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NIH Director: If We Don't Get 20M Vaccinated This Moth "I hope People Will Understand" Logistical Challenge; U.S. Reports 3,401 Deaths, 2nd Highest Since Pandemic Began; Suspected Russian Hackers May Have Made "Unforced Error" Leading To Their Discovery; The Coming Contagion: Congo's Rainforests And Future Pandemics. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired December 23, 2020 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

UNKNOWN: I'm not confident that Pence is going to do that on January 6.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Yet another date, we must mark on the calendar for sure. Bill, thank you.

UNKNOWN: Thanks.

BOLDUAN: Coming up next for us, the Trump administration will buy another 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine. What that means for one of the general population all of us can expect to get the vaccine, that's next.

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BOLDUAN: This just in to CNN, the Trump administration will be invoking the Defense Production Act to prioritize materials and supplies needed to produce more vaccines. The administration has also now reached a deal with Pfizer to purchase an additional 100 million doses of its vaccine, at least 70 million doses will go out by June 30th. And the rest will be delivered no later than July 31st, they say. The Director of NIH Dr. Francis Collins, he told CNN this morning he's amazed at how the vaccine rollout has gone so far, but that Americans still need to be patient.

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DR. FRANCIS COLLINS, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: Yes, I think it's pretty amazing that it's gone as fast as it has. I think the distribution effort done through warp speed and then working through the states is pretty amazing. If we don't quite get that 20 million people being vaccinated this month, I hope people will understand. This is a logistic challenge of enormous proportion.

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[12:35:03] BOLDUAN: Yes. Those doses really can't come soon enough. This country reported the second highest death toll since the pandemic has began. 3,401 Americans died from COVID on Tuesday, and there are almost 118,000 people hospitalized right now. That's a new high. And there is more evidence every day that health care systems across the country are being overwhelmed. The U.S. has remained above 100,000 hospitalizations for 21 consecutive days now.

Joining me right now is Dr. Craig Spencer, Director of Global Health in E.R. Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. Doctor, thank you for coming back in. The last time you were on, we were talking about the vaccine distribution effort, and you said that you were concerned about how this was really going to go logistically and beyond. We now know that 5 million doses have been distributed in in the first week or so. But about 600,000 have been administered. Does that concern you?

DR. CRAIG SPENCER, DIRECTOR, GLOBAL HEALTH IN E.R. MEDICINE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER: Absolutely. I was one of the people who was lucky enough just over a week ago to get vaccinated myself as someone who worked on the front lines. And really, this first step is going to be the easiest step in some respects. It's being sent to hospitals who have a distribution system in place. We know who exactly is getting it, we're not having as much of kind of the -- you know, the fighting who's going to get it next. We know frontline providers should be prioritized.

And so, yes, it is important that we get it out as quickly as possible. But it's also important to remember that the vaccine will save us and it's crucial to ending this pandemic. But in the short term, we need to double down on the things we've been doing all along. 600,000 people were vaccinated in the first week of the vaccine rollout, but 1.5 million people got COVID and many of those will be hospitalized, and many of those will add to that COVID death tally, unfortunately, while they're waiting for a vaccine.

BOLDUAN: Yes, that's a really troubling comparison when you put it that way. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, we see record numbers every day of people getting so sick with COVID that they're in hospitals. This is day after day after day. How is that bearing out in your hospital?

SPENCER: Just as it is all over the country, we're seeing rapid and increased upticks in the number of cases on a nearly daily basis. Look at the hospitalization numbers now. You said 717,000, 118,000, that's double the peaks of April and July. We have had an increase in hospitalizations almost every single day since early October. And the likelihood is that we'll continue to have an increase over the next few weeks.

We see that cases, you know, maybe they're plateauing, or we're going into a holiday season where millions of people are traveling, the likelihood is that we'll have more cases that will contribute to more hospitalizations, and will contribute to more deaths. Projections are that we could have, you know, 3,600, 3,700 deaths per day in just a couple of weeks if things continue as they happen. BOLDUAN: You know, Doctor, I was actually going to ask you, you know, we're two days before Christmas, what's your message to people who haven't gotten it yet, as it may still be planning to travel and to get together with folks just coming from a doctor on the front lines of this every day?

SPENCER: It's really the same thing that it's been all along except that now we do know that there is light at the end of this tunnel. And the majority of Americans will not be vaccinated until late spring, maybe early summer. It's great news that the vaccine is out but the vaccine is not going to save a lot of people in the meantime who get infected at holiday dinners over New Years, or even early in the next year before they get vaccinated. We need to double down and do the things that we know work, masks.

