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The Lead with Jake Tapper

CDC: Second Doses of Vaccine Can Be Scheduled Up to Six Weeks After First Dose; Staff in New Biden White House Required to Wear Masks; Pentagon: 7,000 National Guardsmen to Remain in D.C., More Troops Than in Afghanistan & Iraq Combined. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired January 22, 2021 - 16:30   ET

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

[16:30:01]

NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): There's a new hands-on plan from Fauci and defense.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We've got to go into the trenches. What we need to do is get there and say okay, what went wrong here, and how can we help you fix it?

WATT: The bright side? President Biden's first full day in office, 1 million shots were administered for the second time. Promise kept so far. That's the promise every day for 100 days.

FAUCI: If we do better than that, which I personally think we likely will, then great.

WATT: And this could be huge. Johnson & Johnson expected to submit its single-dose vaccine for authorization soon. They're ramping up production.

DR. MARK MCCLELLAN, BOARD MEMBER, JOHNSON & JOHNSON: With the goal of having perhaps enough vaccine for 100 million Americans by spring, by this April or so. So, that's going to make a big difference.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: All right. Are you ready?

WATT: It's now a race of sorts. Vaccinate fast before more contagious variants spread even farther, now blamed in part for the startling surge in Los Angeles.

MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI (D), LOS ANGELES: I am very concerned and think it does explain what happened in December.

WATT: How far and wide have these variants spread already? We don't really know.

FAUCI: We must be honest and say that the level of comprehensive sequence surveillance thus far is not at the level that we would have liked.

(END VIDEOTAPE) WATT (on camera): And, you know, it's important amidst all this talk of vaccines and variants not to lose site of the daily pain of this. Today in California has been the deadliest day of the pandemic so far, 764 lives reported lost. And, Pamela, nationwide, we're still losing more than 3,000 people, on average, every day to this virus -- Pamela.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: And to think it was about a year ago when the first coronavirus emerged. And here we are, the deadliest day in California.

Nick, thank you.

WATT: Yeah.

BROWN: CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins me now.

Just so grim looking at these numbers. I want to talk about the hope ahead of us. That, of course, is the vaccine that people are relying on, hoping this will get us out of the pandemic.

And the CDC, Sanjay, has issued new guidance, including that someone could take one dose of a Moderna vaccine, and another of the Pfizer vaccine, an exceptional situations, and that second doses can be scheduled up to six weeks after the first dose if necessary.

Do you think they're just loosening the guidelines here because vaccine production has fallen so far behind?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I think is probably driving this here. Uneven distribution, you know, the administration obviously, these vaccines were not where we should be. And this question comes up a lot. I think it's one of the most common questions I get, Pamela, just got the first dose. What if I can't get the second dose of that same vaccine? People are quiet concerned about it.

In the U.K., they loosened these guidelines quite some time ago. Here in the United States, they're saying, as you said, exceptional situations. Hopefully, people don't need to do that.

Scientifically, you know, it seems to make sense. It should still work. These are very similar vaccines and 42 days or six weeks later, you should still get the same immunity.

But the data that we have is based on three week separation for the Pfizer vaccine and four weeks for the Moderna. And this is one of those examples again, Pamela, of -- this is what the science says. If we start to veer away from the science, does that erode trust?

And that's the balance I think that the CDC has to weigh here. Try to do it the right way, the way that science suggests you should do it but in exceptional situations you could veer off a bit.

BROWN: But what happens if you get the first vaccine and then there's not a second available? And even in this new timeframe that the CDC is putting forth, six weeks, what happens? Do you have to start all over again?

GUPTA: Well, we really don't know. I mean, you know, if you looked at the data, you do seem to get some immunity after the first dose. I mean, I looked at those graphics pretty carefully.

I think -- I think the question is, we don't know how long that immunity will last or how strong it really is. So, I don't -- you know, we're sort of learning real time here, Pamela. In a couple of years, we might be able to have better data saying here is what you could do if you were trying to separate out these vaccines.

But I just don't know that we can say now exactly what that would mean. It would be better than nothing, but it's certainly not going to give you the 90 percent plus protection that we know the clinical results showed.

BROWN: Yeah, I mean, you made such a smart point. We're all learning about this in real time, just like we were learning about COVID when it first emerged. You're now having to learn how the vaccines first learned with COVID with this new variant. It's all new. We're learning about it in real time together.

[16:35:00]

The CDC also says you should not get the COVID vaccine and the flu shot at the same time. Why is that?

