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China's Hubei Province Reports 242 New Deaths from Coronavirus; Crisis in Syria; Trump Defends Convicted Adviser Roger Stone; Westerdam Finally Allowed to Dock in Cambodia; Quarantine to End Soon for Cruise Ship in Japan; Pope Sidesteps Proposal for Married Priests in Amazon. Aired 12-1a ET
Aired February 13, 2020 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm John Vause.
Coming up on CNN NEWSROOM: a surge in confirmed cases of the coronavirus. Almost 15,000 in one day in one province as China revises guidelines to diagnose, confirming what many suspected all along, the extent of the outbreak has been global (ph) from the start.
When two states go to war, Syrian government troops and Turkish troops now in open conflict and as the fighting escalates the biggest civilian displacement ever seen in nine years of war is underway.
And vengeance is mine saith the U.S. president. Those who took part in his impeachment, retribution. For those who lied to protect him, mercy and sympathy.
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VAUSE: This day began with what we thought was good news coming from China. Officials were saying the number of confirmed cases and fatalities for the coronavirus may stabilize. But it wasn't long before word came of more than 240 deaths on Wednesday in Hubei province alone, the largest single day increase so far, pushing the overall death toll past 1,300.
The number of those suspected to have the virus worldwide jumped at least 60,000 with nearly 15,000 new cases reported in Hubei alone.
So why the surge?
Officials are now counting cases they confirm through testing as well as patients who were observed and diagnosed in clinics but have not necessarily tested positive. It's no surprise that the China state controlled media is now focusing on what can be described as the best of a bad situation. With extensive reporting on the thousands of patients who have recovered from the virus and have been discharged from hospitals. But behind the scenes the news is not so happy with reports of a purge
underway of high-ranking Communist Party officials in Hubei. CNN's David Culver begins our coverage.
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DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With a rising death toll and a growing number of confirmed cases, these are the images most often associated with the novel coronavirus. Firsthand accounts confirm the deadly virus can be beaten.
Chinese state media shifted much of the coverage to these images, showing patients who survived the illness, flowers in hand as they leave the hospital, their faces blurred as even Chinese state media acknowledges the stigma associated with those infected even after they have recovered.
CULVER: We connected with two patients not part of the media op. They asked that we not reveal their identities. But CNN did review their medical records, showing they had been diagnosed and since recovered from the coronavirus.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: First my results, it's positive, so I have been (INAUDIBLE).
CULVER (voice-over): This 21-year-old college student, who asked we call him "Tiger Yi," says he was attending language courses near the Wuhan seafood market. He started feeling sore and sick to his stomach in mid-January. Initially he tried treating it with cold medicine but it got worse with each passing day.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I realized maybe something wrong has happened. So my dad urged me to get back home immediately.
CULVER (voice-over): He started running a fever and went to the hospital.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a real mess. It's a lot of people. A lot of nurses and doctors in the fever (speaking Japanese).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Fever clinic.
CULVER (voice-over): He eventually found a less crowded hospital willing to test him. His positive diagnosis gave him quick access to anti-viral drugs, which he says proved effective. Within a week, he said he was already feeling better.
Video chatting with us from a nearby city, this 31-year-old Wuhan engineer describes his initial diagnosis.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I was scared and fearful, having contracted this disease.
CULVER (voice-over): He said getting tested took days because of scarce hospital testing resources. When his case was finally confirmed and he was admitted for treatment, he felt confident he could battle through the illness.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I think for the young and the strong, the disease is more like a heavy cold, only it's highly contagious, so it causes panic.
CULVER (voice-over): The road to recovery varies for each person. Both men we spoke with said they finished their treatments but no flower bouquet sendoff back home. They're current in government monitored hotel quarantines, getting tested regularly to make sure the illness does not return -- David Culver, CNN, Beijing.
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VAUSE: We'll go live to Beijing now; CNN's Steven Jiang standing by.
The focus of the state media may be a positive, happy news about recovering patients. But that contrasts starkly with a purge of high- ranking Communist Party officials in Hubei province. Some are paying for this outbreak with their jobs.
