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Trump Signs COVID-19 Relief and Government Funding Bill; Millions in U.S. Lose Jobs, Struggle to Make Ends Meet; California Hospitals Rapidly Running out of Room; European Union Launches Mass Vaccination Program; U.K. Mulls Approval of Oxford/AstraZeneca Vaccine; Working from Home the New Norm. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired December 28, 2020 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN ANCHOR: And welcome back to all of you watching here in the United States, Canada and around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber, and you're watching CNN NEWSROOM.

Nearly one week after the COVID-19 relief bill was passed by Congress, U.S. President Donald Trump has finally put his signature on it. The president said he only approved the bill after getting the Senate to agree to considering increasing the amount of the stimulus check from 600 to $2,000. For those collecting jobless benefits, the relief package includes a $300 weekly federal boost through mid-March. But millions will likely not receive a payment for the final week of the year because of the delay in getting the bill signed.

Beau Doiron is a DJ who's currently unemployed and he joins me now from San Diego. Thanks so much for joining us. I imagined you'd be, you know, normally super busy this time of year. Give me a sense of how everything has changed with the pandemic and how bad things are right now.

BEAU DOIRON, UNEMPLOYED DJ: Yes, usually in December this is where DJ's or a lot from entertainment industry make most of their money. You know, we've got Christmas parties. Everybody is out. You know, we've got our big New Year's gig. So, this is usually the month where we all do pretty well.

And, you know, for me personally, I've had no income right now coming in for December. And you know, we basically a lot of us have to choose between doing the right thing right now and just staying in and not DJing in places that aren't safe.

BRUNHUBER: Yes, I mean on that I'm sure there are jobs you could have done, gigs you could have taken, but then I imagine, you know, your girlfriend comes home from work at the hospital where she's a nurse. I mean, that must change your perspective on the risks out there.

DOIRON: Yes, it's strained some friendships I've had. It's strained business relationships where there's been pressure to DJ certain events. And I'm just not going to do it, man, not going to do it. I need to be safe and I need to make sure I'm not going out there and exposing myself to somebody who's on the frontlines battling in the hospital every day. So, I need to make the right decisions with that.

BRUNHUBER: So, to make ends meet you were getting those, you know, COVID unemployment checks. They ran out this weekend because the president didn't sign the COVID relief bill. He's done that now, but it means you and others will miss out on a check or two at least. So, how do you feel now that it's been signed, and how do you feel that the president waited this long to sign it?

DOIRON: There's a lot of relief. It kind of feels like being in a -- where your mom and dad are divorced and they're fighting and they're trying to make each other look bad instead of actually taking care of the kid. And that's kind of how it seems with both sides on this.

So, it's nice that it's actually going through. I know some people's opinion are like, oh, you know, it's not enough, but for those of us who are running it of money, it's something, you know. It's more than nothing. So, we're really, really happy to be getting that.

So, it's really exciting to have some flow come back in for money because, I mean, there's only so much you can dip into your savings and then, you know, people are just running out of money.

BRUNHUBER: And finally, you know, what happens now? I mean, you know, eventually the checks will run out. How are you going to make ends meet? Are you able to make rent, how are you going to cope going forward?

DOIRON: Yes, I mean, I was working the election. So, that was really fun for me to be a part of that process. But obviously that's over now. So, you know, it's tough to try to find work with where I have to commit to -- you know, I DJ for sports teams. I have weddings that will be coming up when the time is right and safe.

So, it's something I don't want to switch my profession. I want to stay in this. So, you know, I'm open to work and to do jobs. It's trying to find the right one. You know, I'm trying to find something that makes sense.

BRUNHUBER: And that's safe.

DOIRON: Yes, absolutely. That's safe.

BRUNHUBER: Well, listen, we wish you test be of luck, and hopefully things will turn around sooner than later. Certainly, the vaccine will be the game changer. Beau Doiron, we really appreciate you coming in and talking to us.

DOIRON: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

[04:35:00]

BRUNHUBER: California is one of the places hardest hit by the coronavirus right now. The state is reporting some of the highest numbers of new daily cases in the U.S. Hospitals are filling up so quickly that in some places, medical services are spilling out into the parking lots. As Paul Vercammen reports, health officials are worried about running out of resources.

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PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Here in California, the blare of sirens here at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, 189 patients in the hospital with COVID-19. They've even set up surge tents to accommodate other patients with other problems and keep them away from the COVID- 19 patients.

In all, 20,000 COVID-19 patients in hospitals in California, and something of concern here, if there is a tidal wave of cases after New Year's Eve, top officials at this hospital say they may have to ration health care.

DR. KIMBERLY SHRINER, INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPECIALIST, HUNTINGTON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL: Indeed that's what we may have to do. That's really the ultimate triage. We have a limited number of ventilators. We have a limited number of ICU beds. We have a limited number of plastic tubing for oxygen tanks.

