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Growing Fears of Brutal Autumn as 24 States See Cases Rise; Louisville Braces for Grand Jury Decision in Breonna Taylor Probe; COVID-19 Cases Spreading Across Europe as Second Wave Hits. Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired September 23, 2020 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: It is a big day on multiple fronts, as you just saw. We are so glad you're with us. Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: Goodness, what a day of news --

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: -- of course, marking the passing of RBG, but many other things striking the country right now.

Any moment, the country's top health officials, they're going to testify on Capitol Hill about the nation's response to a pandemic that has now claimed more than 200,000 American lives.

New cases now on the rise in 24 states, 40,000 new cases per day across the country, prompting fears of just a vicious fall ahead. We're going to take you the Hill live when that hearing begins, and it's just moments away.

HARLOW: That's right. And we're also learning this morning that the FDA is considering stricter guidelines when it comes to the race for a vaccine. These rules would push even emergency authorization of a vaccine past Election Day. We'll get to that in a moment.

Let's begin though with our Senior Medical Correspondent, Elizabeth Cohen. good morning, Elizabeth. You have new information on the latest vaccine to begin a phase three trial in this country.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, and it's by Johnson & Johnson. And what sets this vaccine apart of it from the other three that are currently in phase three clinical trials in the U.S. is that it's one dose. That will certainly be handy. If it works and if it's safe, it will be much easier to vaccinate everyone once rather than twice.

But let's take a look at the whole pool, all of the four vaccines that are currently -- that have already started phase three clinical trials. Moderna and Pfizer started July 27th. AstraZeneca started August 31st, but then ten days later went on hold to investigate a participant's illness and they are still on hold in the United States. Johnson & Johnson started today.

And when you look at this list, interestingly enough, Moderna and Pfizer are using the same technology and AstraZeneca and J&J are using the same technologies. So two kinds of technologies at work here, neither one of them, Poppy and Jim, have ever led to a vaccine that was put on the market. There was no vaccine on the market that uses either of these two technologies and that does lead to sort of more safety concerns because this technology is not as tried and true as some other ones. Poppy, Jim?

SCIUTTO: All right. Elizabeth, so the FDA issuing new, stricter guidelines on authorizing vaccines, we have watched, we have reported, as the president has set his own timeline for a vaccine. Do we know why the FDA is doing this and doing so publicly?

COHEN: So the FDA is actually expected to be making these limitations. They haven't done it yet, but according to two sources that we've talked to, they're expected to do this, and it's for safety reason, Jim. It's really what we were just talking about. These were relatively new technologies and the feeling is there might be reasons to be very -- there's always reasons to be cautious and perhaps especially with these vaccines.

So what the FDA is expected to do is to say, hey, when you hit a certain point in the trial and they delineate what that is, when you hit a certain point, you then have to wait two months before applying for authorization from the FDA. Neither one of these -- none of these companies have met that point yet.

So, obviously, two months from now is past Election Day, as one source said, it will be Thanksgiving at the earliest that we will be getting a vaccine.

And, again, this is for safety issues. The more time that we let pass, the more time we can see if any safety issues occur in the tens of thousands of study participants who are enrolled in these trials.

SCIUTTO: That's why you do those trials. You know better than us. So we're glad to hear they're sticking to it. Elizabeth Cohen, thanks very much.

This morning, as 24 states across the country are now seeing a troubling rise in new infections, Dr. Anthony Fauci has a warning for the next few months ahead.

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DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We're entering into the fall and into the winter. And that means there're going to be more indoor things than outdoor things. We've got to get out of the situation we're in right now, which means you don't talk about first wave, second wave. We're looking at 40,000 new cases per day. That's unacceptable. (END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Can we say amen for straight talk from Dr. Fauci? It is so important right now.

Ryan Young joins us. Good morning, Ryan. Dr. Fauci also commented on whether he thinks we will see a vaccine this winter, not just like one that will hit the market but one that more people can actually take.

[10:05:01]

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely. There is a big conversation about this, and we've been focusing a lot on the numbers. But when you talk to health care professionals, they are absolutely worried about what's going on across the country. They say they see more people who are starting to drift away from the guidelines, like washing their hands all the time, using hand sanitizer or especially the fact that people are still not wanting to wear masks.