STEVEN JIANG, CNN SENIOR PRODUCER, BEIJING BUREAU: In the last hour or so, we have just learned the most senior official in Hubei. That is the Communist Party chief of the province got replaced by the mayor of Shanghai. A trusted protege of President Xi Jinping and also the Communist Party chief of the city of Wuhan, which is the provincial capital, also replaced by another official from a different Chinese region.
Now the mayor of Wuhan and the governor of Hubei, many expected them to go as well but the change in these positions requires the approval of China's rubber stamp legislature so that may take a bit longer.
But this development is not entirely surprising, considering the scathing criticism these local officials have received for their handling of this outbreak and also I think many would agree, it is in the best interest of the central leadership to direct people's frustrations and anger at the local level and provincial level, at least right now.
The thing is, even with a change in leadership and methodology, it's not changing the reality on the ground. And we have been hearing from people trapped in Wuhan and the rest of the province for over two weeks in terms of how desperate and helpless they continue to feel.
Many are trying to seek medical attention and medical care because they are extremely sick and with full blown symptoms of the coronavirus. But without any success so many have resorted to posting their information online trying to get the attention of the authorities.
State media has reported at least one case of suicide because of the situation. So I think even officials there acknowledging the severe shortage of medical supplies, facilities and personnel continue to be the case. Unless all these issues get resolved the picture there is not going to
improve anytime soon -- John.
We appreciate the update. Steven Jiang there, as has he been from the beginning on the outbreak of the coronavirus. Thanks, Steven.
One of the biggest annual events has been called off because of the coronavirus outbreak. The Mobile World Congress was scheduled for later this month not only where the virus is most prevalent but in Barcelona. Still organizers say the travel concerns and other circumstances make it impossible to halt the event. More than a dozen major tech companies have pulled out over their fees that employees could be exposed to the virus.
The conference typically draws more than 100,000 people from all around the world. The outbreak has also forced major sporting events in China and elsewhere to be canceled or postponed. The latest is the Chinese Grand Prix set for Shanghai in April.
Organizers will soon meet to try and find another day for the Formula 1. No easy task in a very tight racing schedule.
Moving on now, Turkey says it will close off the skies above northwest Syria to aircraft targeting civilians and will in target Syrian regime forces attacking those civilians. Syria calls the warnings "hollow and ignorant."
Caught in the middle, though, civilians, including more than 1 million forced to flee their homes in the past year or so. CNN's Arwa Damon is there.
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ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Turkey most certainly seems as if it is upping the ante when it comes to military involvement.
There have been convoys going in. Turkey saying it's going to more actively assist the forces to push regime troops back to what was the originally demarcated line meant to create a deescalation zone in Syria but it never happened.
The situation is extraordinarily dire there. Many of those living through it and even those observing it struggle to find adequate words to properly describe just how catastrophic the situation really is.
Now I'm joined by Mark Cutts, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordinator for the Syrian crisis.
Thank you so much for joining us.
How do you put into words with the civilian population is going through there right now?
MARK CUTTS, U.N. HUMANITARIAN COORDINATOR FOR SYRIA: Well, this is a massive humanitarian crisis. We haven't seen anything on this scale in Syria during the nine years of this war.
There's more than a million civilians who had to flee their homes in northwest Syria in the last year, 700,000 of them in the last two months alone. These are people, many of them had fled from Aleppo and Homs and other parts of Syria during the long war.
They came to this area thinking they would be safe and now they themselves are under attack. It's a shocking situation on the ground today.
DAMON: And it's freezing even right here where we're standing.
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DAMON: I mean, how is this further compounding the risk for these people, for these families, for the children?
CUTTS: Well, it's freezing where we are right here. For people who are living in tents and out in the open, people sleeping on the backs of trucks and in schools without heating at the moment, it's horrific. We're already getting a lot of stories about babies and elderly people who are dying as a result of this cold weather.
It's snowing today. There's ice on the ground. We hear stories of people, they're burning shoes and plastic bottles and they're sewing up car fires to stay warm. They're inhaling toxic fumes and dying of that. It's a desperate situation.
DAMON: The big question is, where is all the aid?
