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Trump Refuses To Sign COVID Relief Bill; Georgia's GOP Candidates In Tough Spot Over Stimulus; Investigators Say Nashville Blast Likely A Suicide Bombing; California Medical Professionals Working To Exhaustion; Some Nations Start Vaccinations Before E.U. Rollout; Tel Aviv Hospital Celebrates Arrival Of Vaccine; Black Doctor Dies After Alleging Racist Treatment. Aired 5-6a ET

Aired December 27, 2020 - 05:00   ET

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

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KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN HOST (voice-over): Americans are in limbo as President Trump refuses to sign the COVID-19 relief bill. It means unemployment benefits have lapsed for millions.

Major developments in the Christmas Day bombing in Nashville. Investigators now believe it may have been a suicide bombing.

And vaccines begin rolling out across the European nation. We're live across the continent with the latest.

Live, from CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta, welcome to all of you watching here, in the United States, Canada and around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber. This is CNN NEWSROOM.

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BRUNHUBER: Jobless benefits that 12 million struggling Americans have come to rely on are now expiring because of President Trump. The president has allowed the protections to lapse, rather than sign the latest COVID relief bill into law.

He is rejecting the bill his own team helped to craft, sending out tweets, doubling down on last-minute demands to more than triple payments to individual Americans.

Among those strenuously urging President Trump to reverse course is the man who is just weeks away from replacing him. President-Elect Joe Biden calls Mr. Trump's inaction an abdication of responsibility.

Funding to keep the government running is also tied up in the bill. To avoid a shutdown, it needs to be signed by Monday. And in less than a week, the nationwide moratorium on renter evictions ends. But with all that at stake, the president is continuing his holiday vacation in Florida. Jeremy Diamond is traveling with the president.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: President Trump on Saturday, only digging his heels in further on the objections to the coronavirus relief bill. The president insisting once again, on Saturday, he wants to see those stimulus checks to Americans tripled from $600 to $2,000.

Tweeting, "I simply want to get our great people $2,000 rather than the measly $600 that is now in the bill. Also, stop the billions of dollars in pork."

President Trump is saying here, all he wants is to increase these stimulus checks but if that was really the goal, the president might have spoken up before the legislation was passed.

Remember, the president only called the bill a disgrace and suggested he may not sign it or, perhaps, veto it, after Congress passed this legislation by an overwhelming bipartisan majority, a veto proof majority at that.

President Trump in the four days since he made that threat, hasn't been on the phone with congressional leadership. He's hasn't been meeting with advisors to find a way to salvage this relief.

Instead, we see the president at his Mar-a-lago resort, palling around with his friends, going out golfing as he did on Thursday and Friday. The president is doing this at a time when not only are key deadlines are coming up for hi to sign this legislation but also when millions of Americans are in need of that financial relief.

More than 20 million Americans currently unemployed and 12 million Americans losing their benefits this weekend if the president doesn't immediately sign this legislation.

The unemployment benefits, supplemental, provided by the federal government during this coronavirus pandemic. There are other key dates, also looming on Tuesday. The government will shut down amid a global pandemic, if the president doesn't sign this legislation into law.

Then, at the end of the, month in the year, on December 31st, the eviction moratoriums also expires. So critically needed relief here for Americans, who are struggling right now.

And the president could just sign this piece of legislation and that relief would quickly get dispersed. There is also concerns of vaccine distribution, with lots of vaccine distribution funding in this legislation as well.

That was one of the messages we heard from President-Elect Joe Biden on Saturday, warning that if the president doesn't sign this legislation, not only would he be hurting small businesses and American families but also, potentially, these very complex plans to distribute a coronavirus vaccine -- Jeremy Diamond, CNN, traveling with the president, West Palm Beach, Florida.

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BRUNHUBER: Natasha Lindstaedt is a professor of government at the University of Essex. She joins us now from Colchester, England, to talk about all these issues.

Thank you so much for being here. So the easy way, of course, is for the president to just sign this.