And talking to one emergency room doctor here in the Chicago area, he says, absolutely, they think that this works and it will help stop people from seeing a rise in the infections.

Still, we're seeing close to 40,000 people a day contracting COVID-19. Of course, the death toll is something that none of us probably would have believed months ago as it's reaching 200,000, but listen to how these doctors are talking about what could be coming in the next few months.

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FAUCI: We hope that by the time we get into the late fall and early winter, November and December, we will know whether a vaccine is safe and effective. There's never a guarantee, Alexis, that you're going to get a safe and effective vaccine, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

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YOUNG: Look, Jim and Poppy, think about this also. Halloween is coming. I saw some people buying costumes recently. And, of course, the CDC is warning maybe not to do such the large Halloween house-to- house as we've seen from years past. They're obviously worried about that being a super-spreader event.

Talking to more doctors, they say that younger people are starting to come in with the virus, especially college students. So that is a big concern.

And if you think about how big football is in this country, the fact that Notre Dame and Wake Forest had to postpone their game because of all the COVID cases, that just shows you that it's still very prevalent and it's still something that should be on the top of everyone's mind, especially when it comes to wearing the mask.

SCIUTTO: Yes. HARLOW: For sure. I think I'm going to have to set up like trick-or- treat in our house, Ryan, and break the news to the kids. This is how it's going to be this year. Thank you.

YOUNG: Yes, it's going to be tough.

HARLOW: All right. We're watching just this incredibly touching farewell to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court. This was her casket arriving just moments ago.

Right now, her family, her close friends, fellow justices are a attending a private ceremony inside of the court's great hall.

SCIUTTO: Delivering eulogy, Justice Roberts -- Chief Justice Roberts says her loss is widely shared and you see that. We saw that this morning and we see what we have witnessed around the country since her passing just a few days ago.

After the ceremony, Ginsburg will lie in repose at the top of the court's front steps. Why? So members of the public can attend an outdoor viewing both today and tomorrow.

And just a remarkable show of respect and honor on Friday, Ginsburg will become, if you can believe it, the first woman in history, in the history of this country, to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol, yet one more barrier broken by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

As the nation pays its respects to Justice Ginsburg, a fierce battle continues in Washington over filling her vacancy. It didn't take long. President Trump says he will name his nominee on Saturday. Multiple sources telling CNN this morning both the White House and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham are targeting the week of October 12th for the confirmation hearing.

As we reminded you yesterday, it wasn't long ago, Lindsey Graham said he would not consider a nominee to the Supreme Court this close to an election.

HARLOW: I think it was you can use my words against me.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: But things have changed.

So what can Democrats do and what power do they even have on this front? Not a lot, but they're vowing retaliation if this confirmation happens so quickly once a nomination is made.

Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill. Good morning, Manu. There has been a lot of -- I mean, I was so struck by the words from Senator Schumer yesterday about like destroying -- was that the word he used -- that McConnell is destroying the Senate?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, he said defiling the Senate, raising serious concerns. The rhetoric is reaching new levels up here as the Republicans are moving forward. And they're moving forward in a very rapid pace to confirm this nominee. Typically, it takes two to three months to go through the full confirmation process of vetting, the background checks and the like.

What the Republicans are talking about is doing something in probably just over a month for a nominee that has not even been named yet and already Republican votes are lining up to confirm whoever that person is, and with growing expectation that it would be Amy Coney Barrett, a member of the Federal Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

Both sides are starting to pay attention to her record, looking into her in both in the Senate Judiciary Committee is familiar with her. She went through the confirmation process for her current post back in 2017. And in that confirmation hearing, she engaged in a rather tense back and forth with Dianne Feinstein, who questioned whether or not some of her stronger religious views, catholic views could impact her legal findings.

[10:10:09]

This was in relation to a legal law article she wrote back in 1998. She said that she could separate the two.

And I was talking to a number of Democrats on the committee yesterday. They are talking about how to deal with questions like that, faith, because the concern is that would she come into the court and essentially overturn Roe versus Wade based on her own personal beliefs. That is going to be how Democrats are looking to go after this nominee, to question whether she would be the decisive vote to go after abortion rights, and overturn the Affordable Care Act, which, of course, is before the Supreme Court the week after the elections.

