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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Researchers Begin Testing Pfizer Vaccine on Kids as Young as Two; White House Backtracks on Refugee Decision, Says Biden Will Announce New Increased Cap by May 15. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired April 16, 2021 - 16:30   ET

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

ALFIEE BRELAND-NOBLE, PSYCHOLOGIST: We don't want to overwhelm kids. I think we also have to ask parents and the friends, the parents of our children's friends to also be accountable, and not shy away from these conversations because we can't have these conversations in a vacuum.

[16:30:10]

So for parents, you know, for black parents out there, I say keep talking to your children, keep shielding them from things until they're ready to engage and take them in, and I think often we're the best judge of when our kids are ready to have the conversations, how much information, the ways in which we share the information, but what we can't do is avoid it and act as if these things aren't real because our kids are going to confront these every time they walk out of the door. So, we have to be prepared and we have to prepare them.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Absolutely. And it's a conversation that white parents need to have with white kids as well about what this is like and how it's not fair that you have to have those conversations with your children.

W. KAMAU BELL, CNN HOST, "UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA": Just be clear. None of that guarantees your black child is going to come home safely.

TAPPER: Right.

BELL: That's the frustrating part. That's why we have to talk about the system, because Tamir Rice doesn't know what happened. John Crawford doesn't know what happened. Cops have shot black people who didn't even know they were getting shot by cops.

BRELAND-NOBLE: That's right.

BELL: They just shot and died.

TAPPER: Yeah. W. Kamau Bell and Alfiee Breland-Noble, thanks so much for talking to us.

And you can catch a new season of Kamal's show "UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA". It premieres Sunday, May 2nd, at 10:00 p.m. Eastern, only on CNN.

Coming up, President Biden is going to hold his first in-person joint with a world leader. We'll bring that to you live. And Monday will be a big moment for COVID vaccine and getting as many Americans vaccinated as possible.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:36:15]

TAPPER: Welcome back.

President Biden is about to speak from the Rose Garden any minute now. It's a joint news conference with the prime minister of Japan and we'll bring that to you live as soon as it starts.

In our health lead, a huge milestone -- more than 200 million vaccine doses have been administered in the United States, more than 200 million. And starting next Monday, every adult in America will be eligible to get a vaccine. That doesn't mean it's going into their arms as of Monday, but they will be eligible.

So, when, of course, the big question -- when can children start getting vaccinated? When will it be safe?

CNN's Nick Watt filed this report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. VIVEK MURTHY, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: What I'm most concerned about, the numbers which are most on my mind are the rising cases and hospitalizations among those who are not vaccinated.

NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Average new daily cases up more than a quarter in just a month. Those more contagious variants now count for about half of new infections, so --

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: The administration is investing $1.7 billion from the American Rescue Plan in an effort to more effectively track emerging and circulating variants across the country and to better prepare the country for the next pandemic.

WATT: Vax news now nearing a quarter of the U.S. population fully vaccinated. Come Monday, every adult in America will be eligible.

But no Johnson & Johnson shots for at least another week. CDC committee will meet again next Friday to weight if benefits outweigh potential risks. Reports of these blood clots after vaccination appear to be literally about 1 in a million and --

DR. CAMILLE KOTTON, ADULT INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPECIALIST, MASSACHUSETTS GENERAL HOSPITAL: Putting this vaccine on pause for those that are front line health care workers have really been devastating.

WATT: Meanwhile, Pfizer says this.

ALBERT BOURLA, CHAIRMAN AND CEO, PFIZER: There will be likely a need for a third dose somewhere between six and 12 months and then from there, there will be an annual revaccination, but all of that needs to be confirmed.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, CHIEF MEDICAL ADVISER TO PRESIDENT BIDEN: Ongoing already are clinical trials looking at a boost of the original wild type of virus vaccine as well as a boost with a variant specific.

WATT: Researchers now testing that Pfizer vaccine on kids.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why don't give it to her right in her arm.

WATT: And kids as young as 2. The key, what size of dose is best for little bodies?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATT (on camera): Now, two teams of doctors say they are getting pretty close figuring out what might be causing the clots, the very rare clots seen after some Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca vaccines. This they say will help them, treat the clots whether they are connected to the vaccines or not, and remember, no link has actually been established.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration and the CDC saying, listen, this pause of Johnson & Johnson proves that our safety system works. This should in fact increase confidence in the vaccines, not to increase vaccine hesitancy. Jake?

TAPPER: All right, Nick, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Let's bring in Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the chief medical correspondent.

Sanjay, let's start with these Pfizer trials on kids as young as 2 years old. You have three kids. I've got two. I'm eager to get them all vaccinated.