The hard way, let's say.

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BRUNHUBER: Is there a chance the president can move enough Republicans to increase the check to $2,000?

Democrats are on board.

NATASHA LINDSTAEDT, UNIVERSITY OF ESSEX: That's what the House Democrats had tried to do, which the Republicans in the House have rejected, to get the package up to $2,000 per person.

But the Republicans have rejected this, so this is why this is somewhat confusing. I don't understand what Trump's endgame is here, because he's definitely hurting the Republicans, because even his own spokesperson has said that they're going to be providing this, relief.

The secretary of treasury Stephen Mnuchin said this as well, this type of aid would be coming later in the week. Now he's thrown everything into disarray for the Republicans.

But it's not just the Republicans who are affected. It's very much something that hurts all Americans. And as you indicated, there are millions of Americans who were affected by this decision to not support this aid package.

So there is a possibility that the House will vote on this again. And they can get it up to $2,000 as Trump was hoping. But the other indication is that it was not just $2,000 that was needed but also that some of the aid was going to foreign aid and to "pork" as the report indicated. And these are some of the things that he had disagreed with.

BRUNHUBER: All of those things were things that his aides had negotiated with congressional Republicans and Democrats. So the fact that President Trump is only making these demands now, after the bill was passed and Congress left town, what does that suggest about where the president's attention was during the time his aides were working with Congress to craft this?

LINDSTAEDT: That's a great question I think this demonstrates that he is still focused on the fact that he has lost the election and he is trying to just get into some sort of scorched Earth policy. It's really difficult to understand his mindset.

But he is trying to destroy any kind of potential aid package by just not doing anything, you are right. The Republicans and the Democrats had finally come to agreement on something. All he needed to do was just sign it. This was a win-win situation.

But he is distracted. Maybe he is focused on other things, on trying to project this narrative that everything in Congress is corrupt and that the elections were corrupt. Maybe he doesn't want to take any part of it.

I think it's actually very detrimental to his own party, as I mentioned before. This will not help Republicans. And with the really important Senate race coming up in Georgia in January, I don't see how this is going to help those senators that are trying to beat a very close race the two Democratic challengers.

BRUNHUBER: Let's delve into that then. We have both of the Republican senators here, Perdue and Loeffler voted for the bill. Perdue had ads running yesterday that he delivered these billions of dollars in COVID relief, which, of course, hasn't happened yet.

Yesterday, Loeffler said she would be open to the idea of bigger checks but other things would have to be cut.

So now where does that leave them?

Will there be a cost to them in these races do you think?

LINDSTAEDT: That's the big question. Whether or not voters in Georgia will punish Loeffler and Perdue because of Trump because they are Republicans or whether or not they're just going to vote with their party or with the candidate they feel is best able to serve in the Senate. It's really difficult to tell.

Now in the big election in 2020, we saw that Republicans actually did better than Trump, even though Trump did win 74 million votes. The question that Republicans have to ask themselves is how much of a help Trump is to their party.

We're seeing rumblings of, should Republicans, who disagree with Trump, those who were part of The Lincoln Project, should there be a break away from Trumpism?

Which I find to be incredibly dangerous, because Trump is so unpredictable and self-centered. You just don't know what is going to do from one moment to the next.

So on paper, you have these aides saying we're going to agree this, we're going to support this thing, he does a 180 and he changes his mind. This is really damaging to Republicans.

As I already mentioned, in this Georgia Senate race, because they had come out and supported it, now they're really put into a corner as to what they're supposed to do.

Are they supposed to support Trump, is that going to alienate the pro Trump people in Georgia, or are they supposed to disagree with this?

So it makes it very difficult for the senators in the Georgia race.

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BRUNHUBER: Yes, very small tightrope to walk there. Natasha Lindstaedt, thank you so much for being on with us. Appreciate it.

LINDSTAEDT: Thanks for having me.