So both sides are starting to work on their strategy in this very fast-moving confirmation fight. But at the moment, Democrats know their only chance of knocking her off is perhaps at that confirmation hearing. So, it's such high stakes that will affect the lives of so many Americans for decades to come. Guys?

HARLOW: Huge. Huge doesn't even begin to describe it. You're right, Manu. Thank you so much for that reporting.

Well, more shake-ups in Washington this morning, CNN has learned that many White House liaisons are being removed from their jobs at government agencies. They will be replaced with officials who will report directly to the White House instead of to the agencies to come they're assigned.

SCIUTTO: So listen to this. The move apparently comes in anticipation of the administration that President Trump will win a second term. John Harwood is at the White House with the latest.

So, John, first of all, how unusual to have these liaisons report directly to the White House as opposed to the heads of their agencies? How does that change the jobs were meant to be, but what does tell us about expectations inside the White House for 2020?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Jim, it's highly unusual, as everything about the Trump presidency is unusual. This is a continuation of a pattern that has gained momentum throughout President Trump's term. It's happened at the cabinet level, where, initially, you had widely respected figures like Jim Mattis and John Kelly over time struggle to control the president's behavior and decision-making, ultimately get forced out or leave on their own, be replaced by weaker and more compliant figures.

Same is true at the staff level, especially since the president was impeached for pressuring Ukraine to try to smear Joe Biden, his opponent in the campaign. And so we've seen the president increasingly eliminate people that he thought cooperated in that impeachment inquiry who told about his behavior to Democratic investigators.

And we've seen that this fall with the coronavirus pandemic, sometimes with bad results. The president installed Michael Caputo as chief spokesman at the Department of HHS. He's just taken a leave of absence after strange behavior of his own. And this is gathering momentum, in addition, after staffers like Miles Taylor and Olivia Troye had come out and talked about the president's behavior.

So the bottom line is if the president loses, as polls indicate currently that he may, this isn't going to matter all that much. But if the president wins a second term, this government is going to get Trumpier and Trumpier, guys.

SCIUTTO: Yes, positions that are meant to have a different function. John Harwood, thanks very much.

Right now on Capitol Hill, the nation's top health officials are set to testify on the administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic. There is the committee chairman, Lamar Alexander.

Plus, a second wave of coronavirus cases in Europe is now prompting new restrictions in countries there.

HARLOW: Also grand jury watch this morning. The city of Louisville on edge as they are awaiting a decision about charges, potential charges in the killing of Breonna Taylor. We'll take you there live.

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SCIUTTO: Welcome back. There is tension in Louisville, Kentucky, this morning as the city braces for a long-anticipated grand jury decision in the case of Breonna Taylor. That decision could come at any moment.

HARLOW: That's right. Authorities have already restricted access to the downtown area. They have set up barricades in preparation for potential unrest.

Let's go back to our Crime and Justice Correspondent, Shimon Prokupecz. He joins us from Louisville again this morning. Good morning, Shimon.

Talk to us a little bit about what the city is preparing for but also what we see behind you right now.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: So this is -- good morning, Poppy. So this is the vigil. It's been set up here for quite some time here for months here, and every day, people come here. They gather. Some people actually even spend the night here. And this is where a lot of the demonstrations and protesters who have been asking for justice have been gathering around. And you can see a lot of people are gathered here now, a few of them are cleaning up, they're picking up some of the garbage.

But I also want to show you what's happening in Downtown Louisville here, which is really remarkable. I mean, this entire area. This is the government center sort of downtown. You have city hall. You have the courthouse here. But everything has been barricaded, boarded up. It's been this way for some time. But what's different is these concrete barriers and these heavy-duty trucks that the city has placed all around downtown.

You can almost say, Poppy, that all of downtown is virtually shut down. They're restricting cars, they're restricting vehicles from coming here. And this is, as you said, there is a lot of tension here as we await the grand jury decision, which, as you said, could come at any moment.

SCIUTTO: So there is a new development here which is remarkable.

[10:20:00]

One of the officers involved in this shooting sent an email to the broader police department defending his actions. What did he say? Do we know? And what's been the reaction?

PROKUPECZ: Yes. So, certainly, from people in the community, the reaction has been -- they've been unhappy with this officer, Sergeant Mattingly. He was on scene during the shooting. He actually was shot in the -- during the raid. So he sent this email, it was a lengthy email, defending the actions of the officers.

