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First Case of U.K. Coronavirus Variant Discovered in Colorado; U.K. Approves Oxford-AstraZeneca Coronavirus Vaccine; Biden Criticizes Pace of Vaccine Rollout, Vows to Accelerate; McConnell Moves to Combine Trump Asks in Potential 'Poison Pill' Bill. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired December 30, 2020 - 06:00   ET

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

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

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 Wednesday, December 30, 6 a.m. here in New York. John Berman is off. Jim Sciutto joins me. We have a lot of news.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Tremendous amount of headlines today.

CAMEROTA: OK. So we begin with news on the pandemic. The U.S. has discovered the first confirmed case of a fast-spreading coronavirus variant that originated in the U.K. It was found in Colorado. The man who tested positive for it is in his 20s and has not traveled, as far as we know. That suggests that the variant may already be spreading in the community undetected.

There is also a second suspected case there that is under investigation.

This comes as the pandemic in the U.S. is shattering more records. More than 3,700 American deaths were reported yesterday. That is the highest number yet in a single day. And a record number of people, nearly 125,000, are hospitalized this morning with coronavirus. The situation becoming so severe in Los Angeles that several hospitals have had to turn patients away because of a shortage of oxygen.

SCIUTTO: Just alarming in America in 2020.

One of the latest victims of the outbreak, Republican congressman Luke Letlow of Louisiana, just 41 years old. He was set to be sworn in this weekend. He died less than two weeks after his diagnosis. Sad news there.

Also breaking this morning, another coronavirus vaccine getting the green light. The U.K. has just approved the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, with the first doses to be given on Monday. This could be a game changer in the effort to vaccinate many countries, since this vaccine much cheaper, also easier to store and transport than the two approved here in the U.S. already. We're going to get a live report from London on the latest in just a moment.

But let's begin with CNN's Athena Jones. That on the news of the U.K. variant, which is more easily transmissible, now present here in the U.S. and signs that it's already subject of community spread.

ATHENA JONES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. Good morning, Jim. It really is a scary thought.

Colorado health officials announcing the first known case of this COVID-19 variant, first discovered in the United Kingdom, which scientists in the United Kingdom have stressed is much more contagious than the -- the original earlier strain.

And that variant was discovered in a man in his 20s in the Colorado community of Elbert. Elbert County, Colorado. And there is now a second suspected case of a man with the same variant in the same county.

Both of these men were working at an assisted living facility in the town of Simla, and serving in non-clinical roles.

Well, now the state health department has deployed a rapid response team to that facility in order to test all the residents and staff.

Now, we know that the first known -- the first man had no known travel history, which suggests that this variant was already circulating in the community. And of course, now that you have the second suspected case, that seems to confirm that idea.

They will remain in isolation until they're released, and there are health officials working on contact tracing.

But this, of course, comes at -- at a frightening time. This prospect of a more contagious virus comes as the United States is seeing some staggering numbers, staggering new records when it comes to deaths and hospitalizations.

On Tuesday, more than 3,700 people died from COVID and more than -- or nearly 125,000 people were hospitalized due to the virus. We're talking about nearly a month straight now where hospitalizations have been above 100,000.

And of course, we know that doctors across the country have been warning about a surge upon a surge upon a surge. And it looks as though we are in that surge right now. We are now only days away from another grim milestone of 350,000 deaths from COVID in this country, which is a figure that would have been unimaginable six months ago -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: So much of this seemed unimaginable. Athena, thank you very much.

Also breaking overnight, an incoming congressman from Louisiana has died of coronavirus, just days before he was to be sworn in. Republican Congressman-elect Luke Letlow died on Tuesday. He was only 41 years old.

And Letlow only publicly announced his diagnosis less than two weeks ago. From his hospital bed, he made a plea for plasma donations on Twitter, writing, "For those who have had COVID already, your plasma is especially needed by those who are suffering. I cannot stress this enough. Please consider saving lives by going out and donating at your local blood bank. It may very well be the gift of life that you are giving a family this Christmas."

