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CDC Discussing Who Should Get COVID-19 Vaccine First; Russia Says Its Vaccine to be Cheaper than U.S.; Saudi Denies Claims Israeli Prime Minister Met with Crown Prince; Toronto Begins Four-Week Lockdown as Cases Surge. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired November 24, 2020 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:15]

ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM, I'm Rosemary Church.

Well, now for a recap of our top story. It's all systems go for President-elect Joe Biden's transition. His team finally got permission from a key government agency to move ahead. The first step the Trump administration has taken to acknowledge the president's defeat. But the president himself is still saying he will never concede the election, and that his legal cases are moving full speed ahead.

The Biden team is getting down to business with the incoming administration's National Security team set to be formally unveiled later today.

Denise Turner Roth is a former General Services Administration official under President Obama and she spoke to CNN about what the Biden team will gain from this decision and the time they have already lost.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DENISE TURNER ROTH, FORMER GSA ADMINISTRATOR: We had an apparent winner. There has been time that's gone by, and because of that, that does impact the Trump presidential transition team. Of course the Biden team has been working to get up to speed and obviously it's made a number of appointments and announcements, but at the end of the day, there's a hundred federal agencies, close to four million federal employees, and a lot of policy and determination to understand and to take hold of before January 20th.

And we want the presidential team to be prepared on day one. We don't want them playing catch up, and unfortunately they have lost about 20 days at this point.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: Well, now that the transition is underway, one of the most urgent issues for the president-elect will be how he handles the pandemic. His team is hoping to get access to COVID data and vaccine distribution plans by today. Meanwhile, a key CDC team met Monday to discuss how to roll out the vaccine, and importantly who gets priority access.

There's little disagreement that front line health care workers should be included but there's a debate over whether nursing home residents should be. Some worry that the group's high mortality rates will damage confidence in the vaccine. The advisory committee also said it will take into account fair and equitable access to everyone, especially groups that are disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

So let's bring in Luke O'Neill, an immunologist at Trinity College in Dublin.

Good to have you with us.

LUKE O'NEILL, IMMUNOLOGIST, TRINITY COLLEGE, DUBLIN: Hi, Rosemary, good to be here.

CHURCH: So once these vaccines are approved, how do you distribute them, and make sure that's done equitably so that the most vulnerable get access, and particularly lower income nations?

O'NEILL: It's really important, Rosemary. These countries are the worst affected by this pandemic, remember, first of all, that if we don't vaccinate those countries, they might come back in the future from those countries. Now all the companies are well aware of this. AstraZeneca is probably out front, it's the cheapest vaccine, it's about $4 a shot, whereas Pfizer and Moderna is a bit more expensive, around $20.

AstraZeneca is committing to a billion doses for these countries already. So there's a tremendous effort going on. And then of course you've got the great organization CEPI, COVAX and Gavi, everybody is getting behind this. It's going to be a huge humanitarian effort we hope.

CHURCH: Yes. And you mentioned AstraZeneca. I mean, it does seem to make sense for that to be the vaccine distributed to some of these lower-income nations and across the globe because it doesn't need to be in these very, very low temperatures, does it? And it's very cheap and it can be produced in these high numbers.

O'NEILL: No doubt that AstraZeneca is the most convenient so far. Now remember, there's five more vaccines coming down the track. It's going to be -- we're going to have loads of vaccines we hope early in the new year. So we're optimistic that the rollout and logistics shouldn't be that much of a challenge, difficult, though, it will be.

CHURCH: Right. So who should get these vaccines and how do you make that determination when you look at a society? I mean, we've learned so far, we think our frontline health care workers and then the elderly. Then it gets difficult, doesn't it? How do you work out which groups should receive these vaccines without causing all sorts of mayhem?

O'NEILL: It does. It will take a lot of organizing, Rosemary. The U.N. is involved, WHO, they are all looking at this. They're to figure out who should get it next. The health care workers, absolutely, of course, as you said. The vulnerable, but remember, people in these low-income countries are all vulnerable. So in a way, you might see a rollout to those countries next after we've done the health care workers and the other vulnerable groups in the more wealthy country, shall we say.

