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One-Third of U.S. Voters Have Already Cast Ballots; Democrats Hope to End Republican Dominance In Texas; W.H.O.: Europe at the Epicenter of COVID-19 Again; Belgium ICU Doctors Overwhelmed with New Cases; Italy Hits Record Single-Day Case Count of Nearly 27,000; Disease Expert Warns There are No Magic Bullets; The Battle for the Swing State of Wisconsin. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired October 30, 2020 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Pennsylvania officials announcing they will securely segregate votes by setting the side ballots that arrived after Election Day, setting up a potential nightmare legal battle if late arrival ballots end up being enough to swing the election.

KATHY BOOCKVAR, PENNSYLVANIA SECRETARY OF STATE: I know there is confusion about flying court decisions. Make a plan today to vote. Right now, do not wait.

BROWN: And each county has a different counting plan. Cumberland County won't begin counting mail-in ballots until Wednesday, prioritizing in-person voting. Dauphin County wants to have it all done by Tuesday night, but mail-in ballots could lag.

MIKE PRIES, COMMISSIONER, DAUPHIN COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA: We now believe that election night we'll have all the in-person voting done and approximately, if everything goes well, 50,000 mail-in ballots completed.

BROWN: New Hampshire is already getting started as election officials there begin partially processing absentee ballots today. And in Minnesota, a bipartisan message from former governors urging patients, warning the count may not be complete on election night.

JESSE VENTURA, FORMER GOVERNOR OF MINNESOTA: A delay just means our system is working and that we are counting every single ballot.

TIM PAWLENTY, FORMER GOVERNOR OF MINNESOTA: But no matter who wins, let's demonstrate the civility and decency that Minnesotans are known for.

BROWN: Pamela Brown, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE) MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Democrats are eyeing Texas hoping they can pry it away from the states traditional Republican base. And with the huge surge in early voting, particularly among young people. Political experts say Joe Biden might just have a chance against Donald Trump there. CNN's Jason Carroll with that.

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JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): They've been lining up in the Lone Star State for days as early voting ends Friday. More than 8.4 million people have already cast ballots in the state. That is 94 percent of the overall vote from 2016. Both sides are clearly energized.

But Democrats in this reliably red state are feeling more encouraged that they have in decades, thanks to changing demographics, the party's improved standing in fast growing suburbs and with younger voters like Angelica Tutton who voted for Joe Biden.

ANGELICA TUTTON, DEMOCRATIC VOTER: I come from a very conservative background. I'm the only one of my family that I know that's voting blue this year.

CARROLL (on camera): Do you think Biden has a chance in the state of Texas?

TUTTON: I think -- I think he does.

CARROLL (voice-over): The 24-year-old says she lost her job as a server due to the coronavirus. She lives here home to Tarrant County, home to Fort Worth. Donald Trump won Tarrant County by more than eight points four years ago. Two years later, Democrat Beto O'Rourke narrowly carried it while coming up short in his bid to defeat Republican Senator Ted Cruz. Tutton didn't vote then. In fact, she's never voted until now.

SUTTON: I listened to some of the things that Trump said, and I educate myself a lot more, and I think that this year, just in general, with everything that's going on, it's really the turning point for me.

CARROLL: Make no mistake a Biden win in Texas is still a tall order. The last Democratic presidential nominee to win here was Jimmy Carter back in 1976.

But given the early turnout, Democrats aren't seeing red, they are seeing purple. One side of that shift, people like former Dallas Mayor Steve Bartlett, a Republican who says the former vice president has a shot.

STEVE BARTLETT, FORMER REPUBLICAN MAYOR OF DALLAS: Well, it has gone from being a no shot to a long shot to now a medium shot.

CARROLL: Bartlett is backing Biden saying Trump has not shown the character needed to be an effective president.

BARTLETT: I'm a lifetime Republican but the country is suffering, and we will suffer a lot more if we reelect Donald Trump.

CARROLL: Democrats are making a late investment in the race with time and money. On Thursday, a super PAC funded by Michael Bloomberg added another $5.6 million in ads in the state. That's on top of nearly $9 million already spent.

And vice presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, is making three stops here Friday to mobilize new voters in their rapidly diversifying state.

RICHARD MURRAY, POLITICAL SCIENTIST: They are much less culturally conservative. They are very, very diverse. They are generally better educated, and those are the kinds of voters that are much more amenable to voting for a moderate Democrat like Joe Biden.

