort of laid out here. I know that he did this in consultation with Dr. Fauci, as well. So it fits very much with what we've been hearing from them.

100 million doses in 100 days. First of all, this may be more than just semantics, but 100 million doses versus 100 million people are two different things, because these vaccines require two doses. [07:10:08]

So is it 200 million doses? And if so, we can start to look at the calendar here in terms of likelihood of getting that many vaccines out.

You've seen, obviously, so far, for this year, they say 40 million vaccines potentially by the end of the year. And that counts on both Pfizer and Moderna receiving this emergency use authorization.

As you go into the following hundred days, you know, in the beginning of next year, you know, you start to get to that point where you may get to 100 to 150 million doses, but you may also have two other vaccines come online.

I spoke to Moncef Slaoui about this. I spoke to Stephen Hahn, interviewed him yesterday about these vaccines. And it's possible that Johnson & Johnson, the Johnson subsidiary then, the Oxford/AstraZeneca may come online at the end of January. The expectation is that they may apply for emergency use authorization sometime early next year. That would help make up the shortfall.

To get 100 million vaccinated in the first 100 days, things have got to go well and you're probably going to need more than the existing two vaccines that have applied for emergency use authorization.

One thing I just want to follow up on as well with the hospitals, because I totally agree with you, and it's the metric I probably paid the most attention to over the past several months, because it is the truest, most consistent measure. You see the numbers going up, but there's another measure that we should be paying attention to, and that is that the likelihood of being able to get hospitalized, if you have illness.

So, even though the overall hospitalizations are going up, the percentage of people who are sick is actually going down. And what that means, basically, take a look at the numbers there, in August, it was 9.5 percent of patients who have been admitted to the hospital. Now it's 7.4 percent.

Why is that significant? It basically now gives you an idea that hospitals are starting to compensate. They are starting to basically say, look, you're coming in, but you're not sick enough. Three months ago, we would have admitted you to the hospital, but not today, because we simply are running out of room.

So these are the types of triggers, measures, compensatory mechanisms that we look at to see how hospitals are starting to cope. It's worrisome as we start to run out of beds. You're going to have to come up with other strategies, field hospitals like we saw in Wisconsin and Rhode Island, those types of things may be cropping up more and more.

BERMAN: Very interesting statistic, very revealing and very helpful, Sanjay. Thank you so much.

CAMEROTA: Thanks, Sanjay. GUPTA: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: We are going to be able to post some of these questions to the Health and Human Services secretary, Alex Azar, when he was on our program in the next hour.

BERMAN: And Rudy Giuliani didn't have any problem getting in the hospital, did he?

CAMEROTA: No, he didn't. I wonder why that is.

Millions of Americans desperately in need of stimulus checks, but there is a new uncertainty about the deal, and so we have details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:15:00]

BERMAN: This morning, the president is trying to overturn the election he lost. He did it out loud at a vaccine event yesterday, which gives you a sense of his priorities. But he appears to have lost one potential ally that he was counting on, the U.S. Supreme Court. The conservative majority court, which has three members that he appointed, denied a Republican effort to block the certification of Joe Biden's victory in Pennsylvania.

joining us now, CNN Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash, also with us, CNN Political Analyst, Toluse Olorunnipa, he's a White House Reporter for The Washington Post.

Honestly, the court denied it because it was a ridiculous case, as all of these cases have been. Dana, my question to you, I'm sure your phone has been ringing off the hook from Republican leaders in Congress, like Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy and senators like Ted Cruz and --

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: My phone is blowing up.

BERMAN: Saying, Dana, Dana, Joe Biden won the election. We admit it now. The Supreme Court won't weigh in.

BASH: If Mitch McConnell calls me one more time, it's going to be an issue. I'm kidding, obviously. That's why Alisyn is laughing. Of course, that should be the case. This should have been the case for weeks and weeks and week. But it is not the case.

And, you know, our colleague, Stephen Collinson, who every morning has a terrific analysis piece, started his so beautifully this morning, saying, the question is, how many times does President Trump want to lose the election? Because that is what he is setting himself up for over and over and over again, and the most embarrassing was what happened last night at the Supreme Court. That one line, that one sentence she put out there, and it spoke volumes in its brevity.

And the fact that the three Supreme Court justices that he nominated, that he pushed through confirmation in the U.S. Senate didn't use their opportunity to dissent tells you all you need to know.

Now, real quick, I will tell you that what these Republicans, not necessarily Mitch McConnell, but Republicans are saying publicly and privately is, look for Monday. Monday is the day that the Electoral College meets. Look for that to be a turning point. But we've heard similar things before and we haven't seen the full embrace of reality from these leaders. Let's see if this is different.

CAMEROTA: Just help me keep up, Toluse, with the conspiracy theories that Republicans are hanging their hat on. So, if I follow the logic, now the Supreme Court is part of the deep state, even the three conservative justices that President Trump appointed to it, so they're now against President Trump, much like the Republican secretaries of state in battleground states.

BERMAN: FBI?

CAMEROTA: Well, obviously --

BERMAN: The attorney general.

CAMEROTA: Oh, the attorney general, right.

And so, I mean, it's starting to sound like anybody whoever disagrees with President Trump is part of the deep state, but I could be wrong.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, the president's list of allies is really shrinking as he alienates more and more people, even within his own party. You have the Republican governor of Georgia and Arizona who are now rhinos, in the words of the president, even his own hand-picked attorney general, who has gone to bat for him on a number of different issues over the past several years, is now sort of on the outs with the president saying, if he does not step in to essentially substantiate these baseless voter fraud charges, then he's going to essentially be, you know, cast aside from this movement.