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BRUNHUBER: The Christmas morning explosion in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, appears to have been a suicide bombing by a lone individual. That's according to law enforcement sources with direct knowledge of the investigation.

The FBI says it isn't looking for more suspects, at this time. Investigators swarmed over a residence in suburban Nashville, on Saturday, in connection with the case. Earlier photos show a white recreational vehicle at that address that may have been the same one used in Friday's explosion.

At least three people were hurt in the massive blast. Dozens of nearby businesses were badly damaged and digital communications were disrupted for a time. For the latest on what we know, so far, here is CNN's Shimon Prokupecz.

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SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE PRODUCER: Authorities here in Nashville, continuing to try to figure out the motive behind the Christmas morning attack. One belief from authorities is that this was a suicide bombing.

But they don't know what led up to the events. They are exploring every theory at this moment, every motive, as they work back and identify the person and also trying to find out the motive.

What caused this person to come here and cause such a massive explosion?

For the last 48 hours, authorities have been going through every piece of evidence, collecting debris from a lot of the destruction. Authorities say some 40 buildings were damaged here. As we know, three people were injured.

But for now, for people here in Nashville, the one thing authorities say is that they should feel safe. Police are not looking for anyone in connection with this bombing and, at this point, they are just trying to get the streets reopened and, hopefully, continue to work this investigation to try and learn a motive -- Shimon Prokupecz, CNN, Nashville, Tennessee.

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BRUNHUBER: Authorities haven't yet released the identity of the alleged suicide bomber but there is little doubt they know exactly who he is. For that, here is CNN's Natasha Chen.

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NATASHA CHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Federal investigators have been at this property for most of Saturday and left in the early evening after hours of work. The FBI tell us that this was court authorized activity.

First, we saw a bomb technician team come and clear the property, making sure it was safety enter. Then, we saw an evidence team come in and spend hours going in and out of the house. This fence line behind, me surrounding a yard and we did see them go into the yard at a side door.

What we understand they were meticulously going through documenting and photographing, things inside of the house and we did see them take out bags of evidence. Neighbors were very perplexed to see this all going on.

They did tell me that they have seen an RV parked at this property. When we showed them images from Google Street View of this property in years past, where an RV was parked there, they did recognize that one. One neighbor said they saw it here over the summer.

Another neighbor saying, it has been parked here as recently as the last few weeks. The marking of that RV, similar to the one that was involved in the explosion downtown. A law enforcement source tells us, however, they can't be entirely sure because, of course, the one in the explosion was destroyed in the blast -- Natasha Chen, CNN, Antioch, Tennessee.

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BRUNHUBER: Steve Moore is a retired FBI supervisory special agent, also a CNN law enforcement contributor.

Steve, thank you so much for joining me. We know a bit more now than when we spoke yesterday.

What do you make of the new developments?

STEVE MOORE, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT CORRESPONDENT: It's just as bizarre as everything else we've heard. Right now, it looks like the FBI is fairly certain that the remains found in the van were the perpetrator. There is no one outstanding.

So now, motive becomes a real hard one. He is, apparently, at least as far as we know, leaving no manifesto, no list of grievances, no reason for this bomb. In that, way it kind of brings up the shooting in Las Vegas years ago.

BRUNHUBER: Yes. I covered that one extensively and it is still quite a mystery.

Take us through then, how they are trying to solve that?

I think we are seeing pictures of them searching his home and so on.

What exactly are they looking for and how can they crack that?

STEVE MOORE: They are going to be talking to anyone who knows, him anyone who has interacted with him in the past or as far back as they can go. They will also look at his electronics profile, his computers, his phones.

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STEVE MOORE: Anything that would show what he was looking, at what he was interested in and what he was doing with his money.

Was he buying things?

How did he get these explosives?

How did he get wire?

How did he set up this device?

What is going to be interesting for the FBI to find out is, when he began all of this planning, when the decision was made. And, as we saw in the shooting in Vegas, it was probably a year before that he started stockpiling weapons.

