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U.S. Daily COVID-19 Count Nears 100K as Election Looms; U.S. Presidential Candidates Focus on Battleground States in Final Push; British PM Considers New Lockdown Measures. Aired 3-3:30a ET
Aired October 31, 2020 - 03:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ROBYN CURNOW, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hi, welcome to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Robyn Curnow.
So coming up, Joe Biden and Donald Trump spending the weekend making their final arguments to voters as COVID infections in the U.S. hit a new global record.
And the coronavirus may have U.K. leaders considering a new national lockdown.
Also, an urgent search for survivors in Turkey, after a deadly earthquake.
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CURNOW: We are now down to the final 3 days before the U.S. presidential election and the coronavirus isn't just surging across the U.S.; it is exploding. Nearly 100,000 Americans tested positive for COVID-19 just in the past 24 hours. And that is the highest number ever recorded in a single day by one country.
Now the one-day record pushed the U.S. infection total well past 9 million, that's 1 million more COVID cases than just 2 weeks ago, the fastest increase ever. Now the country has also broken daily records all week, each new high far outpaced the worst of last July, when the peak hit 77,000 cases in just one day.
Total numbers aside, health experts say the real measure of the threat is in hospitals, of course; 14 states and one U.S. territory are reporting their highest numbers yet of COVID patients. More than 47,000 people nationwide. .
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DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, it means that we are seeing escalating spread because, at the moment, today, we now have one person being diagnosed of coronavirus every second. We have one American die of coronavirus every 2 minutes and that number is increasing.
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CURNOW: Well, Trump is presenting a more optimistic version, a very optimistic vision of what lies ahead. Take a listen.
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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We will deliver a safe vaccine to the American people, in just a number of weeks. By the way, without it, we are rounding the corner, we have, it but without, it we are rounding the corner. We are rounding the corner on the pandemic.
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CURNOW: Well, this is the final weekend of campaigning before Tuesday's election and both Donald Trump and Joe Biden are trying to make every second count. We get the latest now from Kaitlan Collins.
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KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Trump and Joe Biden are making their closing arguments to voters while coronavirus cases are the highest they have ever been in the U.S.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're still rounding the corner.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Donald Trump has given up.
COLLINS: Infections are surging across the country, including in the battleground states where the candidates are spending the last days of the 2020 race.
TRUMP: Hello, Michigan.
BIDEN: Hello, Iowa!
COLLINS: The U.S. reported almost 90,000 new daily cases yesterday, but the president pushed a different view of reality as he left Washington today.
TRUMP: We're doing very well with respect to making the turn on the pandemic. We're working very hard on that, great therapeutics.
COLLINS: Trump once promised there would be a coronavirus vaccine before Election Day, but aides are now distancing themselves from that deadline.
ALYSSA FARAH, WHITE HOUSE DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS: I mean, his goal has never -- Election Day is kind of an arbitrary deadline. Americans are still suffering from this virus. The sooner we can get it, the better. And that's his goal.
COLLINS: It was the president who set that arbitrary deadline that medical experts said wasn't realistic.
TRUMP: So we're going to have us a vaccine very soon, maybe even before a very special date. You know what date I'm talking about.
COLLINS: The president's campaign announced today that he will hold 14 rallies across seven states in the next three days.
TRUMP: What a crowd. This is some crowd. Wow. This is a big crowd.
COLLINS: Trump has continued to hold large events with little social distancing, where the crowds are mostly maskless.
His last stop is in Minnesota today, though the exact location of his rally was in flux, after state officials insisted the event follow safety guidelines that include a cap on 250 attendees.
TRUMP: Twenty-five thousand people want to be there. As they say you can only have 250 people. So they thought I'd cancel. But I'm not canceling.
COLLINS: Biden is also in the Midwest today with a different approach to the pandemic that his aides hope will help voters see him as a safe alternative to Trump.
BIDEN: Donald Trump has waved the white flag. He surrendered to this virus. But the American people don't give up.
COLLINS: In Michigan, the president ridiculed Biden for adhering to social distancing guidelines, while he flouts them.
TRUMP: I'm watching these Biden rallies. It's like, there's nobody.
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TRUMP: Of course, he says that they want to do it that way on purpose.
COLLINS: Trump even mocked a FOX News host for wearing a mask at his rally.
TRUMP: I can't recognize you. Is that a mask? No way. Are you wearing a mask? I have never seen her in a mask. Look at you. Oh, she's being very politically correct. Whoa. Whoa!
COLLINS: In addition to mocking that anchor for wearing a mask, the president also wrongly claimed at his rallies that hospitals are overstating the number of coronavirus deaths in order to get more funding, something that, of course, doctors have denied, a claim that the president has made many times over the last several months, talking about these numbers that we are seeing with the pandemic which, of course, right now, are at the worse they have ever been -- Kaitlan Collins, CNN, the White House.