And so, a lot of those decisions, if we get to that point, we're not there yet, but if we did, we're going to have make some of those decisions. And again, that's a decision that, you know, no physician or nurse or anyone wants to ever have to make about somebody.

VERCAMMEN: They call that practice of deciding who gets what type of health care, they call it a scarce resource policy. And Dr. Shriner ought to know all about it. The infectious diseases expert also served in Africa in the fight against HIV.

Now they are just crossing their fingers and hoping that Californians pay attention to smart social distancing and don't get out of control by not wearing masks or by getting together for large gatherings during the New Year's holiday.

I'm Paul Vercammen reporting from Pasadena. Now back to you.

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BRUNHUBER: Dr. Robert Kim-Farley is a professor at UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and is the former director of Communicable Disease Control and Prevention at L.A. County Public Health. And he joins me now from L.A.

Doctor, thanks so much for being with us. Sadly, every time we speak, the situation where you are keeps getting worse. So, tell me what you're seeing now.

ROBERT KIM-FARLEY, PROFESSOR, UCLA FIELDING SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Thanks, Kim. And again, thanks for having me on the program. It's always good to be with you.

Yes, you know when we talked before, we talked about there were surges. Now I'm actually saying we have a viral tsunami on our hand here in California and Los Angeles.

BRUNHUBER: What do you mean by that?

KIM-FARLEY: Well, it just means that we characterize former things like waves or surges, and I think just the magnitude of the amount of disease that we are seeing really do need to have a better term which I think a tsunami probably conjures up in people's minds. Or alternatively, you know, we talked before about the idea that I thought -- first we're kind of like having a match book and throwing matches into the forest. And occasionally you have a little bit of a flare up in disease and COVID, for example, but now we really have a raging viral wildfire occurring here in California.

BRUNHUBER: I mean, those dramatic terms underscore the numbers that we're seeing, record upon record falling in terms of cases of hospitalizations, the number of beds that are available are shrinking practically to zero in some cases. So how might all of this affect the quality of care for those who actually need treatment?

KIM-FARLEY: Yes, well, when you use up your capacity of your hospital you have to move to what they call surge procedures or protocols, which means turning off elective surgeries. It means changing the staffing ratio of patients to nurses. It means maybe moving people out of an ICU bed sooner than you might otherwise have done. It means that you may not be able to move someone from your emergency department into your ICU bed, which then backs up the emergency department and the ambulances leading to that.

So, basically you just begin to compromise the quality of care. And previously, you'd sometimes handle an overstressed hospital by what we call mutual aid. You would be sending people to other hospitals or you would be asking for additional staff to come and help you. But when you have the situation occurring everywhere at the same time, you lose the ability to have that mutual aid, of others that maybe having more capacity coming over to help you. Because everyone is busy. Everyone has, you know, turned out all hands-on deck.

BRUNHUBER: I mean, this just emphasizes the paradox of Los Angeles and California writ large that despite all of the very strict restrictions, stay-at-home orders and so on, it's leading the country in terms of the cases and everything. And there's some evidence that people are ignoring these orders. We saw survey by the University of Southern California there found 30 percent of people had visited friends or relatives or had them over, which is prohibited. And that's just the people who admitted it.

[04:40:00]

And people I talk to always tell me, I'm just getting together with a few people. Obviously, a few is clearly better than many, but when it comes to, you know, family, people tend to let down their guard. They lower their masks and so on. So, are people underestimating the risk, even of small gatherings, even of getting together with family?

KIM-FARLEY: Kim, you're exactly right. I think all of us are surprised about this level of magnitude, of tsunami, as I mentioned. I think that what's happening, we have a mixture of things. We have basically a pandemic fatigue that has set in where people maybe aren't wearing masks when they should be. They're beginning to try to go out and see friends or have friends over.

And I think we have really amplifying events that have occurred with the back to back holiday seasons. We've had Halloween followed by Thanksgiving followed by now Hanukkah and Christmas and soon to be New Year's Eve.

And so, what's happening is that people are, for example, over the Christmas holiday, becoming infected. But then they go out to a party on New Year's or have people over to their house on New Year's, and that's exactly the time when they will be coming up with virus such that they could be then transmitting to others and they could be an asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic stage and not even know that they are indeed transmitting to loved ones and family. Some who may have pre- existing conditions for whom COVID could be really a death sentence.

BRUNHUBER: We'll leave it there. Dr. Robert Kim-Farley, we appreciate it as always.

KIM-FARLEY: A pleasure.

BRUNHUBER: The European Union has launched its vaccination program, aimed at giving shots to around 450 million people in the months to come. We're live in Madrid and London next. Stay with us.

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BRUNHUBER: The European Union's mass vaccination program is now underway.

[04:45:00]

The plan calls for the vaccination of some 450 million people across the block. Frontline medical workers and older citizens are the first in line to receive the doses. The rollout comes as governments race to contain the spread of a new COVID-19 variant that was first detected in the U.K.