In this case, we see indications that, months ago, possibly, he had a plan to end his life and go forward with this. But they will want to start planning down to the day or a week and try to find out whether there was a trigger or a motivation for him to go that direction.

BRUNHUBER: Something like a job loss or a personal event in his life.

What about the location, then, in front of the AT&T transmission building?

What does that suggest to you?

STEVE MOORE: That is something that we are going to have to, again, dig into. As we talked yesterday, when someone is crazy enough to blow themselves up with a bomb of that size in a populated area of a city, then they are going to be just as unpredictable and crazy about the reasons for doing it, for doing it there, in fact.

You may find something as trivial as a cell phone disruption or a dispute over a cell phone may have caused a problem. I am hypothesizing here, obviously. Maybe one of the restaurants nearby, he was thrown out or has a problem with someone there.

You are going to have to all but write a biography on this guy if you are the case agent to try and find out what possibly motivated the location of the bomb and why he actually did it.

Unfortunately, as we learned in Las Vegas, sometimes, you just never have a concrete reason.

BRUNHUBER: Maybe helping, people are bringing in tips and so on. The authorities likened it to solving a giant jigsaw puzzle.

What are the challenges that authorities have when they need to sift through those hundreds of leads?

STEVE MOORE: Leads and people calling in with tips are a blessing and a curse because they are tremendous, tremendously valuable. The problem is, out of every hundred you get, maybe two or three are going to be those gold nuggets that you are looking for.

So part of the manpower issue is sifting through 98 to find the two that are important. So that creates a huge backlog.

And I can remember, after 9/11, the days right afterwards, we were measuring our number of leads and tips in feet, by stacked paper. Sometimes, it just gets that ridiculous.

BRUNHUBER: That is why authorities are pleading for patience here. Steve Moore, thank you so much for joining, us we appreciate it.

STEVE MOORE: Thank you for having me.

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BRUNHUBER: Even as two vaccines are rolling out in the U.S., coronavirus cases are soaring during the holidays. Just ahead, why December has tragically become the deadliest month so far in the pandemic.

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BRUNHUBER: Health experts in the U.S. are bracing for yet another surge in COVID-19 cases, similar to spikes following other holidays and that's the last thing this country needs right now. COVID-19 has claimed the lives of one out of every 1,000 Americans, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

With four days left in December, the month is the deadliest for the U.S. since the pandemic began. More than 63,000 people have died this month, bringing the total number of lives lost in the nation to almost 332,000.

But the vaccines are gradually getting into the arms of Americans. Officials say about 2 million doses have been administered across the country.

Now in California, health care workers are being pushed to the brink, as cases soar and hospitals run out of beds. CNN's Paul Vercammen is at a testing site, where workers say they are battling not only the virus but also stress and loss as well.

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PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The war against COVID-19 in California, being waged on two fronts. One in the hospital, with almost 19,000 people hospitalized, 4,000 of those patients, in intensive care units.

That means staffing ramped up, doctors and nurses being called in on their days off, working longer shifts and, literally, expanding the intensive care units, as well as the emergency rooms to accommodate the flood of COVID-19 patients.

Look behind, me testing, extremely important. They tell me here, you can talk all you want about vaccines but you have to keep testing. A daughters dating it had days (ph) where they have tested 11,000 people.

Unsung heroes of the pandemic, the people conducting the testing, on their feet, for lengthy hours, speaking to people in cars who may not have talked to someone for months, crawling those children sometimes, who break out in tears and, of course, comforting each other.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's not just about that one person, but it's families that are struggling and mourning and the pain it brings. We definitely have known people who have passed from this pandemic and it's heartbreaking.

We had a coworker who just lost her grandmother last week. A day to mourn and then, right back to work. We have a big task in front of us.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And we know we just got to keep on going strong right now.

VERCAMMEN: Daniel Lu (ph) and many of his coworkers, also fan out and go to other parts of Los Angeles County, underserved parts, where people may not be getting tested regularly like they should. Sometimes, it's as simple as they don't have transportation to get to a testing site -- reporting from Dodger Stadium, I'm Paul Vercammen, now back to you.

