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U.S. FDA Authorizes Pfizer BioNTech Vaccine; Interview with BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin; Supreme Court Rejects Trump's Bid to Overturn Election; London to Start Mass Testing Schools. Aired 3-3:30a ET

Aired December 12, 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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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello, everyone, and welcome to Studio 7 here at CNN Center in Atlanta. I am Michael Holmes. Appreciate your company.

We're following two major stories tonight. As a COVID vaccine gets authorization in the U.S. the country sets three more grim records in a single day.

Also, the Supreme Court rejects Donald Trump's latest bid to overturn the election. Now the president having his say about it, where else?

On Twitter.

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HOLMES: Welcome everyone.

Just hours ago, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization for the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine. It is the first to get the green light here in the U.S. and the stakes, of course, could not be any higher.

On the same day, the country broke all of its records, deaths, cases and hospitalizations. That last record has been shattered almost every day for weeks now. And the U.S. is the country confirming the most deaths worldwide by far. Now more than 295,000 lives lost when looking at the data from Johns Hopkins University.

More than 3,000 died on Friday alone. But a shot from the vaccine cannot start until this the CDC's vaccine advisers meet and recommend the vaccine. That's pretty much a formality. The meeting was supposed to happen Sunday; it's now been moved up to Saturday, 11 am Eastern time, in the U.S.

So, what comes next?

And how long will it take for Americans to start getting those shots?

CNN's Nick Watt breaks it down for us.

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NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The FDA just signed off on that historic thumbs-up.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We do have a favorable vote.

WATT (voice-over): From their advisory panel. Medics, shippers are ready for the most complicated and consequential vaccine rollout in American history.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a beginning of the end of this crazy pandemic.

WATT (voice-over): This weekend, the CDC will likely sign off on the vaccine and who gets it; maybe Monday, shots in arms.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We could see people getting vaccinated Monday, Tuesday of next week.

WATT (voice-over): But it will be earliest this spring before most people can get the vaccine; the challenge, meantime, keeping as many Americans alive as possible.

DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION: Probably for the next 60 to 90 days, we are going to have more deaths per day than we had in 9/11.

WATT (voice-over): Already averaging well over 2,000 lives lost every single day, that will rise because we are also averaging well over 200,000 new cases every day. And that number has never been higher.

Los Angeles just smashed its daily case count high.

MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI (D-CA), LOS ANGELES: In this year of constant crises, this is the greatest crisis we have ever faced.

WATT (voice-over): In Virginia, an overnight curfew kicks in Monday.

GOV. RALPH NORTHAM (D-VA): If you don't need to go out, go home. This is just plain common sense.

WATT (voice-over): New York City and all of Pennsylvania will close indoor dining, again.

GOV. TOM WOLF (D-PA): We need to take further mitigation actions to protect Pennsylvanians and stop the spread of COVID-19. We all hoped it would not come to this.

WATT (voice-over): It has. But at least there is now read hope.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: If we have a smooth vaccination program where everybody steps to the plate quickly, we could get back to some form of normality reasonably quickly into the summer and certainly into the fall.

WATT (voice-over): The economy back up and running, all kids back in school.

WATT: And of course, when it comes to the vaccine, Pfizer is not the only game in town. The U.S. government just announced they're going to buy another 100 million doses of Moderna's vaccine. So, doubling their holding of that one.

And Thursday, the FDA committee is going to meet to talk about that Moderna vaccine and authorization for the U.S. should follow pretty soon after -- Nick Watt, CNN, Los Angeles.

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HOLMES: Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips, chief clinical officer of Providence Health System, joining me now from Seattle, Washington.

Good to see you, Doctor. Great news on the FDA approval, CDC has the vote next, of course.

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HOLMES: Essentially, now, the work of getting this into arms begins.

What do you see as the immediate challenges?

DR. AMY COMPTON-PHILLIPS, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: The immediate challenger is that the logistics are herculean. The vaccine that was approved today takes an incredibly challenging cold chain, those minus 70-degree freezers.

So, we need to get it from the manufacturing plant, into distribution facilities, into local facilities, which, right now, are typically hospitals. They're the ones that have invested in super cold freezers.

And then we need to make sure we get the health care workers who get this first, particularly, the highest risk health care workers, notified that they can come, in and get their vaccine in a way that is paced so we can get the vaccines done appropriately.