A doctor treating Letlow says he was receiving Remdesivir and steroids as part of his treatment.

The newly-elected congressman was a rising star in Louisiana's Republican Party. The state's congressional delegation said in a statement, quote, "Luke had such a positive spirit and a tremendously bright future ahead of him. He was looking forward to serving the people of Louisiana in Congress and we were excited to welcome him to our delegation, where he was ready to make an even greater impact on our state and our Nation."

Luke Letlow is survived by his wife, Julia, and two young children.

Louisiana's governor says flags in the state will be flown at half- staff for his funeral. We'll have much more on this, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Just sad news.

Also breaking this morning, British regulators approved Oxford and AstraZeneca's coronavirus vaccine, where the country's top health official is touting how much of a game changer this shot could be to end the pandemic.

CNN's Phil Black, live in London with the breaking details.

I mean, so many important ones here. Easy to store, that's important for this vaccine. But already, the U.K. close to having enough doses for the entire country?

PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Jim. So logistically convenient. That's the key point. That's why it's described as a game changer.

[06:05:06]

It doesn't require storing at those ultra-low temperatures. You can move it around and store it more easily, so you can roll it out more quickly and more widely. That's an advantage, not just here, but to the rest of the world, and particularly developing countries.

The government has also announced a switch in tactics to maximize that potential now. Instead of focusing on trying to get the two required doses to as many people as possible, it's saying it wants to delay the second dose and now roll out and prioritize the first dose to as many people, as quickly as possible, as the vaccine stock becomes available.

The logic there is that you start to build a second level of immunity more quickly in a wider section of the population.

All of this this morning means the government is now making what sounds like an extraordinarily positive prediction. This could all be over for the U.K. by spring. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATT HANCOCK, U.K. HEALTH MINISTER: We've got enough of this vaccine on order to vaccinate the whole population. You know, we've got 100 million doses on order. Add that to the 30 million doses of Pfizer, and that's enough for two doses for the entire population. So I can now say with confidence that we can vaccinate everyone.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACK: Now, there are still key questions about this particular vaccine, its effectiveness, what is the ideal dose, because the trials threw up some head-scratching results after a mistake meant part of the trial participants received a smaller dose than was intended but seemed to develop a greater level of protection. That all seems to be -- that all needs to be investigated. It's going to take time.

But for the moment, the regulators here are satisfied that this vaccine is safe enough and effective enough to begin use, going into people's arms pretty much immediately. And they believe it's going to make a big difference to fighting the vaccine in this country, in the short-term.

And it is welcome news at what is a very dark time for the U.K., because cases here are really soaring and threatening to overwhelm the country's health system.

Alisyn, back to you.

CAMEROTA: Phil, absolutely. If only the U.S. could have enough vaccine production for everybody here. We'll be watching what happens there. Thank you for the reporting.

President-elect Joe Biden criticizing the pace of the Trump administration's vaccine rollout. Biden vows to accelerate the process when he takes office in 21 days, but the transition of power continues to hit obstacles.

CNN's Joe Johns is live in Wilmington, Delaware, with more. What's the latest, Joe?

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

And you can certainly say the incoming president's take on the vaccine effort in the United States is sobering, to say the least, putting the bad news first, pointing out that the effort in the United States has fallen far short of the government's goals, pledging that when he takes office in January, things have got to change.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: The next few weeks and months are going to be very tough. A very tough period for our nation. Maybe the toughest during this entire pandemic. I know it's hard to hear, but it's the truth. JOHNS (voice-over): President-elect Joe Biden issuing a dire warning.

BIDEN: The Trump administration's plan to distribute vaccines is falling behind, far behind.

JOHNS: Biden saying that the current effort to vaccinate Americans against the coronavirus will take years, not months. A far cry from the Trump administration's estimate that 20 million Americans would be vaccinated by year's end.

ALEX AZAR, HHS SECRETARY: We expect to have approximately 40 million doses by the end of this year, so that would allow us to vaccinate 20 million people in December.