CARROLL: And back here in Tarrant County, many voters from both parties saying a Biden win in Texas could just be wishful thinking.

CASSIDY COKER, REPUBLICAN VOTER: He has a chance in Maine, but for Texans no, unlikely.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's hard to say because Texas has always been a red state. So, I'm not really sure.

CARROLL (on camera): A poll out just this week showing Trump up in the state by 3 points, but Democrats say in the past a Republican candidate would have been up by much more than that. They say once again, this is a sign that things are changing.

Jason Carroll, CNN, Dallas, Texas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: A quick break here on the program. When we come back, as Europe struggles to get a grip on its second coronavirus wave, we'll take you inside an intensive care unit in one of the hardest hit countries, Belgium. We'll be right back.

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HOLMES: Welcome back. Now to the surge in coronavirus cases across Europe. It's so concerning that the World Health Organization is once again warning the region is at the epicenter of the pandemic. The W.H.O. says more than 1 1/2 million people were infected in the past week alone in Europe.

To reign in surging infections, multiple countries and now imposing tougher restrictions. Germany will begin a month long partial lock down on Monday. It just reported record high new infections for a third consecutive day. And France, now on day one of its second nationwide lock down, people have been ordered to stay home, except for work or medical reasons.

Now, Belgium is seeing one of the worst outbreaks of coronavirus anywhere in the world, and it is stretching hospitals to breaking point. Now, some asymptomatic medical staff are being asked to keep working even after they test positive. Melissa Bell is live for us in Brussels, Belgium with the latest. What have you been finding, Melissa?

MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Michael, you mentioned those lock downs that have been put in place in neighboring countries. Belgium is likely to follow suit. We expect those fresh restrictions to be announced later today. And that's because the number of new cases has soared as have hospital hospitalizations nationwide. The positivity rate, Michael, is more than 25 percent. And in some regions like the province around Liege, it is above 40 percent.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BELL (voice-over): It's the sound of the ICU that many of its nurses can hear even at night. All is calm until one of their COVID patients has trouble breathing. So, they get kitted up and head in. Part of a workload that is 200 percent heavier than with the non-COVID patient, according to the ward's head nurse.

PASCAL ENNAFLA, HEAD NURSE ICU UNIT, LIEGE CITADELLE HOSPITAL (through translation): They have to be really fast to get there to protect themselves, to avoid taking risks, even as they revive patients.

[04:40:00]

But will all those extra layers on, when they come out, they'll be sweating.

BELL: These ICU nurses have already been through the first wave. Some haven't had a break since. Now, they're on the front line of one of the fastest spreading COVID outbreaks in the world.

The graph says it all. The positivity rate recorded daily in the hospital lab shows a vertical climb from early October. Tuesday, 2,000 people were tested by this lab, more than half were COVID-19 positive.

DR. HENRY PARIDAENS, BIOLOGIST, LIEGE CITADELLE HOSPITAL: We have 20 in October. We have a very alarming positivity rate of 60 percent.

BELL: Which means, say the doctors here that an exponential rise in patients needing hospitalization will follow within the next few days. Today, this ICU has just one spare bed. All too soon, doctors are going to start having to make impossible decisions about who gets a bed and who does not, about who is most likely to survive.

STEPHANE DEGESVES, HEAD OF EMERGENCIES, LIEGE CITADELLE HOSPITAL (through translation): It's the sort of decision that is contrary to everything we do. The dream of a doctor is to save lives. It's certainly not to say, OK, I will not save this person and I know it. So, it's not the type of decision that we take alone.

BELL: Already the medical staff at this hospital get psychological help, techniques borrowed from the Israeli Army that allow them to identify those struggling with being on the front line of a ward that no one is winning and that few outside the hospital really understand.

DR. MARTIAL MOONEN, EPIDEMIOLOGIST, LIEGE CITADELLE HOSPITAL (through translation): The message is very clear, that all those people who don't respect the rules, who make anti-mask propaganda should come and spend a day with me at the hospital to see the patients who can't breathe and for whom we can't do very much. To see them isolated from their families because no one can visit. To see them die alone, which is psychologically very, very difficult.

BELL: These children have come to say happy birthday, from a distance. Their only consolation, that their loved one was one of those who got a bed when he needed it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BELL: Michael, what we heard from the medical staff in that hospital in Liege was a great deal of frustration at how slow authorities have been to tighten restrictions here. Even if a lock down is imposed later today, it will be too late, they told us. Simply because it takes a couple of weeks for those measures to start making a difference to positivity rates, to the rises to new cases. And of course, in the meantime, those people who've been testing positive this week, many of them are going to be requiring hospitalization, some of them ICU treatment, and of course, for the time being, there simply isn't the room to take them in.