Fortunately, we have had a warning, we knew this was coming and I do think we will be ready early next week to start giving vaccines.

HOLMES: That is good news. One thing that concerns some people, is the percentage of Americans willing to take the vaccine. It is going up and that is good news. But the last poll was around 53 percent. Really, putting a lid on this thing, needs more like 75 percent to 80 percent of people vaccinated, doesn't it?

What if the take up stays around 55 percent?

What happens with the virus?

COMPTON-PHILLIPS: I absolutely think, as the winter goes on and we get into spring and people start seeing their neighbors, their friends and people they trust getting the vaccine and seeing a benefit from it, actually slowing down the pandemic, they will start accepting the vaccine more.

I also think -- and states are doing this now, health care organizations are doing this now, we are doing this now -- that we really have to work with communities that, in the past, have not always trusted vaccines.

Those include communities of color, with African American communities, with Native American communities, with Latino communities, to ensure we are getting everybody and not just those who volunteer and say, come in, do me first.

We need to make sure we are doing the hard work of convincing people, working with them and understanding the barriers to work through those, so we can get everyone vaccinated.

HOLMES: Absolutely.

Should people be concerned about the reported allergic reactions, as small as that group this?

The issue was cited in the FDA approval and there are many people with allergies out there, who may be concerned they can't get a vaccination.

COMPTON-PHILLIPS: I think we will learn more, as we really ramp up the initial round of vaccinations and how many people get this. What it sounds like from the reports are anaphylactic reactions, extreme allergic reaction.

So at this initial round, ensuring that we target people who don't have that, if people are very high risk and they have a history of anaphylactic reactions, doing it in a way we can monitor them, so we can treat it if they have the reaction, will be critical.

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HOLMES: Dr. Amy Compton-Phillips there, joining us from Seattle, Washington, a little earlier.

Now CNN has gotten exclusive access to BioNTech's CEO to talk about the FDA's approval of the vaccine he worked on. Fred Pleitgen has that interview for us. He's standing by at BioNTech's headquarters in Mainz, Germany.

Great to get the access.

What did he tell you?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Of course, they're thrilled to have gotten this emergency use authorization. They've been putting a lot of work into this vaccine.

Speaking yesterday to BioNTech CEO, he said the moment he heard there was such a thing as the coronavirus, in January of this year, he decided there needed to be a vaccine against it and immediately started working. And his company did this 24/7 for several months. Obviously, a huge deal for them, not just because they're the first

and the U.S. is such a big market but also because the coronavirus situation in the situation is so tough.

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UGUR SAHIN, CEO, BIONTECH: This is a most important milestone. The authorization of our vaccine in the United States was one of the most important milestones from the very beginning.

PLEITGEN: When do you think it will start having an impact on the trajectory, also, of the virus in the United States?

SAHIN: It could happen beginning March, end of March, to see the first effects, I would hope it with the spring season and we would have, by nature, a lower rate of infections and the combination of that may help us to have a better summer than the situation is now.

PLEITGEN: What steps are being taken to really upgrade and speed up production as fast as possible?

SAHIN: We anticipate that the need for each of our vaccine (ph) is much higher than we initially estimated.

[03:10:00]

SAHIN: Now of course, understanding that more doses may be required, we started a few weeks ago to evaluate if we can produce more doses.

And this, of course, means we need to understand the constraints, for example, the availability of raw materials, the availability of machines, of production rooms and of finished capacity. This is exactly happening.

And I anticipate, at the end of January, we will be able to clearly state if we can produce more of those and if, yes, how many more doses.

PLEITGEN: What do you think our future will be with this virus?

SAHIN: I expect the virus will stay with us and I expect we will require (INAUDIBLE) immunizations. This will become some sort of, I would not say seasonal but maybe every 2 years vaccination, will be required to ensure that people do not get reinfections or infections.

I could even anticipate that this could become a vaccine that is already applied in childhood.

PLEITGEN: You provide Americans with hope that we are turning a page and that we are getting to pushing the pandemic back.

SAHIN: I'm optimistic. Of course, we are now in an extremely difficult situation, not only in the United States but also in Europe. The infection numbers are high and, every day, many people are dying.

