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U.K. Approves Vaccine, Will Begin Rolling Out Doses Next Week; CDC Panel: Health Workers, Nursing Homes Should Get Vaccine First; Source: Trump Discussing Preemptive Pardons. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired December 02, 2020 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan. Thank you so much for joining us this hour.

We begin the hour with several major developments in the quest for coronavirus vaccine.

The United Kingdom becomes the first country in the world to approve the one -- approve the vaccine made by Pfizer with the first doses set to be rolled out next week. So, does the big news out of the UK raise the pressure on the United States?

Here in the United States, the first shipments of Pfizer's vaccine are set to be delivered on December 15th. That's according to an internal government document obtained by CNN. The FDA will be meeting next week to consider authorization of the vaccine, and the CDC panel is recommending that healthcare workers, nursing home residents and those -- and employees working in those nursing homes, that they should get the vaccine first. They should be first in line.

And while all of these developments are very encouraging, and thank goodness for them, the coronavirus reality still at this moment and for quite a period of time continues to be its unrelenting spread across the country. Driving hospitalizations to record highs. More than 98,000 Americans are currently hospitalized.

That's approximately double the number from just one month ago. That shows that the trend is clearly in the wrong direction. And then there's also this as you see on your screen, almost 2,600 deaths were reported yesterday, the second highest daily total since the pandemic began.

We're going to get to all of this. Let's start with the major vaccine news out of the UK first. CNN's Max Foster is standing by in London with the very latest on this. Max, tell us exactly what the government there decided, what you're hearing there and why.

MAX FOSTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the latest we've heard is that the vaccine is being packed up at a factory in Belgium ready to come here to the UK. That's huge excitement. It means the rollout has actually begun. UK the first country in the world to have a clear and proven vaccine out in distribution heading our way at least. All comes off to the regulator, the independent respected regulator here in the United Kingdom approved this vaccine saying it's not only 95 percent effective but it's also safe.

And they managed to get this approval through in record time by cutting out concurrent tests on the vaccine, rather than doing the tests one by one. Normally, a vaccine would take 10 years to get to market. In this case, it's going to take 10 months, which is extraordinary.

So, this is how the process will play out as we understand it. Once the vaccine gets here to the UK, which should be next week, public health agency will be instructing people to offer the vaccine seven days a week from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., including holidays. That's for each of these centers that initially gets this vaccine. And then GP practices, doctors' practices will later on pick up the vaccine. They will be told to deliver minimum amounts of 975 shots per week.

So, they're really going to get this out as quickly as possible. They assume the patient will need to return for a second dose. So, when we say 800,000 doses are on their way to the UK, that will only be enough to treat 400,000 people initially, health workers and those in care homes and their carers will be the first to receive it.

Then it will be given to people depending on their age and eventually by the spring, we're told, Kate, everyone in the UK should be vaccinated, which is extraordinary considering what we've all been through over the last few months.

BOLDUAN: Yes, last several months at this point, exactly, Max. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

All right. So, we're also learning more today about the timeline for when the vaccine could be available here in the United States. Let's get over to CNN's Sara Murray. She's been following all of these details and she's joining us right now. Sara, what are you hearing about this?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, we know that states have to by the end of this week, by Friday, they have to tell the federal government where they want the vaccine to be shipped and roughly how many doses they want this initial Pfizer vaccine.

Now, Operation Warp Speed is saying that tentatively they think that the Pfizer vaccine will be shipping out on the 15th and that the Moderna vaccine will be shipping out December 22nd. Now, I say tentatively because, of course, these vaccines still need to be authorized by the FDA. So, Operation Warp Speed is putting out these dates not knowing exactly what day we could get this FDA authorization.

But once that happens, Operation Warp Speed says within 24 hours of that authorization, these vaccines will start being shipped out to states and from there it's really up to the states to figure out how to get these vaccines into people's arms. And we know that off the bat, there are not going to be enough doses.

You know even though there's a recommendation about how to prioritize people and healthcare workers are at the front of the line, most states are not even going get enough doses to be able to vaccinate all of their healthcare workers. So, they're going to have to prioritize within that. You know healthcare workers that are working day in and day out with COVID infected patients. You can imagine are going to be right at the front of this line.

[11:05:04]

The federal government has really taken this sort of overarching management role. They're talking to states and saying you know when it comes to the Pfizer vaccine, which has to be kept really cold, do you have the cold storage that you need? You know if you need dry ice, we can help provide that for you. But there's a lot of this burden that's going to fall to states and that's part of the reason that they've continued to hammer at this point, that they need more money from the federal government.