If testing goes well, how soon could we see the vaccine available for children?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think this is actually going faster than we even thought, Jake. We know in the 12 to 15-year-olds, there will be an emergency use application, really just an amendment to the emergency use authorization. They are going to basically show the data that they have on 12 to 15-year-olds. It looks good. The FDA will obviously review that.

First, we thought that wouldn't happen until the fall and sounds like this might happen this summer and as Nick Watt just mentioned, kids now as young as 2 years old in five different sites around the country, 144 of them are in this trial looking for safety, looking for the right doze.

[16:40:08]

And, again, if that data comes back positive by the end of the year possibly, there could be an amendment to the authorization for them as well. So, moving along pretty quickly. Jake.

TAPPER: And what will that mean for getting kids back into classrooms?

GUPTA: Well, you know, it's interesting. I think it will be helpful. It will help lower risks because these kids will now be vaccinated. I think as you and I have talked about, I think it's -- it is possible to -- to create environments where the schools are safe now, even safer than the surrounding communities.

So, I think the vaccine will be helpful, but kids are obviously at lower risk of getting sick. They are at lower risk of getting infected, so it will have some difference.

I think the bigger difference may be that it helps us as a country get towards herd immunity because there may be so many adults who aren't getting the vaccine that kids may make up that shortfall percentage.

TAPPER: And, Sanjay, as more people get vaccinated, 200 million shots so far, what's your advice to those who are worried about potential symptoms from the vaccine? You and I both experienced some relatively minor symptoms from when we got vaccinated. Should people take painkillers before they get vaccinated after specific drinks to stay hydrated, what do you think?

GUPTA: Yeah. I don't think you take the painkillers before. Two reasons, one is that you may not need them. Why take them and if you're an older person it may be risky to take some of the painkillers. So, but if you need them afterwards, you can take them.

The second reason not to take it before is in part you're giving the vaccine and basically inducing this inflammatory response. If you give anti-inflammatories ahead of time, you may blunt the response a bit. So, you know, again, if you're having significant symptoms take them after, plenty of fluids.

And also, sometimes people will sort of get this itchiness or a COVID arm that can look quite dramatic. Antihistamines can help with that. You got COVID arm in one arm the first time, second time ask to get the shot in the other arm, but things like that, but symptoms are pretty self-resolving, Jake.

TAPPER: Yeah, I had the chills and then it went away. I was fine the next day.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

We're standing by for President Biden to start his first in-person joint news conference with a world leader of his presidency. We're going to bring it to you live from the Rose Garden as soon as it begins, which we expect any moment.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:46:54] TAPPER: In our "Earth Matters" series today, you probably have more than one forgotten mask in your jacket pocket, in your car, your junk drawer. What happens when the pandemic is over and all the N95 masks get thrown away?

As CNN's Bill Weir reports, the sudden mass production of PPE is already causing a waste problem around the world and the biggest consumer, the health care industry, they're finding some creative solutions to try to help save the planet.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BILL WEIR, CNN CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the early days of COVID, the dire shortage of PPE left many frontline health care workers painfully vulnerable, but now, so many masks are made each year they can cover an area the size of Switzerland.

ILYSSA GORDON, MEDICAL DIRECTOR FOR SUSTAINABILITY, CLEVELAND CLINIC: Now, everybody is aware of PPE, and everybody in health care is being asked to use more PPE.

JON UTECH, DIRECTOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY, CLELVEAND CLINIC: We now have almost 70,000 people to potentially use a mask every single day. So the number went from 200 operation theaters and patient floors to literally 70,000 a day.

WEIR: That's from one hospital adding to an already staggering amount of plastic waste coming from our health care system.

PEYLINA CHU, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HEALTHCARE PLASTICS RECYCLING COUNCIL: We estimate that it's somewhere around a million tons per year of clean plastics. They had a million tons per year in the U.S. we're estimating it's probably equivalent in Europe and probably about the same amount in Asia. Unfortunately, today, I would say probably the majority of it is still going to landfill.

WEIR: Landfills if we're lucky. The Ocean Conservancy collected more than 100,000 pieces of PPE during the second half of 2020 alone, and that is just a tiny tip of a mountain of pandemic plastic waste.

BRETT STEVENS, GLOBAL VP OF MATERIAL SALES AND PROCUREMENT, TERRACYCLE: Manufacturers went into overdrive to produce billions of pieces of PPE, things like gloves, things like garments, things like masks, beard nets, hair covers, suit covers. Personal protective equipment has already been around, but due to COVID, it's now a monster waste stream.

WEIR: Programs offered by a recycling companies like TerraCycle are taking aim at the discarded consumer PPE. But contaminated materials like those coming from hospitals aren't as simple to process.

STEVENS: Waste coming from certain areas like hospitals does qualify as hazardous waste in many cases, which means legally from a regulatory standpoint, we can't touch it.