What we now know, we have a solution for the problem. And we have to work hard, to make our vaccine and to make other vaccines, available, as soon as possible.

PLEITGEN: It's a real service to humanity, isn't it?

SAHIN: It's indeed a service to humanity and it is in the center of our hearts, that we are able to help people. It is our goal and our vision, to make our vaccine available worldwide, to any region on the planet.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PLEITGEN: So, a huge step there. You can see for BioNTech for the CEO. But of course, he also says they don't really have any time, Michael, to celebrate because there is still a lot of work to do. They're still looking to get emergency approval here in the European Union. That process is well underway.

And they're already working on ways to scale up production and change the formulation of the vaccine, to make it more easily transported. That is a big knock on the vaccine. They realize that but they're already working to make it easier.

HOLMES: Some issues but terrific achievement in a purely scientific sense. Fred Pleitgen, great interview in Mainz, Germany, thanks.

U.S. president Donald Trump's last-ditch effort to overturn the election gets thrown out of court. Why the Supreme Court says it won't even hear the case.

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HOLMES: Now the U.S. Supreme Court, throwing out President Donald Trump's latest effort to reverse his election loss. The high court, refusing to take up a Trump backed lawsuit, filed by Texas, that sought to block votes in key battleground states.

CNN Supreme Court analyst, Steve Vladeck, summing up the court's decision this way.

Quote, "The closest possible thing to the last nail in the coffin for election related legal challenges," unquote.

CNN Justice correspondent, Jessica Schneider, with more.

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JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: The Supreme Court has spoken, and it is game over for what was a long shot lawsuit that gained support from more than 100 Republicans in Congress, nearly 2 dozen Republican attorneys general. The justices on the Supreme Court have spoken for the second time this

week, shutting down Republican efforts to stop Joe Biden from becoming president. The Supreme Court putting it this way.

"Texas has no right to even file this lawsuit at the high court because Texas has no right to legally challenge how another state conducts its elections."

In this case, Texas was challenging the election procedures of four battleground states. In this order from the Supreme Court, two of the most conservative justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, said they believe the Supreme Court should have at least let Texas file the case.

But then these two justices said, if that had happened, they, too, would have rejected it. So, this is a complete rejection of the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, his efforts to stop the electors in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia from voting for Joe Biden when they meet on Monday.

Now this was a short order, just one page, and just a few sentences in it. But this is a major defeat for Republicans and it's a victory for all the states and officials who blasted this effort by Texas.

In fact, officials in Pennsylvania calling it, quote, "a cacophony of bogus claims that called for a seditious abuse of the judicial process."

The Supreme Court seem to agree, in a Friday order, that capped off a week of two Supreme Court rejections of Republican efforts. Of course, there have been repeated shutdowns of cases across the country by other state and federal judges. This one, just the latest -- Jessica Schneider, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HOLMES: In typical fashion, President Trump, lashing out, where else but on Twitter.

Writing, quote, "The Supreme Court really let us down. No wisdom, no courage," he said. He sent out several other tweets, pushing his baseless claims of a rigged election and vowing to, quote, "fight on."

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HOLMES: CNN senior political analyst, Ron Brownstein, joins me now from Los Angeles. He's also a senior editor at "The Atlantic."

Good to see you, Ron. The Texas Supreme Court challenge, unsurprisingly, failed. Let's not be numb to what happened and what was being attempted. The result of the case was predictable. But talk about the impact of the act itself. That is important. These tactics could become the norm for the Right.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: The failure of the president in court, consistently, through this postelection process, has obscured his success at bringing along more and more of the Republican Party to a staggeringly undemocratic position of trying to subvert the election and disenfranchise millions of legal votes.

This case, specifically, virtually every Republican attorney general, in a state, in the country, signed onto it, a majority, a significant majority of House Republicans, signing onto it.

We saw, earlier in the week, the Arizona Republican Party tweet, asking people if they were ready to die to try to overturn the election. Over 60 Republicans, in the Pennsylvania state legislature signed a letter urging their congressional delegation to invalidate their own state's votes and object to them.

So, if you look all across the board, the big story here is how far Trump has moved the Republican Party towards, frankly, an undemocratic, antidemocratic, posture that has enormous implications for how elections are contested, going forward.