And what's really striking and really unsettling for a lot of people here is the fact that he referred to protesters as thugs. There's a lot of emotions here, certainly, from officers who were involved in this, emotions running high on both sides. And so a lot of people puzzled by why he would send such an email, which could only increase tension, which could only increase problems that the city is trying to avoid.

I should say quickly, Jim, the police chief here, interim police chief, did respond yesterday by only saying it was something that they were looking at, but they have not released any kind of statement or they have not said anything else about it.

SCIUTTO: All right, we'll be watching for developments there. Shimon, we know you'll be there. Thanks very much.

Right now, a second wave of the coronavirus outbreak is gripping Europe. We'll have live reports from the countries right now seeing spikes, as a result, new restrictions go into effect. That's coming up next.

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HARLOW: Welcome back. So there are new curfews in the U.K., as British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says the coronavirus there has reached, quote, a perilous turning point.

SCIUTTO: CNN's Scott McLean is in London. And, Scott, the U.K.'s had enormous swings back and forth, right, from a sort of preference for herd immunity early on and then lockdown, when the prime minister was infected and then things seem to be getting better and now worse. How long could these restrictions last?

SCOTT MCLEAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Six months, Jim, that's what the prime minister is saying, unless there is some sort of major breakthrough on vaccines, treatment or a mass testing scheme way beyond what they're doing right now.

Today in the House of Commons, the prime minister said that these new restrictions were badly needed not only to get a handle on the virus, which seems out of control at this moment, but also to make sure that schools stay open. The U.K. just reported its highest single-day coronavirus case count since early May.

Last night, the prime minister also made a primetime T.V. address to the nation to explain these new measures, which include closing bars early, putting on nice plans (ph) to bring fans back into soccer stadiums and also asking workers to stay home.

He's also offering extra support, even military support to police forces to better enforce the rules that are in place, including limits on social gatherings, which could make holiday celebrations this winter, Christmas, Hanukkah, could limit them to either to just immediate family or set up for the possibility of a lot of illegal family dinners.

The prime minister denounced people on both sides, those pushing for a hard second lockdown and also people who want to let the virus run rampant. This country wants to get the economy going. Neither of those things help do that. Jim, Poppy?

SCIUTTO: Goodness, amazing to watch. Scott McLean, thanks very much.

It's not just the U.K., sadly. We're also seeing cases rise in France and Spain as Europe grapples with what appears to be a second wave of the outbreak.

HARLOW: That's right. Melissa Bell is in Paris with more for us this morning. Good morning, Melissa.

MELISSA BELL, CNN PARIS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy, Jim. It is that second wave that we're looking at in France that has authorities extremely worried again. We've seen rises in the positivity rates with that particular fear around some of the big cities here in France and, in particular, the greater Paris region of particular concern right now, not only with a number of new cases steadily rising over the last couple of weeks but now the number of people entering ICUs.

What they think is that within a couple of weeks in greater Paris, they could be in more trouble in terms of getting any more patients in.

Now, there was an emergency meeting held this morning by ministers to figure out what more they can do and what we expect in an announcement that's expected in a couple of hours from the health minister, fresh regulations, a tightening of restrictions, in particular, here around the greater Paris region. Poppy and Jim?

HARLOW: Melissa, thank you, from Paris for us this morning.

Also a surge in cases in Mexico, as well where the number has reached over 700,000.

SCIUTTO: Yes. CNN International Correspondent Matt Rivers is in Mexico City.

Such a consistent graph we're seeing, right, in these countries, peak, coming down, going back up again. In Mexico, what do they attribute this to?

MATT RIVERS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, Jim, this has just been a steady rise across the board and, really, it kind of feels in some ways like Mexico has just accepted this as the status quo. I mean, people are out and about again. Gyms have reopened or about to reopen here in Mexico City, but there's thousands of new cases every day. There's hundreds of deaths every single day.

And so we're just not seeing, like you saw in Europe, for example, that the wave went up, then it went down.

[10:30:00]

Of course, now there might be that second wave, as we just heard. But in Mexico, it has just been a consistent rise.

Yes, cases are little bit lower than they used to be, but that could change.