But it's a big debate at the moment. We've got to get the millions of doses out in the next sort of nine months or so really to all these different countries and of course the other countries as well. So it will be a huge logistical operationally.

[04:35:02]

CHURCH: Yes. It certainly will be. And we'll continue to watch how people do this.

Luke O'Neill, thank you so much for sharing your expertise. Appreciate it.

O'NEILL: Thank you.

CHURCH: Well, Russia says the price of its coronavirus vaccine will be cheaper than the vaccines being developed by the United States. And we are expecting to learn more about that vaccine in the coming hours.

CNN's Matthew Chance joins us now live from Moscow.

Good to see you, Matthew. So what can we expect to learn about this today?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. Well, within the next half hour or so, an embargoed report is going to be released, which is the latest data from the third phase testing on Sputnik V, which is Russia's sort of homemade vaccine that they were the first to register in the world for use for frontline medical workers and (INAUDIBLE) things like that.

And when they last released results on that vaccine, it indicated somewhere in the region of I think it was 92 percent efficacy with no adverse effects. The expectation this time is that we're going to see something as good or even better than that. But they're also going to be releasing the sort of pricing system for Sputnik V because, you know, we've been talking a bit about the price of these various vaccines and the fact that, you know, the various other vaccines that have been sort of tested and trialed, and are coming out with these amazing results recently.

They're going to be quite expensive with the possible exception of the AstraZeneca-Oxford University one. Well, the Russian strategy is to try and sort of undercut all of them, and so their vaccine, Sputnik V, will be the most affordable to countries around the world. And, you know, remember, you know, there are tens of millions of people in Russia that are expected to be vaccinated with Sputnik V.

But, you know, you can multiply that many, many times when you look at the deals that Russia is doing in countries across Africa, across the Middle East, South America, Asia as well, and so, you know, even though the results from the Sputnik V trials are, you know, there's some caveats around them, you know, this concern that -- you know, that the trials have not been conducted across a wide enough group.

The fact is when this is registered, when this is approved, and when the WHO, for instance, give their stamp of approval to it, tens of millions of people around the world are going to be receiving this Sputnik V Russian vaccine, and you know, the indication so far is that the efficacy of it are really good, it is really effective it seems at the moment, according to the samples that have been taken and the interim results.

And there are no serious adverse effects that have been reported as well, just like with the other vaccines that there's been so much conversation about over the past week or so -- Rosemary.

CHURCH: Yes. And as long as it'd proved to be safe and effective, that is the main thing. The more vaccines, the merrier.

Matthew Chance bringing us the very latest there from Moscow, appreciate it.

Well, almost a month after imposing a nationwide lockdown, France is seeing some glimmers of hope today. French President Emmanuel Macron will address the nation later today. He's expected to announce a slow easing of lockdown restrictions in three stages. France's second lockdown seems to have had some effect at slowing the virus. The country has seen a significant decline in its coronavirus infection rate.

Meantime, in the U.K., Prime Minister Boris Johnson says England's nationwide lockdown will be lifted next week, but regional restrictions will still be in place. He told parliament, he plans to bring back the three-tiered containment system starting December 2nd.

And this is CNN NEWSROOM. Still to come, an historic meeting between two leaders that may or may not have happened over the weekend. We're live in Jerusalem and Riyadh to explain the confusion. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:42:11]

CHURCH: An historic meeting may have taken place other the weekend depending on who you believe. An Israeli minister says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, but that claim was quickly denied by Riyadh.

So let's bring in Oren Liebermann in Jerusalem and Nic Robertson who joins us from the Saudi capital.

Good to see you both. So, Oren, let's start with you. What are you learning about this?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So the revelations about this potential meeting begin when flight trackers picked up the flight of a Israeli private business jet, direct from Israel to the city of Neom, Saudi Arabia. More importantly it was reportedly a business jet that has been used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the past, and it lined up with the exact timing that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in the same city at the same time with official meeting Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Shortly after this flight was revealed, an Israeli reporter who broke the story that it was in fact Netanyahu on that flight with the head the Mossad, Yossi Cohen. It is the head of the Mossad that has generally led the normalization efforts on Israel's behalf with the Arab states. Netanyahu didn't say anything, not even quite a few hours later that it (INAUDIBLE) where he said he wouldn't comment on it.