You know they're especially worried, Kate, about the fact that these are two-dose vaccines. Healthcare workers are very responsible and probably get both, but they need to convince everyone else to come back and get the second dose for this to work.

BOLDUAN: Yes, especially when they say that many people will likely feel some kind of a side effect from the first one. Convincing them that it is working, and they need to come back for that second one becomes an additional part of the challenge.

Great reporting, Sara. Thank you so much.

MURRAY: Thanks, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Joining me for much more on this is Dr. Craig Spencer, director of Global Health in ER Medicine at Presbyterian University Medical Center. It's good to see you again, Dr. Spencer. Thank you for coming in. What is your reaction to hearing the news out of the UK given the green light to the Pfizer vaccine?

DR. CRAIG SPENCER, DIRECTOR, GLOBAL HEALTH IN ER MEDICINE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: This is really heartening news. This is great. It's especially great because we know the MHRA, which is the FDA equivalent in the UK, has decided that the Pfizer vaccine is safe, the quality is high and it's effective.

And that will help I think some concerns that people here in the U.S. who were initially concerned that perhaps the politics was playing into this public health decision. It's good to know that another agency has looked at the information, looked at the data and determined that it's safe.

But look, this is the first approval for a vaccine that's gone through only that full clinical process, these clinical trials that are necessary to tell us whether it works. It's a light at the end of the tunnel and I'm really happy that we can see an end to this pandemic but again, we have many months before we get there.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. What do you make of the fact that the UK approved it first? I mean, do you think that there is something that can be learned, that the U.S. can learn from the UK rollout, that we're learning as you know it is happening next week?

SPENCER: The fact that the UK approved this you know maybe a week before it's going to be heard by the FDA, I don't think is anything too significant. Look at really the unprecedented timeline that we had since the beginning of this year when we didn't even know about this virus really to the fact that now we have the vaccines with over 90 percent efficacy that we're going to be rolling them out to tens of millions of people in the next few weeks.

I think it's really important that we have an independent body like the FDA and other regulatory bodies around the world that look at this independently to make sure we all come to the same conclusion. If it's many weeks or many months later that would be one thing. But the fact that it's only a few days later does not really significantly impact, doesn't really have significant impact and it doesn't say all that much.

BOLDUAN: Yes, the weak timeline in the grand scheme of what the world is facing right now really is not much when you think about it and put it in perspective.

But in your perspective is important. Healthcare frontline workers like yourself and your colleagues, you are - you are at the front of the line, you will be first in line to be getting - first in line for the vaccine once it's approved here in the states. The CDC advisory panel put out that guidance yesterday. How do you think the rollout will work for you? Should work for you and other healthcare workers here?

SPENCER: To be honest, I still have a lot of concerns about that. If we talk about the UK, they have a national health system where all of their databases are connected. They'll be able to find out by going in and just clicking to one chart what vaccine someone has received previously, what they will need for the second vaccine.

I think that there are logistical issues there that are going to be a lot easier than they will be here. They have kind of federally led or you know government-led response and as we've seen here, we have had a response that's different by different states and often by different political party of the governor.

I have concerns that you know we are already have healthcare workers that are overburdened, that are really, really tired and exhausted. We have almost 100,000 people in the hospital now. So at the same time we're going to try to roll out this vaccine to healthcare workers, many of them are overburdened and working extra hours just to cover the shifts and really make up for other colleagues that are already out.

So, I do have concerns around the logistics, you know getting it from the plane, getting it into the clinic and getting into the arms especially of healthcare workers. I don't know if enough of that has been figured out yet.

BOLDUAN: I think you raised an excellent point there. You mentioned the record number, really astonishing number of Americans who are in hospital right now with COVID. And I want to ask you, with that in mind, I want to ask you about the video that you circulated kind of documenting one day in the life in the ER that you experienced at the height of the pandemic. To remind folks, let me play a part of it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SPENCER (voice-over): Two patients in rooms right next to each other both getting a breathing tube and it's not even 10:00 a.m. yet.

For the rest of your shift, nearly every hour you get paged, that notification, very sick patient, short of breath, fever, oxygen 88 percent, stat notification, low blood pressure, short of breathe, low oxygen, stat notification, low oxygen, can't breathe, fever. All day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[11:10:05]

BOLDUAN: You put this out a while back and now entering December, we are as a country heading back to that place that you were describing again. Your videos had more than 4 million views, and I'm just sitting here wondering do you think people just didn't get the message or did and just don't care?