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BRUNHUBER: For more perspective on the COVID crisis, let's bring in Dr. Peter Drobac, a global health and infectious disease expert at the University of Oxford.

Thank you so much for joining us. I want to start with that terrifying statistic here in the U.S. One in 1,000 Americans have died of COVID- 19. Yet, as we speak, large families are traveling and gathering, with few restrictions. People are gathering together to party over the holidays. I can just imagine what New Year's Eve will be like. Are you surprised at the tolerance for risk, given that more and more of us are statistically likely to know someone who died from this disease?

DR. PETER DROBAC, GLOBAL HEALTH AND INFECTIOUS DISEASE EXPERT, OXFORD UNIVERSITY: Thank you for having me, Kim. I am surprised. We can all get numb to the numbers. But as you say, at this stage, so many of us have a friend or a loved one who has been victimized by this virus.

And it's really hard to fathom how, particularly with California right now, with ICUs literally out of capacity, with doctors and nurses near collapse and with the death count continuing to rise, that some are still minimizing the severity of this.

BRUNHUBER: The good news, the flip side, polls found that nearly 75 percent of Americans are now wearing masks when they leave their homes and the percentage of people who say that they will get the vaccine is rising. One poll had it up to 73 percent. I think.

Does that give you cause for optimism?

DROBAC: It's great news. Certainly something we hoped for, that many people who may have been on the fence with these vaccines that have been developed in record time, once we were able to see the scientific scrutiny and then actually see people out getting vaccines, getting jabs in their arms, that it really started to build more confidence.

The fact we've gone from maybe 50 percent of Americans to somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 percent, at least by some polls, saying they're willing to get vaccinated, is, a great sign, of course. Still plenty more work to do and a lot of vaccine misinformation out there that we need to continue to fight.

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BRUNHUBER: Coronavirus vaccinations are underway in the European Union. Health workers in Italy were the first to get the doses of the vaccine. We'll take you across Europe and get the latest. Stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: And welcome back to all of you here watching in the United States, Canada and around the world.

Since the coronavirus pandemic began, the world has seen more than 80 million infections and more than 1.7 million deaths. And the virus continues to spread.

Japan is set to implement a strict travel ban. Starting Monday, no foreign nationals will be allowed into the country. It comes after officials confirmed several cases of the new U.K. virus variant.

And China says it will start a new round of mass testing after confirming two new locally-transmitted cases on Friday. The program will test some 800,000 people in northeastern Beijing.

On a more hopeful note, vaccination programs are getting underway, today, in several European nations. So these here are pictures of the first health workers in Italy getting their shots.

France, Spain and several other countries are, also, getting their first inoculations. Slovakia and Hungary got a head start and began vaccinating as soon as their doses arrived on Saturday.

So we have reporters standing by, across Europe, to let us know how it's going. We have Cyril Vanier in Paris. Atika Shubert is in Spain and Barbie Nadeau is in Rome.

So let's start with you, Cyril. I understand the first folks were just vaccinated, is that right?

CYRIL VANIER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. The first patient was a geriatric patient in an area which was one of the worst affected areas during the first wave of the pandemic.

Now not huge numbers, today. Only a dozen or so people are being vaccinated, this morning. Another dozen or so, this afternoon, in two separate establishments in France.

But of course, it's -- this is just the beginning. And it's going to ramp up and up and up and up. And the first two months, the target is to vaccinate 1 million people, the oldest members of society and those who are the most susceptible to this virus.

And then, it rolls out, from here to the end of spring, to people who are retirement age, 65 and above. And after that, summer of 2021, it is expected to be made available to the wider adult population.

Of course, all of this can only happen if France actually gets the vaccines that have been preordered by the European Union. Right now, the Pfizer BioNTech jab is the only one that's been authorized here. It's very difficult to roll out because of all the cold chain implications.