Notably he neither confirmed nor denied the report. He said he simply still always trying to widen what he calls the circle of peace. But a little earlier in the day, the Israeli minister of Education, a minister from Netanyahu's own Likud Party, Yoav Gallant, said the meeting itself was an incredible achievement. The fact that it's public, even if only half official, is something for which Netanyahu deserves congratulations. That appears to be the confirmation that the meeting itself happened.

It's also worth noting that after the normalization agreement between Israel and Bahrain, both Israel's Foreign Ministry and Netanyahu have said it was years of efforts and decades of efforts behind the scenes in those secret meetings that led to that coming forward. So even if at this point the Saudis are denying this meeting, and perhaps they certainly are denying it, because maybe from their perspective the meeting itself didn't happen, it's worth noting that this appears to be one of those meetings that will only be acknowledged if and when the Saudis and the Israelis normalize relations, which everyone expects to happen, and which Pompeo has been pushing along with the Trump administration for quite some time now.

CHURCH: All right. That's the view from Jerusalem. Nic, let's go to you now in Riyadh, why all the mystery surrounding this meeting and why the denial?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: You know, there's a lot of pressure that the Trump administration has put on Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. Saudi diplomats have told me that. It's a lot of pressure that they felt. A lot of heat. It's something that's very clear that the Trump administration wanted and Bibi Netanyahu wanted. And my understanding from Saudi diplomatic sources has been that there isn't a level of belief or understanding or trust that Bibi Netanyahu can do what Saudi Arabia says is a prerequisite, and has said for a long time that it's a prerequisite for normalizing relations with Israel, and that is guaranteeing that there's a two-state solution.

[04:45:22]

The view from here would be that, you know, Bibi Netanyahu may not be around much longer in power, and President Trump certainly isn't, so why would you try to strike a deal with two people that can't follow through on any of the guarantees that they may give you with the deal. It's very clear the Saudi position on this, you know, alleged meeting between the crown prince and Benjamin Netanyahu, it didn't happen. The foreign minister tweeted to that effect.

We understand from him that he was there at the airport, met Pompeo off his flight. Drove with Pompeo to meet MBS, drove back with Pompeo back to the airport in Neom, and he said in a tweet that the meeting between the Bibi Netanyahu and MBS didn't happen. There was perhaps some ambiguity in the language. That was tidied up in a second tweet in Arabic. That is absolutely the clear position from here, that the meeting did not take place.

Pressure, absolutely has been coming on Saudi Arabia to do exactly this sort of thing, take steps towards and normalize relatives with Israel. My understanding has been that that pressure has continued, despite the fact it's continued after, after Trump has already been voted out of office, that he's still trying to push that forward. And this is the picture of the situation as we have it right now, really.

CHURCH: All right. Nic Robertson in Riyadh, Oren Liebermann in Jerusalem, many thanks to you both.

And this is CNN NEWSROOM. Still to come.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's challenging obviously for us, but it's our, you know, societal obligation to do it.

CHURCH (voice-over): We take you to Canada where the country's largest city is going into a full week lockdown.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:51:07]

CHURCH: Canada's largest city has gone into a partial lockdown. Over the next four weeks, Toronto will limit indoor gatherings and enforce new rules for nonessential businesses. But some fear the latest measures will further damage the economy and create more hardships in the weeks ahead.

Paula Newton has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL NEWTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Its nickname is Toronto the good, and Canada's largest city comes by it honestly. Toronto was so compliant nearly everyone wearing masks, following doctors' orders, it crushed the COVID-19 curve in spring, a curve that public health officials say is spiking out of control now.

Daily cases have nearly doubled in a matter of weeks. ICUs are near capacity, and with 1500 coronavirus death asks counting in the city, officials say a second lockdown as strict as the first, save for keeping schools open, must be enforced to avoid a worst-case scenario.