SPENCER: I think people are getting the message, look, we shared that video initially when we were hit so hard in New York City and people here understood the reality and still understand it, because they saw it. It impacted their friends and their family. I reshared that video this weekend because in the month of November, we had a third of all of our COVID cases since the beginning of this pandemic combined. The hospitalizations doubled. And we are seeing a COVID death on average every minute.

This reality is starting to become more real for people all over this country every single day. And I know people sometimes need to see to believe. I know it's really just an animation and we don't have videos inside hospitals for privacy concerns but I am hoping that this gives people an idea of what it actually looks like inside and what my colleagues are dealing with on a day-to-day basis all over this country, not just New York City, but in nearly every single hospital all throughout the U.S.

This is our reality and we need people to be vigilant. Yes, there's light at the end of the tunnel but the next few months are going to be the hardest part of this pandemic and the decisions that we make today, next week and over the holidays will significantly impact our ability to do our job in the emergency department and make sure many people stay alive.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. The solution is coming but the solution is not here until it is here. There's no gray area in between now and then. Thank you, Dr. Spencer. It's good to see you.

Coming up next for us, sources are telling CNN that President Trump is discussing preemptively pardoning his children and Rudy Giuliani. Why would the president pardon anyone who's not even under investigation? Plus, out of ICU beds, that is the reality for the largest healthcare provider in the state of New Mexico. We're going to talk to one doctor who's sounding the alarm.

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[11:16:26]

BOLDUAN: In his final days in office, President Trump is reportedly discussing with advisers, preemptive pardons for some of his closest allies, and by close, I mean his three eldest children and also Rudy Giuliani.

Sources are saying that he's making appeals -- Giuliani, at least, is making appeals to the president to do just that. This comes just as we are also learning about an investigation into a potential presidential pardon bribery scheme. New court documents reveal the Justice Department is looking into whether money was being funneled into the White House in exchange for a pardon.

Joining me right now, CNN White House correspondent John Harwood and CNN legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig.

So, John, first on this reporting that the president is discussing, considering, however you want to say it, potential preemptive pardons for his kids and Giuliani. Why would he think his kids need to be considered for pardons? They haven't been charged with anything.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: They haven't. We don't know exactly why, but we do know that just like the president himself, Donald Trump, Jr. was investigated by Robert Mueller in conjunction with the interactions with Russian representatives in 2016. Remember Donald Trump Jr. set up that meeting.

If it's what you say, I love it. Jared Kushner also attended that meeting. Jared Kushner also had some issues related to information he gave to the government when he was seeking a security clearance. Don't know if any of that rises to the level of a potential prosecution or whether the Biden administration would have any intention of pursuing that even if it did.

But job one for President Trump is protecting himself and those closest to him. Rudy Giuliani was involved in the effort to smear Joe Biden with Ukraine. Shady sources in Ukraine linked to Russian intelligence, that, of course, is what the same effort that is what got Donald Trump impeached. So, all of this is part of the close circle of associates around President Trump. Protecting them means he's protecting himself.

BOLDUAN: Elie, I mean, is this a good thing, preemptively pardoning people?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Usually not but it has happened a couple of times in our history. Normally when a president issues a pardon, it is to a specific person who's been charged and/or convicted of a specific federal crime. That was the case with Michael Flynn, with Roger Stone.

Now, there have been a couple of instances in our history where the president has preemptively pardoned someone, the most famously being Richard Nixon, who was not ever charged with anything, but he was pardoned. So, if this happens though, it begs the question, Kate, you started off with.

Why? What's going on here? Why does there need to be a pardon? And if I'm a state prosecutor and I'm not bound by this pardon. I would be exactly that question. I'd be saying, why is there a need to pardon these people? They must have done something. Let me see if I can figure that out.

BOLDUAN: And, John, what does this do - I don't know. If anything at all, about the talk of President Trump possibly trying to pardon himself?

HARWOOD: Well, this is something again that hasn't been tried and I would defer to Elie's legal expertise on this. The consensus that I've absorbed from legal scholars who have talked about it are that it would be contested but he might be able to do it.

Again, the president, he's got seven weeks left in office. At the end of that seven weeks, he loses this awesome power that he possesses right now to shield himself or people around him potentially from criminal prosecution.