And really, there is quite a lot of trepidation over the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is not authorized yet. But that one would be a lot, a lot simpler, Kim, to roll out because that one can be kept in a fridge.

BRUNHUBER: All right. Long road there.

So now, to Atika in Spain, where the vaccines roll out, just as they discovered that new U.K. variant there.

ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. There is some concern about the U.K. variant. On Saturday, the Madrid regional authority said they had detected four cases there. None of them, serious. But two of them had been travelers, recently, to the U.K.

There were, also, several more suspected cases but they have not been confirmed yet. Fortunately, it does seem to be isolated and confined, at the moment. But is something that authorities are keeping a close watch on.

In the meantime, the vaccination process has already started here in Spain. The first people to receive the vaccine were a 96-year-old resident at a nursing home in Guadalajara. She was the first to receive it.

And then, the next was a nursing care technician at the same residence. And this is really in line with Spain's plan to really focus on those most vulnerable, the elderly but also frontline medical, health and sanitation workers.

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SHUBERT: Now we are probably only going to see a few hundred, possible a thousand, people vaccinated today. But it should ramp up quickly, if the government's plan goes ahead.

And its plan is to get 350,000 doses a week for the next 12 weeks, ramping it up, it hopes, to at least 4.5 million doses. And the plan is to vaccinate more than 2.2 million people in the next few months. So it is a huge, logistical challenge. It is the quickest and biggest vaccine rollout the country has ever gone through.

BRUNHUBER: Ambitious plan there. Let's bring in Barbie, with the latest from Italy.

We started with those pictures from Italy. People getting their first vaccinations. I can imagine the relief a vaccine might bring after everything Italians have lived through this year.

BARBIE NADEAU, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's absolutely right. You know, this really sort of completes the circle here for so many people. You know, this is really where things started, in Europe, last March, when Italy went under this draconian lockdown.

Here we are in lockdown, again, over the Christmas holiday but there's so much more optimism because of the vaccine. Now five people were vaccinated at the infectious disease hospital behind me, this morning, two nurses, two doctors and a researcher. Those people, now, will be part of the team that vaccinates other people.

Italy, right now, only has 9,750 doses of the vaccine but they are hoping to get 450,000 a week, to start rolling out this vaccine across the country. This comes against the backdrop, of course, of Italy now having the highest death toll from the coronavirus in Europe right now. That's over 71,000 people.

And what's really telling, though, is that more than half of those died in the second wave of the -- of the pandemic, not in the first wave, when everybody was so focused on Italy. So it's not over yet. The vaccine is beginning. It's the hopeful optimism everybody's been looking for.

But there is still a long way to go before people can feel completely safe. Kim.

BRUNHUBER: All right. Great overview of the situation in Europe. Thank you, all of you, Barbie Nadeau in Rome, Atika in Spain and Cyril in France.

Well, Israelis are getting their first doses of the coronavirus vaccine. And it comes at a critical time. Israel is hours away from going into its third national lockdown. So we will take you live to Tel Aviv next. Stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: Israel is set to begin its third national lockdown just a few hours from now as the coronavirus spreads at a troubling rate. The government says the general shutdown goes into effect Sunday evening and will last for at least two weeks.

Schools will remain open for some grade levels but people will be required to stay within 1 kilometer of their home, with few exceptions, and gatherings are limited. Public transport and most workplaces, also, will cut their capacity to 50 percent.

It comes, even as Israel begins vaccinating health workers against the virus. So let's go to journalist Elliott Gotkine in Tel Aviv.

Elliott, I wonder what is the overriding emotion, despair because of lockdown?

Or hope that they are seeing vaccines in their hospitals?

ELLIOTT GOTKINE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There is a bit of resignation this is another lockdown but I think there's a bit of hope and there is some light at the end of the tunnel. The only difference between this lockdown and the last one, really, is that schools will remain open, with the exceptions of grades 5 to 10, who will revert to home schooling.