You were saying you are sending in around 1,000 if not more trucks a month. But then we talk to people inside who say they're not receiving anything and there's a severe lack of humanitarian assistance.
CUTTS: They're right. The needs are so enormous and they far outstrip our capacity to respond. We have a massive aid operation, more than 1,000 trucks have released supplies, going in every month. But when you have a crisis of this scale, 1 million people who fled their homes in the last year, we need to scale this operation up a lot more.
DAMON: And your teams on the ground and are also facing challenges.
CUTTS: Well, it's very difficult for them to respond at the moment. We had three of our humanitarian workers were killed in the last two weeks. A humanitarian warehouse was bombed and destroyed. Hospital workers have had to flee.
More than 70 hospitals and health centers and medical facilities have stopped functioning in the last two months because of the fighting. This is a relentless campaign of airstrikes and shelling and ground forces, emptying out entire cities and towns and villages. It's just on an unimaginable scale.
DAMON: Thank you so much for joining us and helping us try to better understand what's happening. And as you're hearing, this is a conflict perhaps unlike any that, at
the very least, those in Syria have had to go through up until this stage. There is a desperate need for more support from the international community, for more money to be sent for the humanitarian effort and for all parties who have the capability to do anything to stop the bloodshed to take those actions.
But the sad reality has been that, when it comes to Syria, every one has failed. Countries that could have done something to try to reduce, if not end, the bloodshed have failed to do so.
And those who have been responsible for the bulk of the bloodshed, the Syrian regime backed by the Russians, backed by the Iranians, have shown no desire to do so. Right now, those who are trapped in Idlib province have nowhere left to run.
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VAUSE: And so it was, lesson learned. After his impeachment trial and acquittal for the U.S. president, he is now bent on revenge. More on that in a moment.
And also sorry, Catholic priests of the Amazon, looks like you'll remain bachelors. We will explain why when we get back.
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VAUSE: If Donald Trump's impeachment acquittal was a teachable moment, it seems the U.S. president walked away with a different lesson compared to those Republican senators who thought he would be more contrite, even restrained. Perhaps this headline from "The New York Times" opinion piece summed it up best.
"Think Trump's Learned a Lesson? Hahahaha."
CNN's Jim Acosta reports.
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JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The president is all but blowing a kiss to the Justice Department for intervening in the case of the former campaign adviser Roger Stone who is facing a longer prison sentence for his role in the Russia investigation until Mr. Trump started complaining. The president claims he didn't meddle in the case.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to thank the Justice Department for looking into this horrible thing. And I didn't speak to them by the way. ACOSTA: The Justice Department's decision to seek a lighter sentence for Stone prompted four federal prosecutors to quit the case. But Mr. Trump didn't seem to mind.
TRUMP: He was treated badly.
I don't know what happened. They all hit the road pretty quickly.
I'm not concern about anything. They had to go back to school.
Nine years in jail is a disgrace. In the meantime Comey is walks around making book deals.
ACOSTA: Earlier in today the president tweeted "Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought." The president is not ruling out a pardon for Stone.
TRUMP: I don't want to say that yet.
ACOSTA: Critics say the Stone case is just the latest example of Mr. Trump's apparent campaign of retribution after the impeachment trial. Not so say the administration officials who claim there was no revenge sought against Alexander Vindman and his brother after they were pushed out of the White House. Pay back critic say for the Lieutenant Colonel's testimony.
ROBERT O'BRIEN, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: And it was just time for them to go back. And their services were no longer needed and so they've gone back to the Department of the Army. And so that's where they'll continue their career.
I can absolutely tell you they were not retaliated against.
ACOSTA: That doesn't quite line up with the president who said he was unhappy with Vindman.
TRUMP: No. Well, yes, I obviously wasn't happy with the job he did. And the military can handle him anyway they want.
ACOSTA: But there are signs the president's latest fixation on the Stone case. The White House suddenly withdrew the nomination of Jessie Liu, a federal prosecutor tapped for a top job at the Treasury Department. She oversaw the office handling the Stone case.
The president is also targeting the judge presiding over the Stone trial, Amy Berman Jackson, tweeting, "Is this the judge that put Paul Manafort in solitary confinement, something that not even the mobster Al Capone had to endure?"