[11:20:04]

And I think there's every expectation that he would push the envelope and do whatever he can as he did with Michael Flynn, as he did and commuting Roger Stone's sentence. We're all watching to see what happens with Paul Manafort as well. I think the expectation is he pushed the envelope to try to maximize the amount of protection from potentially getting prosecuted that he could.

BOLDUAN: And, Elie, now to the Justice Department investigation into potential pardon bribery scheme, the court documents that CNN has seen, they're partially redacted and the filings do not reveal a timeline of any kind of a scheme or any names of the people involved. The Justice Department official did tell CNN that there was no government official as a target of this. So then, what is your take on this, what's coming out? What does this mean for the president?

HONIG: First of all, absolutely not fake news as the president claimed in a tweet. This comes with documents filed with the court. There absolutely was at least an investigation of this pardon scheme. Now, the most important thing to me that I see here is DOJ believes and understands that the pardon power, while very broad, still doesn't mean you can do it for any purpose, even if that purpose is criminal.

Here, they're looking for the possibility of a pardon for cash bribery scheme which can and should be a federal crime. They're right about that. The more important application, some of the things that John was talking about, I think there could be investigation of whether the president issued pardons or dangled pardons to people like Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, Roger Stone in order to keep them silent. And if so, I believe in using the Justice Department's logic here, that could be obstruction of justice as well.

BOLDUAN: This is long from over is what you guys are telling me. Good to see you both. Thank you so much.

A quick programming note, everyone. President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will be joining Jake Tapper for their first joint interview since winning the White House. You can watch that in full tomorrow night at 9:00 p.m. Eastern only on CNN.

Still ahead for us. At least nine hospitals in New Mexico have completely filled their intensive care units. What will happen if another surge comes? A doctor there is joining us.

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[11:27:05]

BOLDUAN: One doctor on the frontlines in New Mexico is putting it bluntly saying we are out of ICU beds. We are really totally full. Take a look at the numbers from there.

This is the average of new cases in the state week to week. As you can see, it essentially skyrocketed since October. 909 people currently hospitalized in the state, the second highest since the pandemic began. The second highest only since Sunday as well.

Now at least nine New Mexico hospitals say they are out of ICU beds. Dr. Jason Mitchell is the chief medical officer at Presbyterian Healthcare Services, the state's largest healthcare provider. He's joining me right now.

Doctor, thank you so much for being here. You are the doctor that I was just quoting off the top. You are sounding the alarm that you're out of ICU beds. What do things look like in your hospital system right now?

DR. JASON MITCHELL, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, PRESBYTERIAN HEALTHCARE SERVICES: You know, we really truly are out of beds and it's not just the intensive care unit, it's all of the medical beds as well. We've pulled out every stop so that we can take care of New Mexicans but as a community, we really are at the extent of that.

BOLDUAN: How is it getting so bad there? What do you think is behind it?

MITCHELL: You know, we had done very well early on in the pandemic and really locked things down quickly and did a great job as a community. But over time over the summer, I think we all, everybody across America, became more relaxed and we did not practice COVID safe practices consistently. As businesses opened up and we socialized and were together, that's how the virus spreads. And so, when you have a pandemic and you have people beginning to get together, you're going to see the spike and that's what we saw. BOLDUAN: What is your biggest fear? You're out of ICU -- not only out of ICU beds, you're out - you're full, packed full. You're out of medical beds as well. When people hear that, what do you want to make sure they understand that actually means, what is your fear?

MITCHELL: I think every doctor's worse fear is that patients come to us and we can't give them the best care. We can't give them everything they need to take care of them. And when you run out of resources and whether that's doctors or nurses or beds or ventilators, you cannot give that same care and that really is the crisis standard of care that someone would enter into.

(CROSSTALK)

BOLDUAN: Is that what's happening right now, is that where we are right now?

MITCHELL: We're not there yet. We're very, very close as a state but we not there yet. We have been able to bring in physicians and nurses that do not normally practice in the hospital that are competent and to help us, we've brought in agency nurses from around the nation, hospitals that opened up areas to make room for new beds. We have more double occupancy beds, more people in there. We've done everything to expand capacity but we're out of levers to pull.

BOLDUAN: I just want to ask you, this just came in, the CDC -- this had been discussed, doctor, but the CDC just officially announced that it is shortening its guidelines now, shortening the 14-day quarantine guidelines for someone who is exposed, now shortening it from seven to 10 days.