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CURNOW: Thanks, Kaitlan, for that.
The U.S. election is actually 50 state elections with the winner decided by some simple arithmetic. Well, battleground states are the ones that really could tip the outcome in either direction. Phil Mattingly now explains how math is driving the campaign in their final push.
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PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It is now the final weekend of the 2020 election and if you want to know what the map looks like, well frankly, why don't you check back in with 2016?
Because what's made Donald Trump president in 2016 and the lessons that Joe Biden is trying to learn from Hillary Clinton in 2016, dictates, dominates where the candidates are going. They are focused between Friday, Saturday and Sunday, on the Midwest, out into Pennsylvania as well, in other words, the former blue wall that President Trump just blew apart back in 2016.
Now let's kind of take you on a journey here about why this part of the country, the upper Midwest, Pennsylvania matters so much. Let's start here with where states are solid. Solid red. This is where Republicans control. Solid blue, this is where Democrats control. You can kind of go through here and give a few states to each side, right?
Kamala Harris might have been in Texas on Friday, Republicans feel they're going to end up in a good place in Texas. Same with Democrats in Nevada. You can even give Democrats for sure, Colorado, they're very comfortable there. And probably New Hampshire as well, they feel pretty good up there.
For the sake of argument, why don't you give Trump all the southeastern states that he won back in 2016?
You can even give him the state of Florida, state of Georgia -- make it actually red -- state of Georgia, state of North Carolina as well. And where he has won pretty handily back in 2016, in the Midwest. The state of Ohio, give him the state of Iowa.
Now what are you left with?
Democrats feel quite good about the state of Arizona, they're not there yet but they feel comfortable with it.
And where does that leave things?
Well, it leaves Pennsylvania and the upper Midwest. That is why you've seen a focus on both at this point in time.
Now how does this map actually play out?
Well, there is a reason where you're going to see both candidates focused heavily on Saturday and Sunday. Donald Trump on Saturday, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Sunday, on the state of Pennsylvania. Let's say you give the state of Pennsylvania to Joe Biden.
All Joe Biden has to do, pick up and get Michigan. And then one of two -- Minnesota or Wisconsin -- both of the states the Democrats feel comfortable with, Minnesota in particular they feel comfortable with, even though President Trump was there on Friday. Now you give Pennsylvania to Donald Trump. Now all Donald Trump has to do with this map currently is win any one of these three states. Again, Democrats feel very comfortable about the state of Minnesota even though President Trump went there. Won in 2016 but they feel OK about.
But if Donald Trump were to win Pennsylvania with these southeastern states as well, win Michigan, actually win Michigan, he's there. Or say they hold Michigan and Donald Trump wins the state of Wisconsin, he's over 270. The upper Midwest mattered in 2016; it matters now. Pennsylvania mattered in 2016, Pennsylvania matters more than ever now.
That is why you see the candidates where they are at this moment. There is no more valuable commodity to any presidential campaign than the time of their candidate the, time of their running mate, the time of their spouses. All of them, all of those individuals, will be in the state of Pennsylvania over the course of this coming weekend.
Most of them have been in all of these states over the course of the last several days. Watch where they are going. That tells you the story of the end of this campaign.
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CURNOW: Thanks to Phil Mattingly there.
Well Leslie Vinjamuri is the head of the U.S. and Americas Programme at Chatham House in London and she joins us now.
Leslie, lovely to see you. As Phil Mattingly really laid out quite well there with the election map, it's about where folks are going and the itineraries in these last few days.
What do you take from this battleground map?
LESLIE VINJAMURI, CHATHAM HOUSE: Well, I think it is, as we just heard, that even though the national numbers are significantly in favor of vice president Biden, doing very well on Tuesday, as we know, that Electoral College changes absolutely everything.
And once again, all eyes are on those upper Midwest battleground states. And I think what we are seeing is just an intense focus on driving voters to the polls at this point. It's essential, of course, that people either vote in person.
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VINJAMURI: Or that they take their ballots to a registered drop off box or to a government office, because it's too late to depend on the Postal Service. But we know now it is really all about turnout. People are not changing their minds. They know who they want to vote for.
But do they turn out and vote?
And there's intense concern for whether those votes will get counted and when they will get counted. And as we know, in Pennsylvania, for example, which it may well come down to, voting doesn't start until the morning of Election Day. And we may well see one result, one in the evening, quite likely leaning the towards the president, because we expect more in person voting by Republicans.
And that might look very, very different several days later. So I think we are all hearing the message -- turn out and vote, listen to what voters have to say, count the votes and don't call the election until all those votes have been counted.