But other than that, it's pretty similar to the last time. And as you say, vaccinations began about a week ago. The health ministry's saying that almost 300,000 Israelis have been vaccinated, so far.

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GOTKINE (voice-over): It felt like a party. What the dancing doctors and health workers were celebrating was the start of Israel's COVID vaccination campaign. Among them, Dr. Adi Nimrod.

DR. ADI NIMROD, SOURASKY MEDICAL CENTER: It's a very happy day for me today and I think for all, all over the, world, it's a happy day. I hope this is the beginning of the end of the virus.

GOTKINE (voice-over): When CNN's Oren Liebermann visited Dr. Nimrod at the ICU hee in April, Israel was in the throes of its first COVID-19 wave. The death rate was low back, then, fewer than 200 but the battle against COVID was only just beginning.

NIMROD: The virus taught us to be modest, more humble and a lot of compassion for the situations of families. It is just a virus but not just a virus, it's something much bigger.

GOTKINE (voice-over): Bigger even than Dr. Nimrod may have feared. Since the pandemic struck this country, nearly 380,000 people have come down with COVID. More than 3,000 have died.

NIMROD: Sometimes I felt helpless against this virus. So I really, really pray that this nightmare, medical nightmare, would pass away.

GOTKINE (voice-over): Although cases are back here at more than 3,000 per, day Israelis will be hoping the vaccination campaign will help push those numbers down and that the countries and the world debut (ph) dance with this disease will soon be a thing of the past.

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GOTKINE: In these final hours of before we go into lockdown again, Israelis enjoying the beautiful winter weather and trying to shop before most stores close.

BRUNHUBER: Now, Elliott, I understand the prime minister put out a statement, saying that he wanted to get everyone vaccinated, basically, by the time of the election.

Is that right?

GOTKINE: Yes. He wasn't, obviously, quite so explicit. Netanyahu said he spoke with the heads of the pharmaceutical companies over the weekend. He said he told them that his target was 150,000 vaccinations every day and that the pharmaceutical companies say they think that's doable.

On that basis, once Israel hits that 150,000 rate, which Netanyahu says is a world record, which, if you do the math, given the population is about 9 million, another 30 days after that would enable the whole country to be -- to be vaccinated.

And a successful campaign like that would do wonders for Netanyahu's political fortunes. He's come in for a lot of criticism over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. And if he is successful and meets those targets before the elections in March, then that could do wonders for his prospects at the next election -- Kim.

BRUNHUBER: Yes, as well as the -- the health of the people as well. Thank you so much, Elliott Gotkine, in Tel Aviv. Appreciate it.

When Dr. Susan Moore contracted the coronavirus, her family says the hospital staff dismissed her complaints because she was Black.

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BRUNHUBER: Coming up, next. Why experts say Dr. Moore's death speaks to a broader issue of implicit racial bias in healthcare. Stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: An African American doctor in Indiana died from coronavirus weeks after accusing hospital staff of racist treatment. Dr. Susan Moore said hospital staff ignored her complaints of pain, difficulty breathing and requests for medication because she was Black, even though she was both a patient and a doctor herself.

Dr. Moore recorded this message from her hospital bed before her death last week, explaining that her doctor brushed off her concerns, claiming she wasn't even short of breath.

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DR. SUSAN MOORE, COVID-19 VICTIM: I put forward and I maintain, if I was white, I wouldn't have to go through that. I was in so much pain from my neck. My neck hurt so bad. I was crushed. They made me feel like I was a drug addict.

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SUSAN MOORE: And they knew I was a physician.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRUNHUBER: Dr. Moore leaves her elderly parents and her 19-year-old son, Henry Muhammed, who told "The New York Times," quote, "Nearly every time she went to the hospital, she had to advocate for herself, fight for something in some way, shape or form, just to get baseline, proper care."

In a statement, the president of the hospital called for an external review of the case. He defended the technical aspects of the treatment were received but conceded, quote, "that we may not have shown the level of compassion and respect we strive for in understanding what matters most to patients."

