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FDA Says, Pfizer Vaccine Provides Some Protection after First Dose; World Watches as U.K. Gives First Doses of Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine; U.S. Set to Surpass 15 Million Cases amid Record Hospitalizations. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 08, 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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POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Top of the hour, good morning, everyone, I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Jim Sciutto.

Today, some good news, some hopeful sign for us here in the U.S. as the U.K. begins its first coronavirus vaccinations. President Trump plans to sign an executive order aimed at prioritizing the shipment of the vaccine to Americans before other nations but real questions about that effect. Asked about that order this morning, the chief scientist of the president's Operation Warp Speed, as it's known, says, frankly, he's staying out of it, he refused to comment further. We're going to have more on that in a moment, what it actually means.

But, first, but really a monumental day for science. This morning, the United Kingdom became the first western nation to begin inoculating people with a vaccine for coronavirus, this is one, the Pfizer vaccine.

HARLOW: That is amplifying anticipation here in the U.S. ahead of a key FDA meeting that is set for Thursday.

Also breaking this morning, the FDA releasing new data verifying the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine. This past week marked the deadliest in the United States from COVID since April, more than 15,000 Americans dying. At least 100,000 Americans hospitalized for the sixth straight day.

Let's begin our coverage this hour with Jacqueline Howard. She joins us now. Good morning.

Could you go through the key findings from the FDA on the Pfizer vaccine this morning, including what they have found after the first dose of the vaccine is administered?

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: Yes. After that first dose is really fascinating. But here is kind of the round up of what is included in this FDA document. The FDA document includes information on data regarding safety and efficacy. When it comes to safety, the document details the safety profile as favorable and it mentions reactions to the vaccine, including fatigue, headache, muscle pain. So these are things we've heard before.

But I think it's also important to mention that the FDA document notes that there is insufficient data when it comes to safety in certain groups. And here is what those groups -- here are those groups. We should have a list here. The document says there are currently insufficient data to make conclusions about the safety of the vaccine in children under age 16 and pregnant women and immunocompromised individuals. So that's important to make a note of.

Yes, the document says, overall, the safety profile is favorable, but those groups are areas where we need more research.

And then, Jim and Poppy, when it comes to efficacy, the document does confirm the efficacy of the vaccine appearing to be 95 percent, which is what has been reported before. But the document also includes data on efficacy after one dose, which really stood out. And here is more information on that in particular.

Now, keep in mind this vaccine is administered as a two-dose shot, so two 30 microgram doses given 21 days apart. But after that first dose, the document describes efficacy between the first and second dose as 52.4 percent. So that tells us there is some efficacy that we're seeing there. There are some immune response that we're seeing there after that first dose.

Now, the document does go on to say that, you know, we -- the analysis cannot support a conclusion of efficacy after a single dose because the time between that first dose and second dose is only 21 days. But this is interesting, Jim and Poppy. I think the safety data and the efficacy data is interesting. All eyes are on this Thursday meeting.

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That's when these reports, this data, will be reviewed by the FDA advisory committee.

SCIUTTO: Good news is that, big picture, they all seem to be pointing towards a very effective vaccine, even more effective than somebody really hopes. Jacqueline Howard, thanks very much.

To the White House now where the president is signing an executive order on vaccine shipments today, questions about its efficacy.

HARLOW: For sure. John Harwood, good morning to you again.

Okay. So, I don't think anyone really understands what the point of this executive order is, and I guess, most importantly, does it have any teeth? Like will it change anything for Americans?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy, I think the one thing we know is going to happen is that President Trump is going to sign his name to a piece of paper. The question is whether it means anything more than a random person on the streets signing their name to a piece of paper.

The president likes to do this rather than create workable plans and do that hard work of governing, sign executive orders and declare he's done it. We all remember during the campaign when he was asking the Supreme Court to throw out Obamacare, he signed a piece of paper and said, I hereby declare we'll protect preexisting conditions. It meant absolutely nothing but it gave him something to say in the campaign.

Now, he is going to do this today, and not only do we not know the -- as journalists, not know the effect of this potential order but neither does Moncef Slaoui, the person who is running Operation Warp Speed. Here is what he said on ABC this morning.

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GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEW HOST: Can you explain this executive order the president is going to be putting out? I don't quite understand it. He's saying that foreign countries aren't going to be able to get the vaccine until everybody here in the United States gets it.

It sounds like the problem is the opposite right now. Pfizer has made deals with other countries that are going to limit the supply here.

DR. MONCEF SLAOUI, CHIEF SCIENTIFIC ADVISER, OPERATION WARP SPEED: Frankly, I don't know. And, frankly, I'm staying out of this, so I can't comment.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You don't know?