Democrats say the president is out of control.
SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER, (D) MINORITY LEADER: Left to his own devices, President Trump would turn America into a banana republic where the dictator can do whatever he wants and the Justice Department is the president's personal law firm. ACOSTA: The president's top defenders are pushing back on that.
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM, (R) SOUTH CAROLINA: He should not be commenting on cases in the system. I've said that a bunch. And if I had thought that he had done something to change the outcome inappropriately, I'd be the first to say.
ACOSTA: Still some Republicans are unsettled by the president's moves after Maine Senator Susan Collins said she thought the president had learned a lesson after impeachment.
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS, (R) MAINE: He was impeached and there has been criticism by both Republican and Democratic senators of his call. I believe that he will be much more cautious in the future.
ACOSTA: Alaskan GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski conceded "There haven't been any strong indicators this week that he has."
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ACOSTA: And the president is also making it clear he doesn't plan on modifying his behavior after his impeachment trial. Asked by reporters earlier today what he has learned, he responded that, it's the Democrats, he says, who are crooked and that he should have never been impeached -- Jim Acosta, CNN, the White House.
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VAUSE: Harry Litman is a former U.S. attorney and former assistant deputy attorney general, he joins us from Los Angeles.
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VAUSE: Quickly off the top, if you are the prosecutor in the Stone case, would you answer that same sentence, nine years in jail is appropriate?
HARRY LITMAN, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL: There is nothing inappropriate about it. So it is exactly by the book. It is just what the guidelines provide. It wasn't just the prosecutors; it was also the probation people, the pretrial services.
All said that that is what the justice requires here and that is totally typical when somebody like Stone goes to trial. I hear the arguments and it's excessive but the place for those arguments are within the process.
Once the assistant U.S. attorney comes out and makes the recommendation for the political forces of the Justice Department to basically kick him in the teeth, the next day, that is what's really mind-blowing.
So the arguments that it could have been less are really missing the point. The point is the override of the regular process.
VAUSE: For some reason this president believes what he tweets is different than what he says. Listen to this.
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TRUMP: No, I didn't speak to the Justice -- I'd be able to do it if I wanted to, I have the absolute right to do it.
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VAUSE: You know whether he spoke directly to the Justice Department or indirectly via Twitter, doesn't really matter does it?
And he has absolute right to do that, to interfere with the independence of the judiciary?
LITMAN: All right, so two points. He certainly doesn't by practice, protocol, memorandum, everything, he is saying I'm president, I'm the boss, I can do what I want. In terms of does it matter, you know I think what happened here very arguably is he didn't speak to them.
And Barr was sort of channeling his political preferences. In many ways that's worse. If you have the political leadership of the Department of Justice, that unbidden looks what it can do to further his agenda of hurting his enemies and helping his friends, that's in many ways more harrowing, not less, than it would be if he were giving explicit commands.
VAUSE: "The New York Times" editorial board calls out the attorney general for his actions, writing, "An aspiring autocrat is only as powerful as his enablers and Mr. Trump hit the jackpot Mr. Barr, who is now taking control of all cases involving the president, including Mr. Stone's conviction."
They should add maybe to the list Republicans in Congress, guys like these.
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MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Is it possible that he is getting favored treatment here because he is the president's friend?
SEN. RICK SCOTT (R-FL): I don't know. I don't know enough about the facts. I do believe everybody ought to be treated the same.
RAJU: Should Barr come and testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee?
SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R): About what?
RAJU: About this.
CORNYN: That's up to the chairman.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Should we be tweeting about a sentence regarding someone he is close with? SEN. JOHN KENNEDY (R-LA): I have suggested to the White House and to the president, that tweeting less would not cause brain damage. But the president is going to tweet.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: You know would any of this be possible if Congress and in particular the Republicans were acting as they should?
LITMAN: The short answer is no. I mean they are really completely feckless and craven. You had Susan Collins saying, I think he will have learned his lesson.
Try to figure out how this is happened, a completely brazen president with no regard for the rule of law, what is the constitutional remedy for that?