HOLMES: Ron, you wrote in "The Atlantic" about, it and I want to quote, "a democratic erosion, concerns that Republicans are showing signs of treating elections as they are treated in countries like Turkey, Hungary or Russia."

How worried are you that those sorts of fears could be realized?

BROWNSTEIN: This is a continuum and it's not the first point on the continuum. Really, for more than a decade, we've seen Republicans in the states pass an incredible panorama of laws making it harder to vote. That was kind of the predicate.

Then, Donald Trump comes into office.

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BROWNSTEIN: And he pushes at the boundaries of democratic conventions and norms one by one. He extorts the government of the Ukraine openly to produce dirt, manufacture dirt on his opponent. Only a single Republican in either chamber finds that worthy of sanction.

He becomes the first president to try to tilt the census results. The partisan advantage, not a peep from Republicans, he weaponizes the Postal Service, not a peep from the Republicans.

He intervenes in the Justice Department, cases, criminal cases, against former associates. Again, not a peep from Republicans. And then we see this extraordinary postelection activity in which a shocking number of Republicans have aligned with him and his efforts to overturn the election, even though he has failed to produce any evidence of fraud that has been accepted in any court in the country.

So, when you look at all of this and add it all up, it raises serious questions about the Republican Party's commitment to small D democracy. And Michael, I think we will see further pressure from Trump on this.

One thing to watch, in 2022, does he support a primary challenge to Brian Kemp in Georgia that stood up, to some extent, against him in his efforts to overturn the election?

If that is successful, it is now becoming the norm in the Republican Party, where you are expected to try to overturn an election.

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HOLMES: CNN senior political analyst, Ron Brownstein, speaking with me earlier.

We'll take a break on the program. When we come, back new vaccines, new hope and a new COVID surge across Europe. Tougher restrictions might be on the way, yet again, from London. We will be live, in the British capital, with Anna Stewart ahead.

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HOLMES: Now the number of confirmed coronavirus cases surging in many European countries. France delaying lifting restrictions as case numbers are still high there. German lawmakers expecting to meet in the coming days to tighten their own lockdown measures.

In England, there is speculation that London could enter a strict tier 3 level lockdown next week. The British capital seeing a rise in infections, especially among school children. The government says it plans to start mass testing 11 to 18-year-old. Anna Stewart, joining us from London, with the latest -- Anna.

ANNA STEWART, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Morning, Michael.

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STEWART: Yes. Unfortunately, England exited its national lockdown less than 2 weeks ago. But already, across the country, the infection rate is beginning to rise. The trajectory is particularly bad, here in London.

Yesterday, health minister Matt Hancock, said it is children between the ages of 11 and 18, in secondary schools, that appear to account for most of those cases. This is why they're taking a targeted approach, they want to mass test secondary children in certain areas of London, also Kent and Essex, sending up mobile testing units, not obligatory but encouraging all students to take part, even if they don't have symptoms.

It has drawn some criticism here in the U.K. Some parents say, the term's nearly over, just close schools or some people want to see more e-learning happen. The government, since the first lockdown, when they shut down schools, have always maintained, they don't want to do that again. They'd rather shut down businesses, hospitality and tell people to stay at home if they are working.

They want to see kids in school. That is the plan there. As you said, we do have a review coming next week and I think, for London, it could mean that we enter a much stricter tier of lockdown rules, two weeks after we left them and just before Christmas.

That would be needed to curb this rise. In front of everyone's minds, right now, is of course, Christmas coming up. The government said we can have three households mixing, inside, for a few days to celebrate.

But if the infection rate is on the rise, the worry is, soon after Christmas, you can see a worrying uptick in cases for the new year -- Michael.

HOLMES: Anna Stewart, in London, appreciate it. Thank you.

Just before we go, we are hearing that at least one person is dead, two others wounded, after 10 rockets were fired from a vehicle in Kabul in Afghanistan. The airport temporarily shut down after a rocket landed near a plane.

Aviation officials say the aircraft wasn't damaged and all other rockets landing in different parts of the city. No one yet claiming responsibility. We are keeping an eye on that.

Meanwhile, I am Michael Holmes, thank you for your company, appreciate you spending part of your day with me. Kim Brunhuber will be along in 30 minutes with more CNN NEWSROOM, until, then "AFRICAN VOICES CHANGEMAKERS" up next.