HOLMES: Lagging indicators, heartbreaking stuff. Melissa Bell in Brussels, thank you very much.

Well, more now on Italy as it breaks its coronavirus case record for the second time this week. CNN's Ben Wedeman joining me now from Rome. Tell us the latest there and how the system is coping?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The system is coping at the moment. You have an odd situation where you have almost four times as many active cases as you did at the height of the pandemic earlier this year. But of course, the basic numbers are alarming. You have an increase of eight times in the number of positive cases in the last three weeks. So, the situation is dire.

But we did discover a group of Americans who despite the situation here and the situation in the U.S. have decided that the grass is greener on this side of the Atlantic.

HOLMES: Ben, we'll carry on the conversation at the moment. I mean, when it comes to these lock downs, a number of places we've seen pushback from some segments of society. What's been the attitude of the public where you are?

WEDEMAN: OK, just to explain my policy there, I thought we were going to see our report about Americans who have decided to get Italian passports and move here.

So as far as how the situation is -- how they're dealing with the situation, we understand that the Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte is planning, perhaps within the next 10 days, to impose what's been called a soft lock down, along the lines of what we have seen in France.

They're talking about perhaps closing elementary schools to avoid congestion in public transport, which it's believed that is where much of the spread in new cases is taking place. What the government here wants to avoid is a repeat of the more than two months of harsh, sort of an extreme lock down that has essentially paralyzed the country and caused untold damage to the Italian economy.

[04:45:00]

So, they're trying to do as much as they can to limit the spread without yet again, hobbling an economy that even before coronavirus wasn't in very good shape -- Michael.

HOLMES: Understood, thanks for that, Ben, appreciate it. CNN's ben Wedeman in Rome.

We are joined by Dr. Peter Drobac. He is an infectious disease expert at Oxford University. Appreciate your company. Doctor, Germany, France announcing lockdowns of various severity. It looks like Italy is going to follow suit. In England, infections doubling in three weeks. What is that trajectory? What do you see for the continent and what went wrong?

DR. PETER DROBAC, INFECTIOUS DISEASE EXPERT, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD: You know, we feared for a long time that a perfect storm of circumstances in the winter could create a crisis like this and that's unfortunately exactly what we're seeing. You know, colder drier air favors the virus. It pushes us all inside where the risk of transmission is higher. Kids have been back in school for a bit, and of course, now we are approaching flu season, which already puts a strain on hospitals.

But I think, that even all that considered, a lot of people have been surprised by how quickly countries have sort of moved up that exponential growth curve. We are actually seeing infections doubling, possibly as quickly as every nine days here in the U.K.

You know, part of this came down to, I think, a little bit of complacency back in the summer after the big surge and the extraordinary sacrifice of lockdowns, countries were sort of quick to open up, trying to get their economies moving, trying to encourage people to get out and travel.

And so rather than really crushing the virus, tolerated a baseline level of transmission that was probably too high. Now things have really taken off and we're in for a very difficult winter. I expect more lockdowns to follow, unfortunately.

HOLMES: Yes, you know, you've tweeted something on Thursday, and I just want to quote, and I think we can put it up on the screen.

You said this, quote, we can't sit back and put all of our hopes in COVID-19 vaccines. There are no magic bullets out of this pandemic. We need to go on offense against the virus with public health measures and comprehensive strategies to get through the winter, which is good advice. Because at the same time, here in the U.S., the President talks of, basically, an imminent vaccine and then, boom, the virus is gone. And that is not how it works, is it? It's not like some antidote for a snake bite or something.

DROBAC: That's right, that's exactly right. You know, we don't know exactly -- we have to have some humility about when the vaccines will come because the clinical trials process is difficult and sometimes unpredictable. And it may take longer than we hope despite all of the extraordinary scientific work being done.

But the second thing is that the first vaccines that eventually do come out may not be the best ones. They likely won't provide complete protection. And even still, we have to think about the incredible distribution challenges of hundreds of millions, if not, billions of people needing to be vaccinated with two doses and a vaccine that needs to be stored at minus 80 degrees Celsius in some cases.

Realistically, even under a pretty good case scenario, a year from now, most people are probably not going to have received any kind of COVID-19 vaccine. And the point is, the virus is raging out of control right now and we need to be able to respond to that.