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HARWOOD: Now, what the president may be trying to do is get ahead of the controversy that George Stephanopoulos alluded to in the question and that is that the U.S. government this summer passed on the opportunity to option more, 100 million additional doses of the vaccine.

Now, Slaoui said that that was a reasonable judgment at the time because we didn't know how effective it was going to be. We have got multiple vaccines in the pipeline. So it is not clear that the administration screwed up by not doing that.

What we do know is that we're going to have multiple applications for emergency use authorization. We may see Moderna approved next week. So it's possible it won't be an issue. The one thing we know is that anything that Moncef Slaoui has to say about this is going to be infinitely more credible than whatever President Trump says this afternoon.

HARLOW: John Harwood, thank you, at the White House, for that very much.

Let's go to the U.K. now where there is great news this morning, people are receiving the first round of Pfizer's vaccine injections outside of clinical trials. It's the real deal. SCIUTTO: CNN's Cyril Vanier is in London. Cyril, this is remarkable. It's a marker in bringing this pandemic to an end, an early one. Tell us how it's working out there.

CYRIL VANIER, CNN INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Look, it's the biggest and the most complex immunization in the program in the history of the U.K. And it started early this morning. 6:31 was the very first Britain get it in a hospital in Coventry. Her name was Margaret Keenan, she's 91 years old, and she said she felt privileged to be the first person to get it in this country.

But, look, I have just met somebody that I want to introduce to you, Martin Kenyon. And just as we were preparing for the live hit, we asked this gentleman whether perhaps he had just received the vaccine, and it turns out that he did. Mr. Kenyon is 91 years old. And I'd like you to tell us how you came to get the vaccine this morning, how it happened.

MARTIN KENYON, JUST RECEIVED COVID-19 VACCINE: I rang up the Guy's Hospital, which I knew very well because I've lived in London most of my grown up life. And I said what's this thing you're doing the vaccination? They said, yes. And then they spent various time asking me questions about this (INAUDIBLE), and I said, yes, no, yes, no. And they said, well, come have a stroll. Of course, I couldn't damn well find anywhere to park my car so I was late.

Anyway, I'm here now and I got inside and they put me on the list, went off had a rather nasty lunch and then came back and they were ready for me. And didn't hurt at all. I didn't know the needle had gone in until it had come out. It was painless.

VANIER: It was a quick in and out for the needle like any vaccination?

KENYON: Exactly. Vaccinations aren't really common, are they? Inoculations, no.

VANIER: So, you called this morning, sir?

KENYON: I rang up Guy's Hospital and said, I'd like to be vaccinated, you're vaccinating, aren't you?

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I've seen it on the news, watched the news. And they said, yes. And then they asked questions. They said come in and have a fill.

VANIER: How do you feel that you are now one of the first people in the country to have received the first dose of this vaccine?

KENYON: Thrilled.

VANIER: One of the first people in the world, how do you feel about it?

KENYON: I can't imagine at all, except that I hope I am not going to have the bloody bug now. I don't intend to have it because I've got granddaughters and I want to live a long time to enjoy their lives.

VANIER: Have you been able to see them much this year, this past year?

KENYON: No, not hug them. And now I'm going to for Christmas. Well, they're going to be -- their parents, my daughter and son, and they'll get to -- I'm not quite sure they're able to be hugged.

VANIER: Have you told them? Do they know?

KENYON: No, I'm telling. I'm going home and telling them now. Nobody knows. You're the first to know.

VANIER: So they are going to get the good news that soon you will have protection from this virus?

KENYON: Exactly, yes. They will. Of course, I'm going to tell my family (INAUDIBLE) daughters and grandchildren.

VANIER: I understand the hospital gave you a card.

KENYON: Yes.

VANIER: What is it -- can you show us? What does it say on the card?

KENYON: Here you are. Take the picture there. It just says my name. And when I to come for the follow-up in ten days' time or so. And it's got my name on it, and that's about it, very unexciting.

VANIER: So you should be coming back in 21 days time. And according to NHS guidance, seven to ten days after that, which brings us to early January, you should have developed protection, immunity from the coronavirus. And that, sir, is when you should be able to hug your family and your --

KENYON: That's my intention, yes. I don't intend to have it. Well, there's no point in dying now when I have lived this long, is there? I don't plan to anyway.

VANIER: Martin thank you for sharing your experience with us today.

KENYON: My pleasure to meet you.

VANIER: Well, it's been our pleasure to meet you too.

And, look, these are just -- these incredible human stories that have been percolating throughout the day from this hospital here, Guy's Hospital in Central London, great place. And 50 more hospitals in England and dozens more across the U.K. And it is just the beginning of this mass vaccination program.