DR. IRFAN DHALLA, VP, PHYSICIAN QUALITY, UNITY HEALTH TORONTO: We're in a lot of trouble and so our public health officials and our elected leaders decided there really was no other choice but to take, you know, a big step back.

NEWTON: That step back means a return to lining up for groceries, shutting down all in-person dining, even outdoors. All nonessential, in-store shopping, salons, gyms, now shut down for at least four weeks.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's challenging obviously for us. But it's our, you know, societal obligation to do it.

NEWTON: That obligation extends to staying home and seeing no one other than those you live with.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hopefully by Christmas, we may get it under control probably where families can get together for Christmas. But, you know, it's -- like I said, it sucks for most of these people that are running these small businesses.

NEWTON: And it's not just business, the Raptors, Toronto's beloved NBA team had to find a temporary home in Tampa, Florida, because of the health crisis.

It's a measure of how seriously the city is taking this. We caught up with Mayor John Tory not at city hall but at home, hunkering down for a second wave he says many cities underestimated.

JOHN TORY, TORONTO MAYOR: I think we, you know, need to focus as hard as we now or very focused on the marginalized neighborhoods where the fire spread and the positivity -- I mean, the test rates has been, you know, much higher than in other parts of the population, and we're really focused on all that now. The lockdown will help us to get a greater grip on all of this.

NEWTON: Protests against the lockdown and masks have been small, but persistent. A reminder that the city's goodwill has its limits.

(On camera): There's no question a second lockdown will be tough here in Toronto. But what's been even tougher to think about are the consequences if it doesn't work.

(Voice-over): The worry fewer restrictions in other areas bordering the city, in some cases just a few blocks away, means people will move freely to shop, dine and get together. Only Toronto and one of its sprawling suburbs, Peel, is in lockdown.

Hot House Restaurant managers Adam Joe and Arif Ahmed used to employ a hundred people. They were able to keep half on payroll thanks to their large patio. Under lockdown, they'll have to scale back even further.

ADAM JOE, RESTAURANT MANAGER: I guess I would say, you know, a little crestfallen. You know, we have a lot of energy recently. I wouldn't say I was shocked. NEWTON (on camera): Are you guys afraid of what will happen if it

doesn't work?

ARIF AHMED, RESTAURANT MANAGER: Absolutely. But you don't really know how it's going to pan out on the other end. So it is, you know, scary.

NEWTON (voice-over): And so Toronto, one of the largest cities in North America, masks up, locks down, and hopes this painful sacrifice will be enough to reopen in time for Christmas.

Paula Newton, CNN, Toronto.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: Well, scientists have discovered evidence of catastrophic flooding on mars that took place nearly four billion years ago.

[04:55:01]

NASA's Curiosity rover captured images from a crater on the planet. They show channels and ripple patterns carved by water. Scientists think the heat from a meteor vaporized frozen reservoirs, all those billions of years ago. That in turn produced floods and brought about a warm and rainy season.

Well, in Washington, D.C., the Smithsonian National Zoo's giant panda cub finally has a name. The public voted online to name the furry fellow Xiao Qi Ji, Mandarin for little miracle. The zoo says it symbolizes the hope he brought amid the pandemic. They also say the 3- month-old cub excels at napping, nursing and cuddling with his mother.

And we end with another uplifting story. Every year at Thanksgiving, the president performs a very special duty. He pardons a lucky turkey. In the coming hours, Mr. Trump will do just that for either Corn or Cobb. Both will live to tell about this experience but only one will go down in history as the national turkey.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RON KARDEL, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL TURKEY FEDERATION: I think this event is great today because Lord knows 2020 has been a little challenge, whether it's the COVID, whether it's fires, whether it's economic turmoil. I think it's great to celebrate something that's happy, something that's for everybody, something that's for all of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: The pardoning will happen in the Rose Garden at the White House. It will be President Trump's first public appearance since the official transition of power to President-elect Biden got underway.

And thank you so much for your company. I'm Rosemary Church. "EARLY START" is coming up next. You're watching CNN. Have yourselves a great day.

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