JOHNS: The reality: only 11.4 million vaccine doses have been distributed, and a little over 2 million people have received their first shot, with two days left to go this year.

President Trump placing blame on the states, tweeting, "It is up to the states to distribute the vaccines once brought to the designated areas by the federal government."

The White House issuing a statement late Tuesday night, reinforcing the president's argument, writing, "Nearly 20 million first doses have been allocated to states for immediate delivery and administration at their direction, and this process is progressing rapidly."

The president-elect laying out his ambitious plan: Ramp up vaccinations to a million shots a day in his first 100 days in office.

BIDEN: If Congress provides the funding, we'd be able to meet this incredible goal. It would take ramping up five to six times the current pace to 1 million shots a day. This is going to be the greatest operational challenge we've ever faced as a nation. But we're going to get it done.

JOHNS: In addition to appealing to Congress for more funding, Biden plans to use the Defense Production Act to ramp up production of supplies needed to vaccinate Americans, as well as personal protective equipment.

BIDEN: I'm going to move heaven and earth to get us going in the right direction.

JOHNS: Joe Biden warning the country might not see improvement until well into March, and in the meantime, encouraging all Americans to wear a mask.

[06:10:14]

BIDEN: We need to steel our spines for what's ahead. We need to follow even more closely the recommendations to slow the spread of the virus.

COVID is a killer in red states and blue states alike. So I encourage you all to wear a mask mask.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHNS: The president-elect has no public events on his schedule today, but he is expected to go down to his Delaware beach house for the holiday.

CNN has also learned that Biden, as well as Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, are expected to campaign in Georgia on Monday in advance of the Senate runoff election there -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Georgia is going to be crowded on Monday. Thank you very much, Joe, for all of that reporting.

So this morning, the U.S. discovering the first case of the new coronavirus strain that is more transmissible. We discuss all of this, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Breaking news. This morning, the United States again smashing a record for coronavirus deaths and hospitalizations in a single day. And at the same time, we have new details about the first known case of that coronavirus variant from the U.K. that has been discovered in Colorado.

Joining us now is William Haseltine. He's the chair and president of ACCESS Health International and a former professor at Harvard Medical School.

Professor, what disturbing news we wake up to this morning.

Let -- let me just start with the variant, because that's the news that everyone is waking up to. So a man in Colorado, he's in his 20s. No travel history that we know of. He has been identified as having the first case of that U.K. COVID variant that is more transmissible. What do we need to know?

WILLIAM HASELTINE, CHAIR/PRESIDENT, ACCESS HEALTH INTERNATIONAL: Well, what we now know is that the virus is here, like it's in so many other countries. We know the virus is much more transmissible, and we know we've got to take more serious measures to control what's inevitably going to be an increased rate of infection in our population.

SCIUTTO: You are saying that these measures should include a lockdown. The U.K. shut down virtually completion in response to this variant. We're seeing other countries take steps: ban international travel, et cetera. What specific steps do you believe are now necessary in this country?

[06:15:10]

HASELTINE: Well, I would take a good look at France. France has this variant. France had a rate of infection higher than the United States, and in three weeks brought it down by 20 times, saving thousands and thousands of lives.

We could save those same lives here, if we took the same very strict measures, including travel bans.

For example, not allowing over a million Americans to travel by air and many more by train and bus. We could put this thing back in the bottle very, very quickly, if we did that. It would be, I think, highly controversial, but it's what we need to do. We now know this variant is here.

And I suspect we have our own homegrown variants that are doing the same thing. This virus is much trickier than anybody said it was. It is able to evade our immune system in convalescent anti-sera. It is a very tricky virus, and we've got to understand what we need to do to save lives.

CAMEROTA: A few more things that we know about this. This young man worked at a nursing home in a very rural area in Colorado. There is a second suspected case, another, I believe, young man, who also works at that nursing home, but that has not yet been confirmed. We will report it as soon as it's confirmed.

And so the idea that neither of them have a travel history, as far as we know, doesn't that -- does that tell us that there is already community spread happening in that county in Colorado?