For the moment, it's just a trickle, a few people, 800,000 doses are in country, that's enough for 400,000 priority cases like Martin Kenyon who we just met. And, of course, the program is going to be ramped up over time to include wider sections of the population. Back to you. HARLOW: I was sitting here, I'm sure, Jim, too beaming from ear to ear that entire interview and applauding when Martin Kenyon said, there's no point in dying now, Cyril, I've made it to 91.

VANIER: I'm afraid I lost connection there.

HARLOW: Okay. Well, thank you, Cyril, that was a highlight, right, Jim? I mean, can you ask for anything better?

SCIUTTO: Yes, no point in dying now, that's a life mantra.

HARLOW: It was great to see him. We hope Martin's family was watching as well.

All right, after the vaccine is approved, the big question. A big question is, if you're not 91 like Martin, when are you going to get it?

SCIUTTO: Well, there are growing concerns that the first round of vaccine doses will not be nearly enough to protect the nation's health care workers. I mean, there are millions of them.

CNN's Pete Muntean has more. I mean, listen, there had been months to prepare for this. What do we know about where this stands now?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim and Poppy, it's widely agreed upon that frontline health care workers and those living in long-term care facilities should get vaccinated first. But now, we are learning only a fraction of them will be able to get the vaccine right away.

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MUNTEAN (voice over): There was new hope that a coronavirus vaccine could soon bring an end to the pandemic but the new problem is not enough vaccine.

SLAOUI: On the manufacturing side, it's turned out to be somewhat more complicated and more difficult than we planned.

MUNTEAN: A new CNN analysis of 27 states finds none will get enough doses in early shipments to cover those who need to get the vaccine first, frontline health care workers and those in long-term care facilities.

SLAOUI: We probably are six to eight weeks later than an ideal scenario where we would have had 100 million doses by the end of this year, but we're not far.

MUNTEAN: If both Moderna and Pfizer get emergency FDA authorization, officials estimate early doses will be enough to vaccinate 20 million people by the end of this month, even though the first phase needs to cover about 24 million people. With FDA authorization, the first Pfizer doses could come this week but distribution is tricky.

[10:15:03] DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: It is up to the state and local authorities in their individual way to make the decisions about the distribution as well as the logistics of it.

MUNTEAN: States tell CNN they have different needs. Montana's 40,000 health care workers get less than 10,000 initial doses. In California, almost 2.5 million health care workers must be vaccinated but the first doses there will cover less than one in every ten of them.

GOV. GAVIN NEWSOM (D-CA): We have to look at sub-prioritization of those doses.

MUNTEAN: New York could get 170,000 doses by next week.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): Assuming they approve it, the trucks roll. We then have the prioritization of where they go.

There are about 700,000 health care workers.

MUNTEAN: Distribution leans heavily on help from private companies. CVS along with Walgreens will aid in administering the vaccine. CVS just urged more pharmacists and technicians to apply to administer shots.

American Airlines tells CNN it plans to transport vaccine within 24 hours of FDA authorization. The airline has been preparing temperature-controlled containers to make sure doses do not spoil in transit.

ROGER SAMWAYS, AMERICAN AIRLINES VICE PRESIDENT OF CARGO SALES: If the temperature range is exceeded at either end, to the top or the bottom, alarms will trigger, and so that will send a notification to our team to come out and do something.

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MUNTEAN (on camera): We could learn more about vaccine distribution later today. The White House will hold a summit. But, interestingly, Pfizer and Moderna will not be there as to not share the stage with the FDA regulator.

SCIUTTO: That is extremely unusual. You would think you would want to hear from those companies given that they're the early ones. Pete Muntean, thanks very much.

Well, President Trump's staunchest defenders on Capitol Hill are urging him not to concede an election he lost. What basis are they giving?

HARLOW (voice over): Police in Florida raid the home of a fired data scientist who has accused state officials of covering up the extent of the pandemic, the raid captured on tape. New details ahead.

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HARLOW: Right now in the United States, the number of people infected with COVID-19 is rising at the fastest rate it has in the entire pandemic.

SCIUTTO: And in California now, there are millions under stay-at-home orders as the state awaits its first big shipment of COVID vaccines.

HARLOW: Dan Simon joins us this morning from San Francisco. Good morning to you, Dan. What can you tell us about this, essentially, lockdown in California and if people are abiding by it?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Poppy and Jim. First of all, on the heels of this positive vaccine news, all of the trends continue to go in the wrong direction in the country. I just want to share with you some of the statistics that I have here on my phone. Cases, more than 192,000 yesterday, that's the seventh highest overall for cases, deaths more than 1,400. We're basically at the peak of daily deaths right now. And we can cross that threshold tomorrow. And hospitalizations, more than 102,000 people right now in this country are hospitalized, and that's the highest metric we have ever seen.