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: Joining me now is Dr. Brittani James, family medicine physician in Chicago and cofounder of the Institute for Anti-Racism in Medicine. Thank you so much for joining us, Doctor. Before we get to the case of

Dr. Moore, I want to put this in the context of what you see every day as a practitioner. You're a family physician on Chicago's South Side.

And you've written that, "Modern medicine, if unchallenged, will let Black people die. In fact it is perfectly designed to do so."

What did you mean by that?

DR. BRITTANI JAMES, FAMILY MEDICINE PHYSICIAN: When we talk about racism in medicine, it's easy to think about it as something historical, something that's not going on right now.

But as somebody who is trained in the medical system, who practices in it professionally and also a Black woman who has been a patient many times, I believe and many of us believe that racism is alive and well. And there is many ways we see that today.

BRUNHUBER: But the word "designed" implies more than just neglect or casual racism.

So what do you mean by that specifically?

JAMES: So we have to understand, since early days, medicine was segregated and not designed to benefit everyone equally. The reality is, medicine has a long history of racial segregation and with preferential treatment toward white Americans over Black and Brown Americans.

We have two different systems, really. One is geared toward straight white males and everyone else, women, children, and especially Black and Brown people were an afterthought in giving the quality of care that is given to white Americans. And we have to reckon with that.

BRUNHUBER: Some people are using the case of Dr. Moore, the doctor who complained she wasn't given medicine for her pain or drugs that might have helped save her life.

She said that treatment was because she was Black before she passed.

What was your reaction when you heard her story?

JAMES: My reaction was just devastation. She is -- we have so many similarities, both obviously Black women physicians. We trained at the same medical school, University of Michigan Medical School.

To know, even having an MD and these sort of credentials and privileges that come with the class of being a physician, even that wasn't enough to protect her from racism in the system. That's really jarring.

BRUNHUBER: Studies have shown Black patients, their pain isn't given the same attention as white patients.

JAMES: A 2016 study of medical students documented these pervasive understandings about Black bodies and Brown bodies being biologically different than white bodies. So things that Black people do experience less pain and things of that nature.

[05:45:00]

JAMES: We see that in our trainees and in our physicians that practice today, those sorts of racist belief systems lead to the outcomes we saw with Dr. Moore.

BRUNHUBER: This COVID-19 crisis seems to have revealed many of those tensions. You've written, for many of your patients, things like social distancing and working from home are privileges out of reach.

How has this exacerbated those existing race problems in the American health care system?

JAMES: We have to understand that, going into pandemic, Black and Brown communities were disproportionately poorer, structurally disadvantaged, having barriers to access to health care. Those things existed before the pandemic.

Now COVID-19 has hurt these communities even more so they are starting out behind and getting hit again. So the temptation is to say this is new and divorce this from the historical reality we knew existed before COVID.

But it is really important to understand.

[05:55:00]

JAMES: Those people already the most vulnerable are bearing the brunt of this pandemic more than others who have money to protect their health.

BRUNHUBER: Some are hoping the vaccine can counter some of that racial inequality. But access for communities of color, people in wealthy neighborhoods perhaps getting perhaps preferential treatment.

What should we do to make sure that vaccines are administered equitably?

JAMES: That's a great question. I think the big thing that we have to understand. We are talking about racism, not just a belief system but a structure of privilege that goes to people of lighter skin tones and a disadvantage to those with Black or darker skin tones.

If we are not addressing those structural forces that try to keep the Black and Brown communities most vulnerable, I don't think we can be successful. If it's a matter of changing attitudes and not changing policy, we can't make the changes we need to make.

BRUNHUBER: Such an important topic, really appreciate you coming on, Dr. Brittani James, really appreciate it.

JAMES: Of course.

(END VIDEOTAPE) BRUNHUBER: And with that, that wraps this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Kim Brunhuber. For viewers in the U.S. and Canada, "NEW DAY" is next. For international viewers, please, stay with us for "Eco Solutions."