HASELTINE: It does. But we -- you know, we don't need even that to know that we're in deep trouble. You were citing very serious numbers, over 3,700 people dying yesterday. That number could easily go up to 5,000 to 7,000 people a day if we're not careful.

This is a very dire situation, as all our public health officials are warning us. It's time to take much more serious measures.

Now, the good news is that there's help on the way. We can see vaccines around the world being improved. The British vaccine, the Chinese vaccines, two different versions. These are stable vaccines. They work pretty well. And I think it's time to consider importation of many of these vaccines to bolster our own efforts.

The better we -- the sooner we vaccinate most people in this country, the better off we'll be. Relying on our high-tech vaccines rather than the traditional, more traditional measures of vaccines may have been a mistake. We should have many more doses available that are easy to deliver, like the rest of the world is getting. And it's time to open our borders to vaccines from other countries.

SCIUTTO: Well, amazing turn, right, in that the question was would the U.S. share these vaccines with the world. Now, it may need help.

Tell us about this vaccine rollout effort. Because it is proceeding far more slowly than promised. We were supposed to have 20 million people vaccinated by the end of this month. That's tomorrow. It's not going to happen. It's 2.1 million, the latest figures right now. Has that exposed a fundamental issue with the rollout plan and with this country's ability to get this vaccine out, to the maximum number of people quickly?

HASELTINE: This country has the ability to do almost anything. The fact that we're not doing it is a fault of this administration.

They blame it on the states, but they haven't given the states the money and the resources they need to do it. States don't have unlimited borrowing capacity like the federal government does.

So this is not an American problem. This is an administration problem that's resulted in a very serious situation.

The other thing we did is we put all our eggs in a high-tech basket for vaccines, not long-term, proven technology which other countries have used, particularly the ones in Asia.

And so I'm hopeful that, when we think about how we can accelerate protection of our own people, it isn't America giving vaccines to other people. We should be sourcing them wherever we can get them, where they're shown to be approved and to work and to be relatively safe.

CAMEROTA: Professor, can I just ask you a couple of questions about that? You're referring to the messenger RNA. Right? What we -- the --

HASELTINE: Right.

CAMEROTA: The lingo that we've all learned over the past --

HASELTINE: That's right.

CAMEROTA: -- several months. And so the U.S. invested in that, because it showed great success rates, right?

HASELTINE: Right.

CAMEROTA: I mean, 90-plus percent. But what are you saying that we overlooked?

HASELTINE: We overlooked the fact that you can make a vaccine by just growing the virus and killing it, just what we did for the polio virus in the 1950s. Many countries have invested in that technology, and those vaccines are now showing to be effective, at least 80, 90 percent effective vaccines.

[06:20:08]

Now, all of those numbers are a little bit soft. They may be less effective than that, even the American vaccines. But what is clear is these are much more robust technologies. You can make a lot more of the vaccine quickly. It's much more stable. And it's going to sell for at least 1/10, maybe 1/20th of the price.

CAMEROTA: And why didn't we do that? I mean, that sounds so easy and simple. Why didn't we do that?

HASELTINE: It's amazing to me we didn't. It was a major oversight. Just like we've not put out very cheap tests. We should have 50 cents or 25 cents tests available for everybody to do at home. We've made major mistakes in the way we've approached this. We've

looked at a high-tech solution. That's amazing. But let's not pat ourselves on the back when the rest of the world will be getting an effective vaccine at 1/10th to 1/20th the price and a lot more of it.

SCIUTTO: Can I ask you before we go, just quickly, you're talking about major course corrections here to solve this problem.

HASELTINE: I know.

SCIUTTO: Right? Distribution, a new plan, but also possibly distributing different vaccines than the ones this country is focused on. Twenty-one days, new president. How quickly can a new -- and by the way, the current president seems to have checked out of this pandemic. How quickly can the new administration make those necessary course corrections?