It is with Congress and they have completely abandoned their responsibility, knowing, I feel confident, everybody in the Senate and Congress knows exactly what kind of president he is and what he has done. And they are ducking for cover as those few excerpts illustrated.
VAUSE: Since his impeachment acquittal Donald Trump has fired Lieutenant Colonel Vindman, who testified in the House over Ukraine phone call; he removed his twin brother from National Security Council for good measure; he fired the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, who also testified against him.
Then came the Roger Stone sentencing tweet. That same day there was retribution for the U.S. attorney who's overseeing the prosecution of Stone as well as other Trump allies, like Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort. He pulled her nomination as a Treasury undersecretary.
That is what we know. That is what's public. This is a pattern for a president, who now is acting with impunity.
And is that the lesson he learned from being impeach on abuse of power?
That he can do whatever he wants?
LITMAN: It sure seems like it. It is a reign of terror and he said this in the past, well, if I thought it was wrong, I wouldn't do it openly. Where these things are concerned with him, he is a sociopath and he may do it openly. And it just makes it more stunning.
But of course, if he now thinks, well, you took your shot at me, you got to kill the king if you shoot him. You didn't and now no holds barred. As a expression of the actual state of political play, maybe that's accurate.
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LITMAN: But that is where people like Bill Barr and others who swear an oath to the Constitution come in. And now we have them abdicating their role.
VAUSE: Well here's part of an op-ed written by Chuck Rosenberg, U.S. attorney for a number of districts.
He wrote, "The rule of law is a construct. It was made by people and is nurtured and preserved by people. It can also be destroyed by people. And unlike the law of gravity, which works everywhere and all the time, at least on this planet, the rule of law is precious and fragile.
"As citizens and prosecutors we either safeguard it or we surrender it. That's the choice."
And basically what we're saying is this is how democracies die.
So where is an outrage from a country which was a champion of democracy around the world for generations?
LITMAN: It's for -- first of all, Chuck Rosenberg, extremely respected across the board by Republicans and Democrats and his words really ring true.
There is outrage by some, by some Democrats. But it's just not enough to deter Trump and certainly not if they have the acquiescence of the Department of Justice, which here, is not simply that it's overriding what professional prosecutors do; it's putting their lot in with everything that is antithetical to the Department of Justice mission.
Roger Stone thumbed his nose at them, made a circus of it, called them basically the deep state. That's the team that Bill Barr and Donald Trump have chosen to join and put the Department of Justice behind, not surprising but still stunning the four career prosecutors resigned yesterday.
VAUSE: We're out of time but thank you so much for being with us.
LITMAN: Thank you.
VAUSE: More than 3,700 people are stranded on board a cruise ship just off of Japan, over 200 have tested positive for the coronavirus and those who haven't think that they could get it.
Also a cruise ship turned away by the coronavirus scare finally finds a friendly port. Details just ahead.
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VAUSE: Welcome back I'm John Vause with an update on our top news this hour.
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The worldwide death toll from the coronavirus is now over 1,300, with at least 60,000 cases reported globally. The numbers surged in China's Hubei province on Wednesday, largely because they're now counting both cases confirmed through testing, as well as patients who were diagnosed in clinics but not necessarily tested.
This coronavirus scare is playing out on the high seas, as a tale of two cruise ships. One, the Westerdam, has no confirmed cases of the disease. The other, the Diamond Princess, has at least 219 confirmed cases, the highest number outside of mainland China.
Yet passengers on both have been refused permission to disembark. Now, though, the Westerdam found safe harbor in Cambodia, where passengers have been allowed to come ashore and from there, fly home.
But thousands of kilometers away, just off Yokohama, Japan, the Diamond Princess is still a floating quarantine zone. But officials say, barring unforeseen circumstances, passengers will be allowed to leave next Wednesday.
CNN's Will Ripley live for us with all of this. So you're there at Yokohama with the Diamond Princess. So this announcement that the quarantine will end February 19, which is a Wednesday, have these announcements been sort of routine, only to be reset when there's a new case confirmed on board? Or is this looking a little more positive that, maybe the holiday from hell, you know maybe it's coming to an end?
WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It seems like the holiday from hell might be in its final days, John. But passengers still have a lot of questions about how things are going to actually work, because all they've been told at this point is that, at 7 a.m. on the 19th, the quarantine period ends.
But passengers don't know when they're actually going to be able to get off the ship, who goes first, what flights are they going to take home? Do they have to book their own flights? Does the cruise company handle booking the flights? These are all unanswered questions at this point.
And, you know, we don't have those answers to provide them, because it presumably -- those details are still being worked out. Even the U.S. embassy here in Japan, which has been emailing passengers a couple of times a day, just kind of keeps regurgitating the same information.
So you can understand how frustrating it is, given the fact that they are still now, you know, another two dozen new cases reported just today.
Also another new development: that passengers who are over the age of 80, who have tested negative for coronavirus, and have not had any contact with somebody who has tested positive, they are now being told that they have a choice. They can either stay on the cruise ship, or they can get off and go into housing provided by the Japanese government and ride out the rest of the quarantine there. So that's for, you know, some of the older passengers, people who are in the higher risk groups.
If they did, obviously, contract coronavirus, people over the age of 60, and those with preexisting conditions are at the highest risk of a serious case.
But for the rest of those passengers, they still have, you know, around 3,500 people in total on board, including the passengers and crew. They just continue to wait things out and, you know, count down the days and hope that they can figure out what's going to happen next.
VAUSE: The other -- the other ship is the voyage of the damned. It's the Westerdam. A number of countries wouldn't allow the ship to dock, but now Cambodia has agreed. Why? Why did Cambodia agree when so many others said no?
RIPLEY: Well, because the World Health Organization is, you know, saying thank you to Cambodia for showing international solidarity, after you know, here in Japan, in Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines they all turned this cruise ship away with, you know, almost 1,500 passengers on board, even though there is zero evidence that anybody on the ship has coronavirus. Nobody is showing any symptoms, the cruise line indicates. They say there was never any question about whether these people had coronavirus.
The only reason why this cruise ship has kind of been aimlessly floating around, trying to find some place, you know, to dock, so that people can go home. It's because they stopped in Hong Kong, which now has 50 confirmed cases of the virus there. But no indication that anybody on the ship actually became infected.
So you know, this speaks to the -- kind of the fear, the hysteria, and the fact that a lot of countries, including here in Japan frankly, they don't want to repeat of what we see unfolding here in Yokohama, where Japan is now dealing with 200-plus cases that they're having to manage, in addition to worrying about, you know, their own citizens.
You know, Japan says they're even running low on testing kits to be able to -- to be able to, you know, test people who might be showing symptoms, even as the passengers on board the ship here in Yokohama think that everybody should be tested, because they wonder, OK, what if I'm carrying the virus, and I'm just not showing symptoms? Does that mean I could bring the virus, potentially, back home?
But for the passengers in Cambodia, we know that health officials have now boarded the ship, and in the coming days, they are expecting that the passengers will be able to get off the ship, and they will get on flights that are provided by the cruise line, and they'll get to go home. That's in addition to 100 percent refund, and a cruise credit, if they actually decide they want to take another cruise -- John.
VAUSE: Big "if," I'd imagine.
Will, thank you. Will Ripley reporting for us live. Thanks, Will.
Joining us now on the line, Rose Yerex, one of almost 4,000 passengers on board the Diamond Princess.
So Rose, good to have you with us. I guess there is some now good news for you. There is a light at the end of this quarantine tunnel. What have you been told?
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ROSE YEREX, CRUISE SHIP PASSENGER (via phone): Well, we're keeping our fingers crossed. They're saying that it's still February the 19th, that quarantine period will end, so especially for all of us who are still in good health.
VAUSE: In the time that you've been there under this quarantine, what's sort of been the high point, if there has been one, a best moment that you can share with us?
YEREX: The high point?
VAUSE: Yes.
YEREX: Well, the quality time -- the quality time that my husband and I are spending together,
VAUSE: In a very small cabin, I imagine?
YEREX: Yes, very small cabin. But we do have access to the outside, because we have a balcony.
VAUSE: Yes.
YEREX: So that's very helpful.