And we're continuing to see that trend here in California, hospitalizations up 72 percent over the past two weeks. And that's why the San Francisco Bay Area has joined Southern California and has the stay-at-home restrictions and it's really going to have a big impact in an area like this where we are, in the Marina District in San Francisco, where you have retail shops, in-store capacity now reduced to 20 percent and restaurants hit especially hard.

I want to show you what things look like behind me. All throughout San Francisco, you see things like this. The restaurants really have done a remarkable job adapting, creating these outdoor seating environments and all of it basically going by the wayside for now, right now, restaurants just pickup and delivery only.

In the meantime, Poppy and Jim, I also want to tell you about this new app that we heard about yesterday from Gavin Newsom. And this was the app that was developed jointly by Google and Apple. And, basically, it's an opt-in app. You alert the app that you may have tested positive for the virus and then, in turn, it will alert people you have been around. It's not a contact tracing app but it gives people some additional information that they may have to go to self-isolation or get tested. And this is going to wide on Thursday.

This is what Governor Newsom had to say about it.

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NEWSOM: This is only as good as people's adaptation and utilization. Opting in, it's not an opt out. You make the decision. It's not a contact tracing app. It's a notification app. If you choose to use it, we can leverage more and more utilization, which will make us more effective and more meaningful.

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SIMON: Governor Newsom calling this one more tool in the tool kit. Of course, the biggest tool, the vaccines, California going to get 2 million vaccines within the next couple of weeks and, of course, the first people to get that, that first batch, are going to be at-risk health care workers. Poppy and Jim, back to you.

HARLOW: Dan Simon, thank you for that reporting.

Let's talk about all of the big headlines this morning, all of this is with -- with us now to talk about all of this is Yahoo News Medical Contributor and Emergency Medicine Physician, Dr. Uche Blackstock. It's very good to have you, Doctor, thank you for being here.

It's a good day. I think we're smiling on the show more today than we normally do because of the vaccine news and the amazing man, Martin, who we had just live on the air who just got vaccinated in the U.K.

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But there's a real battle and an uphill battle struggle here when you have Pew numbers this week that show only 42 percent of black Americans trust this vaccine. What do you do about that?

DR. UCHE BLACKSTOCK, EMERGENCY MEDICINE PHYSICIAN: Thank you for having me, Poppy. So, this morning, definitely a sigh of relief but I also recognize we have a very long, challenging road ahead of us. Getting the vaccines to the state is one thing but getting the vaccines to the arm of every American is another thing. And because of the history of medical experimentation but also ongoing discrimination that black Americans face, we're having these numbers that you just cited.

And so what I think is needed, we need really extensive public health campaigns that are engaging community-based organizations and trusted leaders and black communities. I also think there needs to be significant transparency around the vaccine development process. People have so many questions. Why was it developed so quickly? How do I know it will work? And it needs to be conveyed, this information, in a culturally responsive way so that people can make an informed decision about the vaccine.

SCIUTTO: So, Dr. Blackstock, you have confidence and then you have availability, right? It appears the administration missed an opportunity to get more doses, specifically of the Pfizer vaccine, in time by the end of this year. Looking at the plans for distribution, are you confident that this vaccine will be distributed widely and fairly?

BLACKSTOCK: You know, I have to admit, I am worried about the distribution process. I'm worried about it because if we're saying that hospitals and pharmacies are going to be the vaccination sites, we know that they are not equitably distributed across this country. We know there are people who often avoid hospitals or going to hospitals. And so that's also going to be an issue. We need to make vaccination sites not only free but accessible. So, for example, mobile vaccination testing centers going throughout the community. So these will be issues that we'll have to pay very close attention to.

HARLOW: You're a mother of two little kids, four and six years old, Jim and I both have little kids. Even when all three of us are vaccinated, it's still going to be a while until our kids are, right? So it's not life back to normal for families in full, correct?

BLACKSTOCK: Correct, definitely not back to normal, and it won't be for a while, maybe, optimistically, fall 2021. But we need to have more complete data on what the vaccine looks like in adults before our children are involved in these studies. So there's this issue of consent. We know that also we can't make assumptions about people who are lactating or pregnant. They also have to be involved in these trials as well.

So we need more data and it's going to be a long time before we can all safely socialize without our masks on.

SCIUTTO: Thankfully, the trials have given some confidence. Dr. Uche Blackstock, thanks very much.

BLACKSTOCK: Thank you so much for having me.

SCIUTTO: President-elect Joe Biden's pick to run the defense department could end up being the first black man in this nation's history to do so. We'll have more details.

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