HASELTINE: I think they can make them pretty quickly. It's not too hard to make an order for a vaccine. And it's not too hard to get these stable vaccines imported. It will take courage to do that, because we've got so much invested. Tens of millions of dollars invested in our own, but if our own can't meet the need, which it doesn't seem it's going to be able to. Look at a country like England, they say they're going to vaccinate everybody in their country by March, maybe before. Why, then, not us?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

CAMEROTA: William Haseltine, thank you very much for all of your sobering take on this morning and all of your expertise. We really appreciate talking to you.

HASELTINE: You're welcome, thank you.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appearing open to President Trump's demands to increase coronavirus stimulus checks and to pad that bill with some of his other pet demands. But many on Capitol Hill call the proposal a poison pill. I'll have the details, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:26:19]

SCIUTTO: Developing this morning, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has now introduced legislation that combines two of President Trump's pet peeves to that increase in stimulus checks that has a lot of support across party lines.

But the move is almost certain to fail to deliver the $2,000 payments to Americans, many of whom need it right now.

CNN's Suzanne Malveaux is live on Capitol Hill with more.

I'm curious here, Suzanne, is this something that the majority leader is going to stick to? Is it a trial balloon? Do we know at this point? SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: We don't know at this point, but

we do know, Jim, that millions of Americans and whether or not they get three times the amount of direct payments for COVID relief really hangs in the balance, and it depends on what happens out of the Senate.

We looked to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. And yesterday, yes, he put forward this idea, this bill of the raise from $600 to $2,000, but he did tack on those other two conditions that Trump had required, namely the repeal of Section 230, demanding to strip tech companies of some liability protections; and also setting up a commission to investigate election -- alleged election fraud.

We know that this is something that is a nonstarter, a poison pill for Democrats who have said, Look, you essentially killed the possibility of this raise.

At the same time, however, there is possible leverage here. You have McConnell, who wants to put forward, has scheduled to put forward this vote to override Trump's veto of the Defense Authorization Act, to clear the way for money and funding for defense projects and policies. And along comes Senator Bernie Sanders, who says, Look, I'm not going to sign onto that until we get a vote on this raise on the 2,000.

Democrats are deeply divided over whether or not this is a good strategy. Senator Dick Durbin made that very clear.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): I don't want to use this defense bill for the national security and for the men and women in uniform as part of this strategy.

I would say to Bernie, I'm with you on the goal of $2,000. Let's not do it at the expense of the Department of defense.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: So Jim, the questions remain. How long does Sanders, Senator Sanders hold out? How much leverage does he have in terms of getting McConnell to bring something that's an up or down vote regarding direct payments?

And also the deadline, of course, that they're running up against. Sunday is when the new Congress will take session and will be sworn in. Essentially if the stimulus direct payment package does not happen, does not go to a vote, it dies -- Jim.

SCIUTTO: Listen, millions of Americans are waiting for an answer on this. Many of them need this money. Suzanne Malveaux on the Hill, thanks very much.

Joining us now, CNN political analysts and "Washington Post" reporters, Toluse Olorunnipa and Rachel Bade. Good to have you both on this morning. Rachael, if I could begin with you, you've covered the hill for a long

time. Is McConnell, from what you're hearing, going to stick to this plan?

So what he's done is, in effect, loaded up a simple vote on whether to increase these payments from $600 to $2,000, with two issues that are pet peeves of the president. One, liability protections for social media companies. Of course, he likes to tweet a lot.

But two, an election commission to examine voter fraud, which -- which courts, Trump-appointed judges, the DOJ, have already rejected here. Is he going to stick to this plan, the majority leader?

RACHAEL BADE, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I mean, at the ends of doing that, this is kind of quintessential McConnell. I mean, he's got this sort of bag of political tricks he pulls out every once in a while. This is very clearly one of them.

Look, the majority leader in the Senate has never been a fan of $2,000 payments, stimulus payments. And clearly, what he's doing right now is trying to give his members, Republicans in the Senate, a way to vote for this to give themselves political cover back home, but also make sure the bill dies.

I mean, if you look at some of these -- these two senators who are running in the Georgia special election.