[07:20:12]

So the president is finding himself with fewer and fewer allies.

Now, he has been able to keep a large number of people within his party onboard. We haven't seen, as we said, you know, Mitch McConnell speak out and say that this election is over and it's time to move on. There have been the vast majority of elected Republicans in Congress have not spoken out against the president or said that Joe Biden is the next president, which is the fact on the ground.

But, you know, the president is losing over and over and over again with people that he thought would be on his side, whether it's the Supreme Court justices, judges that he appointed as he remade the judiciary, Republican secretaries of state, Republican governors. It's pretty clear at this point that his avenue to having four more years in office is closing very quickly and he has a number of people to blame, but it seems like right now, it's only himself to blame, because he does not have much of an argument as to why he should remain in office for four more years, when the voters chose different. BERMAN: Look, I've said this before, but the president once claimed that he wins so much, we'd all get tired of all the winning, he never gets tired of the losing, clearly, because it just keeps on piling up.

And I want to put one pin in this, or a button, I should say, because we smiled a little bit, but there's nothing funny about trying to overturn an election. There's nothing funny about trying to undermine democracy.

And George Conway, Republican conservative lawyer with Jake, I think, made this clear really succinctly. They're talking about a new lawsuit being filed by the state of Texas, which is legally and constitutionally ridiculous, frankly, and I assume the court will say the same thing.

Let me play George's sound.

BASH: Yes, please, sorry.

BERMAN: This is George's sound.

BASH: Sure.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE CONWAY, ATTORNEY: This is the most insane thing yet.

They're throwing in all the garbage allegations of fraud that the Trump campaign wouldn't even put in some of their complaints in federal district court. It's absurd and an embarrassment. And for a public official, let alone any lawyer, let alone any member of the Supreme Court bar to bring this lawsuit is atrocious.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Dana?

BASH: I mean, he's right. He's right. I mean, that's why most of the lawyers who were around the president, even in his impeachment, are kind of nowhere to be found on a public level because they don't want to have their name associated with this.

But I want to associate myself with what you said, John, because at this point, you almost have to laugh because it's so ridiculous, but it isn't funny. Because the longer -- with every day that goes by, without Republican leaders acknowledging the reality, the seeds of doubt and the lies that are coming from the top, from the president of the United States, go deeper and deeper and deeper into the soil of this country. And it will be very hard to rid this country of that disinformation or of that misinformation. And it will be hard to govern. And it is really dangerous.

And the fact that these Republican leaders continue to just ignore the reality, it's way beyond political. We know why they're doing it. We know all the political reasons why they're doing it. But it does have real consequences. CAMEROTA: And so while all of this theater or whatever it is is happening, Toluse, Americans are waiting for hours in food lines with cars stretched down the highway, stretched around blocks and blocks. Where are we with a stimulus bill and a relief bill today?

OLORUNNIPA: Well, it seems like we may be getting closer. But in normal circumstances, you would expect the president of the United States to be the leader in these negotiations, bringing both sides into a room and actually cutting deals to make sure that people get help.

We have seen a very different approach from this president. He has been sort of an afterthought in these negotiations. It does appear that the White House has put out a counteroffer, $916 billion, which Democrats say is a nonstarter because it cuts off some of the unemployment benefits.

There's a lot of questions about whether or not the two sides can come to some kind of an agreement over the next several days. With the clock ticking, it does appear that they're closer than they were last week, in some ways, but still far apart on a number of these different issues.

So it's not beyond the realm of possibility that we go into Christmas, we w go into the holiday period, and all of these people who are suffering, going into food lines, do not have any prospect of the kind of relief that they have been hoping for for several months now with the political polarization, the culprit here, and sort of becoming the Grinch and not allowing people to have a holiday period where they can expect their leaders to give them some sort of relief at the end of the year.

BERMAN: We may have some news on that in just a few minutes here on this show. Joe Manchin, who has been in the middle of negotiations, will come on. We will get an update from him on where things stand. I imagine he's been up all night working.

Dana, Toluse, our thanks to both of you.

[07:25:00]

Dana let us know if you get a call from a Republican senator.

BASH: Okay. I'm just going to turn ringer on.

BERMAN: Yes, I appreciate it.

All right, traveling nurses work in some of the worst virus hot spots in America, two of them will tell us their stories, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: There are more people in the hospital right now with coronavirus in the U.S. than ever before. Many hospitals stretched to the breaking point and so are the personnel, the doctors and nurses there, which means that many hospitals are calling upon traveling nurses to race to the hot spots to help.

Joining us now are two of them, Laura Liffiton and Morgan Fitzsimmons, they are traveling nurses working at the moment in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Ladies, thank you very much for being here.

MORGAN FITZSIMMONS, NURSE WHO TRAVELS TO CORONAVIRUS HOT SPOTS: Thank you for having us.

CAMEROTA: Laura, I want to start with you. How does this work. How do you figure out which hospital needs your help and which one you need to parachute into? And then how long do you stay?

[07:30:00]

LAURA LIFFITON, NURSE WHO TRAVELS TO CORONAVIRUS HOT SPOTS: The contracts, they range from 4 to 13 weeks and we basically -- the hospitals put out a call to.