I think 92 million mail-in ballots have been requested and less than half of those returned at this point despite an extraordinary voter turnout. I mean I, think that is the real story of this election, is the very high numbers of people turning out across the country and voting early.
We are on track for a record turnout in this election in America, so passionate about voting.
CURNOW: Indeed. And you heard talk about the president's possible path to victory.
Where do you see his strengths right now?
VINJAMURI: It's a really difficult road for the president. He is facing circumstances in the United States, partly of his own doing, where the virus is completely out of control and spreading.
And America saw the worst day ever yesterday in terms of the number of infections. The president is trying to deny it still but he is really doubling down on his base, he is certainly working the upper Midwest, something that's incredibly important to him.
And obviously, the president needs to win Florida -- if he doesn't, it gets extremely difficult for him to secure the presidency. But let's be very honest, this is a president that, if it was a popular vote, there is no chance that he would win, because the numbers are just simply not in his favor. So now it is really --
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CURNOW: -- that's a total moot point because there is no popular vote in that sense. It comes down to the Electoral College and it's going to come down to key demographics as well.
And I want to bring up some CNN polls, recent ones from this week, on seniors and on women.
I mean, in many ways, do you think that Mr. Biden's path to victory could be through those very voters who helped Mr. Trump over the finishing line last election?
VINJAMURI: That's a critical point. Women have really turned, especially women in the suburbs, women who have gone to college and white women have turned away from President Trump. Remember that 53 percent of white women voted for President Trump in
2016. That has just changed dramatically and that has really been important for Vice President Biden.
The African American vote is very important for Vice President Biden. And yes, the fact that older Americans who traditionally have been more inclined to vote Republican are really discouraged and moving their votes towards Vice President Biden. I think that this is not surprising.
And given how badly the pandemic has been handled, the mixed messaging and the fact that it's not under control. And remember, very interestingly, the virus is really spreading in the battleground states.
So how people see the pandemic, how they see the effect of the virus on themselves, whether they see it as a health effect or an economic impact, I think will really matter in terms of the votes that we see cast. But older voters are not leaning towards the president and that could well hurt him.
CURNOW: Leslie Vinjamuri in London, thanks very much.
VINJAMURI: Thank you.
CURNOW: So there is much more to come here on CNN, including reports of rising COVID numbers in the U.K., which could prompt a nationwide lockdown. A live report after the break.
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CURNOW: Well, the U.S. isn't alone in smashing coronavirus records this week. COVID is, of course, surging across Europe as well. I want you to look at this map. There's almost no green. The countries in dark red, those are new infections that are up in countries by up to 50 percent or more.
Now France is on the 2 day -- on day 2 of a new national lockdown imposed because of the spike in rates of new cases, hospitalizations and death. There is no national lockdown in the U.K. right now but there soon could be.
The British newspaper, "The Times," reports that the prime minister is considering issuing one early next week. So there is certainly a lot to cover and we have reporters standing by. Melissa Bell is in Paris for the latest on the national lockdown and what's happening in the rest of the continent. And Salma Abdelaziz is in London.
I want to start with you some about this news coming from "The Times" that there might be a nationwide lockdown as soon as Wednesday. SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN PRODUCER: It is important to stress, here we
simply do not know at this time. These are very early reports. But if this is true, this is a massive about-face. This is an absolute 180- degree turn for prime minister Boris Johnson's government.
For weeks, he was isolated on his strategy and that strategy is a regional, tiered one. He cut up the country geographically, each area has a certain level of restriction based on the number of coronavirus cases and rate of infection.
That has not gone down well. He has an absolute revolution against him, essentially, from regional leaders. He was in a standoff with the mayor of Manchester for 10 days, trying to impose restrictions there.
He's had opposition from scientists, the government advisers, saying he should have a nationwide lockdown. He had opposition from the other three nations, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, as well opposing this strategy. He has had opposition from business leaders, who said a nationwide lockdown, short, sharp, complete shutdown of the country, provides more economic support and more financial certainty.
So for the prime minister to turn around at this time, he will need to explain it to this country. He will have to make it clear. He will also have to explain this to the public because so far these restrictions have kind of been the butt of the joke here.
Shut down a few pubs and you will end coronavirus?
What exactly is a substantial meal?
Under these restrictions, pubs and restaurants shut down if they do not serve substantial meals.
The question is, what is a substantial meal?
To get into this minutiae, while cases continue to rise and infection rates spread, that is a difficult pill to swallow. So this will be a time in which prime minister Boris Johnson if this is announced on Monday, will need to step, out explain these restrictions clearly and explain, why, now, why after scientists have been calling for it for weeks.
CURNOW: Thank you so much, Salma.
Melissa, I want to go to you in Paris. Tell us what the situation is there.
MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It is now the first weekend of this partial lockdown, a fairly strict one. You are made to stay at home. You can only leave your house if you have a document explaining why your outing is necessary. For instance if you have no choice but to travel to work.
Shops closed; people could really only leave their homes within a 1- kilometer radius and for an hour at a time. And it is also designed to stop people from traveling between regions. We had those extraordinary scenes on Thursday night, nearly 500 miles of traffic jams, as Parisians tried to flee to their second home or to other French regions, while they still could.
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BELL: Just to the point that Salma was making there, they're saying a few weeks ago here in France an attempted regional solution, with the symptom of curfews we had for a few weeks and, in the end, the national solution, because as long as people can travel freely, those rates continue climbing.
For the time being, across Europe, they continue to rise substantially. We are looking at infection rates here in Europe that have tripled in a single month. We saw yesterday, again, record new cases in Italy, in Spain, in Germany, for the third day in a row.
In the Netherlands, in Austria. The cases continue to rise at record levels and that, means in a week or 10 days' time, there will be more people getting into hospitals, more people getting into ICUs, that are already struggling to cope.
CURNOW: Keep us posted, thanks so much Melissa, there in Paris.
Coming up on CNN, we will go live to Turkey, where rescue efforts are underway after a deadly earthquake rocked the Aegean Sea.
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CURNOW: Take a look at these images. Searches in western Turkey, scouring damaged buildings at this, hour hoping to find anyone, alive after a magnitude 7 earthquake struck the country's coastline on Friday.
The death toll, raised to 25 and more than 800 people we know are injured; 2 teenagers, on the nearby Greek island of Samos are among those killed. The center of the quake was just north of Samos, off the Turkish coast, near the city of Izmir. That is where we find Arwa Damon, right now.
Arwa, hi, what can you tell, us what can you, see what are people saying to you?
ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Robyn, the search and rescue operations have not stopped throughout the entire night. As you can see, they are obviously still ongoing, quite intensely.
Just a short while ago, the search and rescue teams, here and the authorities, asked everyone to stay, completely still and completely quiet. We don't know exactly what is going on.
But overnight, they did manage to rescue a woman who had been visiting a dentist inside of the building there and, pulled her out alive. That was an eight story building, similar height to the building you see next to, it completely flattened, from the impact of this earthquake.
One of a number of buildings that was utterly destroyed. But we do understand, now, from the authorities, is search and rescue operations are still ongoing, at about 8 or 9. locations, throughout the city, as well as this one.
In one of the other locations that they are searching, they did a few hours ago manage to rescue an elderly woman in her 60s. The teams are moving into this building, from a number of different points. There are teams that are going in and in between the floors further down.
I'm not sure if you can see, it but from my vantage, point we can see a number of people who are trying to squeeze themselves through this very narrow passageway. On top of the building, we are seeing the rescue teams hard at work there.
And for hours, they were emptying bucket after bucket, of rubble. And then, in the crowd, here you do also see those who are waiting for news of their loved ones. It is agonizing and they are terrified. But they still remain hopeful.
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DAMON: And people will say, even though Turkey is accustomed to earthquakes, nothing prepares you for something like this.
CURNOW: No.
If you could just tell us, that building behind you, what was it originally?
It has been totally pancaked there and it doesn't look, safe even for the guys on top. Talk us through what exactly we are seeing again.
DAMON: This was a building that both had offices in, it and, was also residential. These search and rescue teams, they are very experienced in these types of operations. Turkey is no stranger to devastating earthquakes.
But they have gone into the building from a number of different areas. There is a team that is working on one area, down there that I believe you can see right now. They have been going at it for hours, trying to get into the lower floor from that side. You have a team on the roof and then, again, a team that is trying to crawl in between these various different levels.
When you look at the building itself, you can see the clothing that has spilled out. You can see people's belongings that are completely crushed. When you look at that, that is when you get this overwhelming sense of people who were in this building when it was crushed. There were lives that were unfolding and, in moments, when this earthquake struck, they were completely and totally destroyed.
The rescue teams were very quick to respond and there are thousands of individuals working alongside the search and rescue teams, the Turkish Red Crescent as well as a number of other aid organizations. They were also very quick to dispatch additional food assistance, should that end up being needed.
As I was saying, Turkey is very well equipped, again, to respond to these kinds of disasters. At the same time, it really doesn't matter how ready you actually are as individuals going through something like this.
CURNOW: As you say, there are washing lines there with people's clothing hanging off the edges. We do know, the latest death toll we've got is 25. Let's hope it doesn't rise. Arwa Damon, on the, ground thank you and your camera man for great shots as well.
Thank you for watching CNN, I'm Robyn Curnow, "AFRICAN VOICES" is next.