Mask would save 55,000 lives, which is many more than the projected number of lives that would be saved in the next three months even from a vaccine rollout. So double down, it's, you know, we're near the end of this. We just need everyone to help us especially us on the frontline who are continuing to see a surge of patients.

BOLDUAN: Yes. Dr. Spencer, thank you.

SPENCER: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: Still ahead for us, investigators say suspected Russian hackers took a risk that ultimately may have led to the discovery of that massive cyber attack targeting U.S. government agencies. We have new report coming and that's coming up.

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BOLDUAN: CNN has new reporting now on how the suspected Russian cyber attack of government agencies was discovered. Investigators now believe the hackers may have taken a calculated risk that led to a possible unforced error that expose the breach. Joining me with more on this is CNN Security Correspondent Josh Campbell has been digging in. Josh, what was this unforced error?

JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning to you, Kate. When you think about the U.S. government and its cyber capabilities, they have some of the most sophisticated defensive capabilities in the world. But, in this case, this massive cyber breach we've been reporting on, it was actually the actions of the hackers that likely tipped off forensic examiners that this hack was underway.

What we're hearing is that this cyber security firm FireEye, which first detected this breach on their network is saying that what it appears though is going to happen is that the hackers were in one file, one set of systems and try to move what's called laterally over to another set of systems to gather information. And it was that movement that tipped off these forensic examiners that they had a problem on their system. It's essentially classic espionage. When you have access to one body of information, you want to take that calculated risk to gather more information and we're hearing it was likely that jump, that move that tips off investigators that something was awry here.

Now, what is it interesting about this particular hack and what just leading authorities and investigators to believe this was a nation state is think about the motivation. If a hacker goes into a system and their goal is to cause destruction or mischief, that is detected quite rapidly.

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But nation states, especially those at the behest of foreign services want to burrow in and passively gather information, collect as much information as they can. And it's that long time period that is moving this into that direction that the authorities believed this was likely Russians, their foreign intelligence services doing this.

Now, I talked to one forensic examiner who said that looking ahead, one thing that is interesting is that they're not just using sophisticated techniques, they're also unsophisticated techniques that may be at play here as well and that includes basic spearfishing. All of us have received e-mails from, you know, untrusted sources, and gathering information and access to e-mail accounts and sending those could prove additional entry points for additional hacks. That's something that the U.S. government is grappling with right now.

BOLDUAN: Josh, thank you for bringing that up. Appreciate it.

CAMPBELL: Thanks.

BOLDUAN: Coming up next for us, a CNN exclusive investigation into where viruses like the coronavirus are coming from. And what can be done to stop the next pandemic at its source.

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BOLDUAN: While the world grapples with one pandemic, scientists are warning there are surely more to come. And when they do, humans may only have themselves to blame. CNN's Sam Kiley traveled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where human actions and animal diseases are forming the perfect storm.

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SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): This pristine wilderness is under threat. The environmental disaster here could lead to a human apocalypse. Because locked up in the forest are reservoirs, are potentially deadly contagions, some perhaps more dangerous than we've ever seen before.

Ingende, 400 miles upriver from the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, has been struck by a recent outbreak of the killer Ebola virus. It's killed three out of 11 patients here, but doctor's fear that they've stumbled on a new virus for which there may be neither treatment nor cure.

CHRISTIAN BOMPALANGA, MEDICAL CHIEF, INGENDE ZONE (through translator): We have to do more examination to figure out what's going on.

KILEY: So the doctors just told me that one of their immediate concerns is that they are getting cases now that present symptoms that are similar to Ebola. But when they test them in the laboratory here, they are coming up negative.

This patient has Ebola symptoms, but she's tested negative. She's one of two victims here who may be fighting a disease never encountered before.

I asked the doctor if he was worried about new diseases emerging.

DR. DADIN BONKOLE, PHYSICIAN TREATING EBOLA (through translator): Yes, indeed. We should be afraid. That was how Ebola came, it was unknown, an unknown disease, and then after tests, it turned out to be a virus

KILEY: Treatments and a vaccine for Ebola now mean that while it's often deadly, more patients do survive. But medicine will never keep up with new diseases emerging from the wilderness. The patients here did survive. The test for known illnesses were all negative. So her disease remains a mystery. Doctors worry that more zoonotic diseases like Ebola, HIV/aids, SARS, MERS and COVID-19 will emerge and make that jump from animals to humans.

Ingende, on the river Ruki, is deep in the Congo basin. It's accessible only by boat, but that's how a virus can travel to big cities like Mbandaka to the country's capital Kinshasa and into the global bloodstream. Mbandaka has been at the epicenter of this latest fight against Ebola, which killed 55 people in the province.