GUPTA: Well, you know, part of it is you're inducing antibodies. The way these vaccines work, you're exposing the body -- the human body to a little bit of the virus or a portion of the virus, or in the case of the mRNA vaccine, just a little bit of a genetic sequence to a portion of the virus.

If you're trying to induce antibodies from two different things at the same time, might it reduce the effectiveness? I mean, that's the concern. I have to say, you know, talked to a couple of folks today who are immunologists about this point. They say in healthy people, it probably shouldn't make a difference. If you're someone who has a weakened immune system or elderly, maybe you won't amount the same effective -- as effective an immune response.

So, separated it out, they say, by at least a couple of weeks. Another thing they said, make sure you don't have symptoms. Let's say you develop a low-grade fever or something like that after one of the vaccinations, that is not the time to be getting a second vaccine of some sort.

BROWN: I also want to ask something that's in a lot of people's minds, because six in ten Americans still don't know when or where they will get their vaccine. This reminds me almost of the testing, where people were like, where do I get tested for COVID?

GUPTA: Right.

BROWN: Now it's the vaccine. How is the Biden administration planning to address this? And if you would, what is the latest timeline on when people who aren't in those front line worker or health risk categories, when can they get the vaccine?

GUPTA: Well, first of all, in terms of what the administration is trying to do to address this is a few things. First of all, they want to set up these community centers, these community vaccination centers, and they say that FEMA will start working on this right away. I think within the next several days.

We're probably going to see some of these first community centers and we're supposed to have 100 of them, they say, within a month. The whole point is putting these centers in communities, so people know, you know, where to get them.

Also, you know, I've been talking to people in the pharmacy -- retail pharmacy chains. They've largely been focused on long-term care facility residents. Hopefully, they say, by the end of this month, they should have addressed most of the long-term care facility residents and can start shifting their attention to the general public. So, maybe sort of mid-February.

They're going to need resources. They're going to need, you know, people who can actually administer the vaccine. There's a lot of work to be done there. But I would say within the next several weeks, hopefully, the priority groups expand.

BROWN: All right. Sanjay, stick around because coming up, we're going to take a look at the one tool that some experts say could stop the pandemic in four weeks, and it's not the vaccine.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:41:42]

BROWN: Well, the new Biden administration is requiring masks at all federal properties including the White House, where CNN cameras have seen aides wearing the cloth and surgical types, while others like press secretary Jen Psaki are adding the more protective N95 masks.

As CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports, it's those hard-to-find N95s that may help slow down the pandemic the most.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice-over): From day one, a change.

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Mask up for 100 days.

GUPTA: Masks, a top priority for the new administration. And still, one of our most useful tools to fight the pandemic.

PSAKI: The steps we're all taking to make sure that we are safe, he is safe, you are all safe. Those include daily testing when we're in the White House. It includes wearing n95 masks.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The masks have become a partisan issue, unfortunately. But it's a patriotic act.

GUPTA: We know two important things. People should wear masks in public and not all masks are equal. The quality of your cloth mask depends on its fabric and the number of layers. Studies have shown they could be as low as 26 percent effective. But the N95 masks that some aides are wearing in the White House, 95 percent effective.

Even better than the surgical masks I wear in the operating room. This is critical.

And Harvard Medical School's Dr. Abraar Karan is now advocating N95 masks for all.

If for four weeks, the country essentially wore these masks in those risky settings like that indoors, what kind of difference do you think it would make?

DR. ABRAAR KARAN, INTERNAL MEDICINE PHYSICIAN, HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL: This would stop the epidemic.

GUPTA: It's an extraordinary statement. Four weeks to essentially stop the pandemic. We're not talking about vaccines here, or some sort of new magical therapeutic, just a properly fitted, $5 N95 mask as you see here in this video.

KARAN: We know now that aerosols spread best when there's poor ventilation, crowding and close contact that's prolonged. And so, we were arguing that actually those settings, cloth masks a alone are not going to block aerosols.

GUPTA: Remember, aerosols, like a puff of smoke, are those tiny particles that can hang in the air and are small enough to travel through or around some face masks. And the new variants even more transmissible make masks like these more necessary.

That's because the N95 mask has a secret weapon. A unique, electrostatic filter that traps particles like bacteria and viruses and polarizes those particles before they could pass through the mask. Think of how socks get stuck to a blanket in the drier.

KARAN: If we have better personal protection for people, they can more safely go back to work.

GUPTA: Other experts have advocated for N95s as well like former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb who wrote this: An N95 or equivalent mask offers the best protection. Some European countries are currently finalizing rules requiring N95 masks in shops and on public transportation.

And now more than a year into the pandemic, the Biden administration is also ramping up the Defense Production Act to make more N95s available for health care workers who still don't have enough and then hopefully for the rest of the population as well.