VAUSE: What's been the worst moment, though? When looking back. I mean, you still have another week to go and then hopefully, you'll be off a week from Friday. A week from today, rather. Has it been a really low point that you can remember?
YEREX: We are actually doing our absolute best to keep each other optimistic, so I can't really recall any really low point.
VAUSE: Are you guys regular cruise goers?
YEREX: This, I think, is our -- no, this is maybe our fourth cruise in total.
VAUSE: OK. My question is will you do another one?
YEREX: Absolutely.
VAUSE: Even through this experience, you're still keen to go again? Why?
YEREX: Well, let me tell you, though, we would make sure that A, we have an outside cabin, so we have access to a balcony and a chair. And I think we would make sure we carry with us a coffee maker and our own supply of coffee. VAUSE: I heard coffee shortage was a big -- one of the biggest
complaints that a lot of people had, that the coffee kept running out.
YEREX: Well, I could certainly understand it, because we're -- we get one cup a day, and it's usually lukewarm.
VAUSE: That's very harsh. Harsh conditions.
Bu Rose, we're very happy for you. We're very happy for your husband we can hear in the background there, as well, chiming in. We wish all the best. Let's hope that nothing goes wrong between now and that quarantine ending in about the next seven days or so. Thank you for being with us. We appreciate it.
YEREX: Our pleasure.
VAUSE: Pope Francis has decided it's better to dodge than deal with one of the church's most controversial issues. And that means he'll need to find another solution for a shortage of priests in the Amazon. Details when CNN NEWSROOM returns.
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VAUSE: Pope Francis has effectively rejected a proposal to allow married men to be ordained as priests in the Amazon. The pope sidestepped the idea on Wednesday when he released a 32-page document addressing issues in the region.
CNN's Delia Gallagher has more now, reporting from Rome.
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DELIA GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There were high expectations surrounding the pope's decision ever since last October, when Francis convened at the Vatican, a meeting to discuss issues in the Amazon, such as the shortage of clergy there. There are many Catholics in the Amazon region who do not have a regular Sunday mass to go to because of a lack of priests.
So Francis told his bishops last October to make bold proposals, and they did that. Two of those proposals -- one of them being to allow married men in the Amazon to be ordained as Catholic priests; the other to allow women to be ordained a deacons, which is a sort of priest -- have been on the pope's desk since October.
But on Wednesday morning, Pope Francis published his reflections on the proceedings, and he did not endorse either of those proposals.
You can imagine that, for progressives, this is a disappointment, while for conservatives, it is welcome news. And in fact, some Vatican experts say that the conservative backlash, ever since last year, against these proposals may have weighed into the pope's decision.
There were some top cardinals, including the pope emeritus, Pope Benedict VI, who wrote articles and books in support of traditional Catholic priesthood and celibacy.
Another factor that might have weighed in the pope's decisions, experts say, is the fact that, if he had made the exception for the Amazon, he would probably also have to make it for the rest of the world.
And we might mention what Francis himself is reported to have said about his decision. Some U.S. bishops reported they met with him a few days ago, and the pope told them the holy spirit wasn't in it. In other words, it just wasn't the right time.
Whatever the reasons, the pope has decided that, for the moment anyway, there will be no changes to the Catholic priesthood.
Delia Gallagher, CNN, Rome.
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VAUSE: Northern Ireland joined the 21st Century on Tuesday with the first same-sex marriage there. British MPs voted back in July to extend marriage rights to the same-sex couples in Northern Ireland, but the law only took effect this week.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in the rest of the U.K. since 2014.
The Church of England has voted to apologize for racism experienced by countless black, Asian and minority ethnic people over the past 70 years. The archbishop of Canterbury, the church's most senior bishop, says there's no doubt the church is still deeply institutionally racist. An outside expert will be brought in to assess the current extent of racism within the church.
Thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm John Vause. Please stay with us. WORLD SPORT is next.
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VAUSE: Hello, everyone. I'm John Vause. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, live from Studio Seven, CNN's world headquarters in Atlanta. Ahead this hour, the number of coronavirus cases surges in the outbreak's epicenter, after China's government uses a new way to count the people who are sick, all but admitting it lowballed the extent of the crisis from the start.
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