Here in Mbandaka, they are battling with the fifth local outbreak of the Ebola virus which is on its 11th here in the Congo, they are getting a grip on it they believe. But they are also concerned about finding unknown viruses that emerge from the forest, just like Ebola.

The scientists here have limited funds but they know their work is essential to protect their own country and the rest of humanity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we don't have all this in place, you can imagine the nightmare scenario where you just have a vast epidemic with many places leading to huge mortality and morbidity.

KILEY: More than 100 new viruses have been discovered in the DRC over a decade, including many coronaviruses in bats. So, it's bats that get tracked. Bats are linked to many zoonotic diseases notably COVID-19 and Ebola.

GUY MIDINGI, ECOLOGIST, NATIONAL BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INRB: Now we are going to put it in the capture bag. You have to be really careful or it bite.

KILEY: And the virologists have told us that once they haven't found the Ebola virus itself inside them, they have found the antibodies, so these are an essential species and an early warning system for humanity.

And it could prove fatal, start an epidemic or worst. So could a cross infections from an unknown host, to bats, to chickens, to children. About 80 bats are swabbed, tested for COVID and Ebola, and then the samples are sent to Kinshasa for more investigation. Most of them survive capture and are returned to the wild.

[12:55:11]

The Congo's population has almost doubled in two decades to around 90 million. This puts the forest under strain and closes the gap between people and the new diseases that could kill them.

The scale of the direction of the rain forest here in the Congo is not yet on the scale that we've seen in the Amazon. A great deal of it is the result of local farmers who clear the land and then farm it for a few years. The problem is that causes fragmentation of the rainforest, increasing the surface area between the forest and humanity.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So this is the forest.

Professor Jean Jacques Muyembe is an expert in emerging diseases. He's been tracking them since he discovered Ebola in 1976. And now he has a warning for us all.

PROF. JEAN JACQUES MUYEMBE TAMTUM, IS AN EXPERT IN EMERGING DISEASES: So, it has become an outbreak.

KILEY: Are you afraid that there is going to be more emerging diseases coming out of the forest, something that is perhaps spreads like COVID but kills like Ebola?

MUYEMBE TAMTUM: We are now in a world where new pathogens will come out that will constitute a threat for humanity. And as you know, most of these diseases emerge from Africa.

KILEY: And this in the Congo is how viruses mostly travel.

The River Congo is the great artery that gives life to the whole nation, but it's also the root by which the results of deforestation are exported.

Like these smoked monkeys being sold for food. I film undercover because traders here in protected species fear exposure. Adams Cassinga is my guide. Once subsistence food, now bush meat (ph) is an international luxury commodity.

Can you arrange for shipping to Europe and America?

And so that's no problem, there's an agency for that. A protected species, the monkey's heads and arms had to be cut off to disguise them with antelope meat.

ADAMS CASSINGA, WILDLIFE CRIME INVESTIGATOR, CONSERV CONGO: We have experienced an influx of expatriates, mainly from Southeast Eastern Asia and who demand to eat certain types of meat, such as turtles, snakes, primates.

KILEY: The U.N. estimates that some 5 million tons of wild meat are harvested every year from the Congo basin. But the most potent source of viruses are live animals. They carry the viruses and can infect when they're butchered or patted in private zoos. Live animals and bush meat are part of a multibillion dollar global trade that's a cause and a symptom of ecological disaster.

Combined with logging and industrial pressure, untold numbers of potential infections could be released, and now it seems as if nature has found a way to protect itself, that locked up in the armory of the forest, is a weapon against the planet's most deadly threat, humankind.

And if so, this abandoned palace of a long dead dictator isn't a relic of the past, it's a vision of what the planet looks like when mother earth fights back.

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BOLDUAN: And Sam Kiley joins me now. I have to say, Sam, it's both fascinating and a bit terrifying to see your investigation. I mean, when you talk to experts, is there anything that can be done to stop the threat of these new viruses?

KILEY (on camera): Well, yes, in short, there is, Kate. There is quite a lot of interesting work that's been done actually in the Amazon rainforest, particularly in Brazil before the bell scenario, government took over, that was looking at ways of encouraging local people to far more effectively, do a lot less damage and farm in a more sympathetic way alongside the rain forests. But also at the same time, one has to be cognizant that the rainforest is a major source of protein for people who would not otherwise have meat to eat.

There's nothing dirty or unclean about hunting bush meat. The problem is that when you add that to denuding rain forests, such as commercial logging, and one of the things are very worried about coming down the lines in the future, a lot of plans are being made in the Congo to perhaps cut down the rain forest and replace it with palm oil plantations. This would be catastrophic in an environmental sense, and also open up those reservoirs of many tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands, possibly more viruses that are locked up in that wilderness away from contact with human.

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