CHU: Recyclers are afraid to take materials from hospitals because maybe there's a syringe in there, something came in that wasn't supposed to and they didn't catch it in time, and they had to shut down their whole plant and disinfect everything. Recycling is really third on the hierarchy when comes to dealing with waste. The first to reduce the use of plastic and the second is to reuse and then the third is recycle.

WEIR: It's a situation that's forced the Cleveland Clinic to rethink and look for other ways to reduce their plastic footprint.

UTECH: We found a local company, Cleveland Whisky, that started to make the sanitizer for us. We bottled the sanitizer and send it out to every facility every day and we have a combination of glass and plastic containers where we're filling these things constantly.

GORDON: We started a collection early on of the PPE that we could re- sterilized, the N95 masks and other gowns and personal protective equipment.

[16:50:10]

And nobody ever imagined that that was even a possibility.

UTECH: We've also been trying to innovate and we're building a process to actually turn those lower value plastics that we can't recycle into fuel. We went and found seamstresses in the city of Cleveland, and we sourced a really good cloth material, and we produced cloth masks.

WEIR: As masks help fill our landfills all the faster, the flow of plastics into our oceans is expected to triple by 2040.

More than two-thirds of U.N. member states would be open to a Paris- style agreement that might stem the kind of pollution found now in every link in the food chain. The U.S. so far has been notably silent.

Bill Weir, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Bill Weir with the latest in our "Earth Matters" series, and we are still awaiting President Biden. We are told any moment he'll hold the joint news conference with the prime minister of Japan. We're going to squeeze in one more quick break.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:56:12]

TAPPER: We're standing by for President Biden to speak alongside the Japanese prime minister. They will also face some questions from reporters. That could possibly include questions on an ever-shifting policy on refugees from the Biden administration. Right now, officially Biden has said he's not going to raise the annual limit on the number of refugees admitted to the U.S. from the position that Trump had it so he'll keep it at the historically low level of 15,000 under President Trump.

Multiple humanitarian groups called it disappointing and disturbing and shameful, but it's also possible that this is going to shift again.

Let's bring in CNN's Kaitlan Collins.

Kaitlan, so, Biden went after Trump for this low level of refugees when he was a candidate and then he announced they were going to have the same level, low level, only 15,000 refugees. And now what's going on after the announcement, they are shifting is again?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, it's a backtrack of an earlier backtrack, Jake, that's all happening in one day and now, the White House is saying next month, President Biden will set a new refugee cap that comes after he set one already this year saying he was going to bump it up from the historically low level set by President Trump at 15,000 and raise it is to 62,500 by the end of this fiscal year, so September 30th.

Yet, of course, it's April. He still has not actually signed that paperwork, so for weeks we've been asking the White House why hasn't he signed it yet, because it was having real life repercussions. These are people who have gone through years of vetting sometimes who had plane tickets booked to come to the United States and the tickets were getting cancelled because they couldn't actually come in under this historically low limit set by former President Trump.

And earlier today, officials confirmed to CNN and "The New York Times" and "Washington Post" and multiple other outlets they were going to leave that cap at 15,000 because they had several reasons. They blamed it on the lack of infrastructure really in the refugee process over at DHS that was left over from when President Trump was in office. They also said because of that surge that you're seeing at the border, that that was affecting it. But they did say, yes, it's staying at 15,000.

And now, we have a new statement from Jen Psaki talking about raising this cap next month. We don't know what that number is going to be, but it doesn't appear that that's going tonight 62,500 level.

Just to give you an idea, Jake, of how quickly all of this is changing on the White House behalf. This is what Jen Psaki said last week when I asked her, is President Biden committed to raising it to his original stated goal that he had in January?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Is the White House still committed to raising that cap to 62,500 by this fiscal year?

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COLLINS: Of course, that's no longer happening, even in the new statement we got a few minutes ago, Jen Psaki says it's unlikely after meeting with immigration officials that they would likely be able to achieve that goal of 62,500. So, we'll be waiting to see what it is from the White House.

Of course, people's lives are hanging in the balance kind of waiting to figure how the what this number is going to be and now, Jen Psaki says we'll figure out the new refugee cap in about a month from now, Jake.

TAPPER: About a month from now. So, a reverse of the reversal. All right. My head is spinning here.

Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much.

Be sure to tune in to CNN this Sunday for "STATE OF THE UNION". My co- host Dana Bash is going to be joined by Dr. Anthony Fauci, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, former Republican House Speaker John Boehner, and Democratic Congresswoman Karen Bass of California. That's 9:00 a.m. and noon Sunday.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now. Thanks for watching.

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Welcome to our viewers from around the world and here in the United States. I'm Wolf Blitzer in the "THE SITUATION ROOM."

We're standing by to hear directly from President Biden. He's now holding his first in-person meeting with a foreign leader.