So when I talk about comprehensive strategies, its yes, let's make sure that we're trying to support the acceleration of the scientific discovery process for vaccines and therapeutics, but we also got to go on offense against the virus and do the public health stuff that we know works, masking, distancing, testing, tracing, et cetera.

HOLMES: You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, when we come back after the break.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Finding the two biggest stories of the day, and have ballot drop offs while you're getting your COVID test.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HOLMES: Find out how the battle ground state of Wisconsin is dealing with dueling lines for early voting and COVID testing when we come back.

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HOLMES: There is no question Wisconsin is a crucial state for both the Republican and Democratic campaigns. It helped propel Donald Trump to the White House in 2016, but the election isn't the only thing on the minds of the people there. Wisconsin has seen a huge spike in coronavirus cases. Bill Weir with that.

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BILL WEIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The future of Wisconsin is being written in long lines, lines to vote and lines to test as the virus spreads at nightmare rates.

(on-camera): So, what are you worried about more these days COVID-19 or the election,

ANN HEASLETT, WISCONSIN VOTER: It would be a tossup.

WEIR (voice-over): She is among the thousands poring through this center in Madison each day, or they knock out one free test every nine seconds. The current rates, the state's intensive care units will overflow within weeks. And outrageous, preventable final straw for Biden voters who see Trump's mostly mask-less Wisconsin rallies, super spreader events.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're rounding the curve. We're rounding the corner.

JOHN BORGWARDT, WISCONSIN VOTER: I don't understand how he can downplay the seriousness of this. It just totally escapes me.

WEIR (on-camera): Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's wrong.

HEASLETT: I think Biden's going to win this state. I think that it has strongly affected the way that I would vote. I think Trump has handled this abysmally.

WEIR (voice-over): But in Charles, Wisconsin, from farm country up north, to the suburbs of Milwaukee, there is a very different level of COVID concern.

(on-camera): Did it affect the way you think about this election?

MICHELLE ANDERSON, WISCONSIN VOTER: No, not at all. Just stay safe. They have lots of hand sanitizer and they have alcohol wipes. They have glass protection. It's very safe. My biggest reason for voting for Trump is Biden. I don't believe he's going to live that long. And I am a female, but I just -- I'm not real comfortable with two females in office, and I don't care for Nancy. So.

WEIR (voice-over): Her fear of Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris makes her the exception. As polls show Joe Biden holding a wide lead among women. Early turnout among younger voters is also off the charts. But Milwaukee's black voters have yet to show up in the numbers that helped Barack Obama's first win.

[04:55:03]

(on-camera): Do you see that yourself like there's a different interest now than there was in '16?

JUSTIN HAMPTON, WISCONSIN VOTER: For sure, because a lot of, you know, a lot of things that that occurred in the United States were, you know, police brutality, you know, and equality with, you know, African-Americans and other brown races.

WEIR: You worry that what happened in Kenosha might inspire the other side to come out?

HAMPTON: I mean, yes, I mean, it is what it is, you know, most definitely.

BEN WIKLER, CHAIR, DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF WISCONSIN: It feels like bungee jumping during a hurricane.

WEIR (voice-over): Meanwhile, Wisconsin's Democrats lost a Supreme Court plea for more time to gather pandemic mail-in ballots, but they are winning every recent pre-election poll.

WIKLER: And it's pretty clear when we look at the numbers that there are a lot more Democrats voting early and absentee than Republicans and more new voters who are likely voting for Biden and Harris, than new voters voting Republican. A single voter in Wisconsin has a bigger say about the future of humanity than almost anyone who's ever lived.

WEIR (on-camera): Have you considered combining the two biggest stories of the day and have ballot drop offs while you're getting your COVID test?

KEN VAN HON, MADISON & DANE COUNTY EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS COORDINATOR: I think that we want to we want to concentrate on just testing here and will -- health is health and I wish it weren't political.

WEIR (voice-over): After testing a quarter million people so far, not a single worker here caught the virus. Just more proof that prevention is the best medicine.

VAN HON: On any given day, one of our testers is probably exposed to about 80 positive cases. And they're wearing a mask and a face shield and that's keeping him safe. I worry whenever I see a large gathering without masks because I know the virus is going to spread in that community. And I worry for them. I wish that people would just wear masks.

WEIR: Bill Weir, CNN, Madison, Wisconsin.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: Thanks for your company this past hour, spending part of your day with me. I'm Michael Holmes. "EARLY START" is up next. You are watching CNN.

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