[16:45:14]

KARAN: Make masks part of American culture to stop the epidemic.

GUPTA: The key here is to always wear a mask, whenever you're in public. The ability to control the spread is in our hands and on our faces.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (on camera): Now, Pamela, one thing about these masks, some people will argue that they're pretty uncomfortable. They have to be fit tested and they fit pretty snugly on your face, but there are few locations where most of the viral transmission is occurring in this country, in bars, in cafes and places of worship. Places like that, where you do get a lot more viral spread.

If in certain high-risk locations, you can wear these N95 masks, as you heard from Dr. Karan there, it could make a huge difference bringing down the overall trajectory of the pandemic.

BROWN: So important.

Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much.

Some troops are leaving D.C. today, but more are staying than the U.S. has in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. So what will they be doing?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:50:58]

BROWN: Well, today, First Lady Jill Biden went to the U.S. Capitol and thanked National Guard troops for protecting her family this week. This comes after outrage last night over troops forced to take breaks in a cold parking garage with just one bathroom. Lawmakers on both sides called the move absurd, shameful and unacceptable.

Now as many guard members pack up and go home, some 7,000 will remain in D.C. That's more than 5,000 combined troops in Iraq and Afghanistan right now, just to put that in perspective.

CNN's Pete Muntean is live at the D.C. armory.

So, Pete, what will the 7,000 troops be doing?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, remember, the National Guard came here to support law enforcement and that's exactly what it says it will keep doing as that contagion of 7,000 members of the guard remains here in Washington. What's so interesting is that D.C. officials say the threat of right-wing extremism is here to stay. That's why it, along with Capitol police, requested that the guards stay here until January 30th.

But now, we're hearing that could be extended into March. But, remember, this is a big job getting the guard here. It will be a big job to get them home. It will take some time. 4,000 members of the guard in that initial wave going home in the next 48 hours.

BROWN: Any indication, Pete, that it could be extended because of the impending Senate trial over President Trump? Former President Trump?

MUNTEAN: Well, we know that D.C. officials have said that that is a concern. They want to make sure that the guard is here as we go into this session of Congress, as this impeachment trial could potentially begin. They want to make sure no potential violent extremists, no potential attack on the Capitol could happen again.

BROWN: All right. And guard members are being tested for COVID before they go home. Are many of those tests coming back positive?

MUNTEAN: Well, it's a real concern here. The guard tells me it's looking into that. This doesn't have official numbers to give out just yet. Although we also know that the Defense Department is looking into this as well.

You have to consider that members of capitol police have tested positive after this. So there is a real concern here that members of the guard could have contributed to a super spreader event, although no official numbers just yet -- Pamela.

BROWN: OK. Pete Muntean, thank you so much.

Well, Muhammad Ali once called him the only man I idolized more than myself. The sports world and civil rights movement loses a legend, up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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[16:58:01]

BROWN: In the sports lead, April 8th, 1974, the day he passed, The Babe. Today, he is still baseball's all-time home run king. Henry, Louis "Hank" Aaron has died, one of baseball's all time greats, finishing his career of 755 home runs, a record that would last until Barry Bonds broke it in the midst of baseball's so-called steroid era.

Hammerin' Hank would defy mountains of hate mail during that iconic home run chase, filled with death threats and racist filled that would turn your stomach. So much hate mail, in fact, that the Braves had to hire a secretary for the sole purpose of handling all of it. And he would go on to stand tall as a civil rights icon for decades after his final blast and founded the Hank Aaron Chasing the Dream Foundation to help underprivileged youth. Hank Aaron was 86 years old.

And before we go, we also want to remember one of the 412,000 lives lost to the U.S. in coronavirus.

Hemant Coya (ph) was 64 years old. His family calls him a true New Yorker who was determined to live the American dream. Hemant (ph) emigrated to the U.S. from India and worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 32 years.

Hemant (ph) and his wife had just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary. They had plans to travel the world before he died. His children say their father taught them how to be hard workers and

compassionate people. To the Coya (ph) family, our condolences. And may his memory be a blessing.

And I will see you tomorrow on my new show, "CNN NEWSROOM WEEKENDS," at Saturdays and Sundays from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern every weekend. But this weekend because of all the news going on, it's going to be 6:00 to 10:00 p.m. both Saturday and Sunday night. I really hope you'll join me for the show debut.

I'm Pamela Brown in for Jake Tapper. You can follow me at Twitter @PamelaBrownCNN or just tweet the show, tweet THE LEAD @TheLeadCNN.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now.

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