Journalist Al Goodman joins us now from Madrid, Spain. So the elation at seeing the vaccine arrive I image has been a bit tempered by a delay.

AL GOODMAN, JOURNALIST: That's right, Kim. Already a delay on what was to be the second shipment of some 50,000 doses -- some 350,000 doses to Spain. This Monday, the Spanish health ministry saying that Pfizer of Spain told them that Pfizer of Belgium, the factory had a logistics problem loading and shipping these out to Spain and to seven other European countries. We're trying to get the identity of those seven countries, but there is a delay. It will start on Tuesday.

On Sunday, however, there was an optimistic note and about 10,000 doses across the country were issued including at this residence, senior care center where I am right now in Madrid where about 50 residents got the vaccination. We have just started to talk to some of these residents. An 87-year-old woman told us she had been a nurse during her life, and she said she's never in her life as a nurse had to give a vaccination as important as this one. She hopes this will be the last of these kinds of vaccinations to tamp down this coronavirus.

Now, the health minister speaking on Spanish radio this day, reiterated what he's been saying is that by the end of summer, the end of August, he expects, and authorities expect 60 to 70 percent of the Spaniards to be immunized that will really hold down coronavirus in this country, which has got nearly 50,000 deaths, more than 1.8 million cases has been one of the very hardest hit countries in Europe, and in the world. And the center of the problem has been in many cases at these senior care homes which didn't have enough supplies and the virus spread, not at this one so much, but others, so quickly during the hardest months last spring -- Kim.

BRUNHUBER: All right, thank you so much for that report from there and stay safe. Appreciate it, Al Goodman.

According to British media, a vaccine candidate may receive a green light from the MHRA, that's the British agency that regulates medicine. For more on that, let's bring in CNN's Salma Abdelaziz who's joining us from London. Salma, so great news that there is soon a new weapon in the fight as the enemy evolves.

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN REPORTER: That's right, Kim, in a matter of days, we are expecting the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine to be approved. It could be rolled out as early as January 4th. And of course the British government is very excited about this because this is the home grown vaccine. This is the one made right here in the U.K.

Now, there's been some controversy about the efficacy of this vaccine. Early trials show it to be about 70 percent effective in immunizing people against the virus, but the researchers say that they have a winning formula. So if you remember, there's a second dosage that has to be given. That winning formula, according to these scientists is that the second dose would be a half dose that could potentially increase the efficacy of it to up to 90 percent, putting it on par with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.

And that's not the only advantage, it's cheap, about the cost of your morning latte, 3 pounds and also does not need to be stored at those extra cold temperatures. A normal refrigeration will do. So a lot of advantages here, and it couldn't come soon enough. This country is of course battling with a spike in cases and most importantly is battling with a new variant of coronavirus that the authorities here say is more transmissible, it's not more deadly or immune to the vaccine. But again, because it is more transmissible, it's been blamed for this spread of cases here in London and in other infected areas.

So a lot of hopes pinned on this vaccine to be rolled out quickly, and effectively and soon. Again, as a way to fight off this new variant and to get a grip on the cases here -- Kim.

BRUNHUBER: Great news. All right, thank you so much, Salma Abdelaziz in London.

For much of the year many around the world have been working from home, and a great number of them hope that will continue even after the situation improves. We'll have the details next. Stay with us. [04:50:00]

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BRUNHUBER: Among the many things that changed in 2020 was of course the vast number of people working from home. With millions around the world settled into their new work environment for months, could this be the new normal? Anna Stewart takes a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ANNA STEWART, CNN REPORTER: This is the year, working home went mainstream right around the world. This was a how to work from home video that I made all the way back in March. I thought this might be the way of things for a couple of months. Wow, did I get that wrong?

As we reach the end of 2020, many of us haven't returned to the office. We're still on Zoom, Skype, Webex, Slack. While video conference fatigue has set in for some, others are happy with this new way of working. Twitter is one company that's embraced the change and is allowing some employees to choose to work from home permanently.

JENNIFER CHRISTIE, CHIEF HR OFFICER, TWITTER: We've had about over 80% of our employees working four or five days in the office, so pretty much full-time in the office and one very small percentage, single digits of people who are working full-time remote. And that's almost flipped. We've done these surveys, coming back out of it, we have in the single digits people who want to spend four or five days in the office and much more in terms of -- almost a third of our work force want to be actually full-time remote. Actually productivity has remained pretty steady, but people's perception is increasing as they figure this out.

[04:55:00]

STEWART: Productivity is critical. 90% of workers said that in the U.K. say they would like to continue working from home often or all the time. However, only 70% felt they were as productive or more so.

ALAN FELSTEAD, CARDIFF UNIVERSITY RESEARCH PROFESSOR: I think when we move into more hybrid forms of working that people do actually work a lot more at home than they used to be before the pandemic. So, it has ushered in a major change, I think, in the landscape in terms of how we work, where we work.

STEWART: The shift to remote has had a devastating impact on local economies. Cafes, bars and shops are reliant on office workers who may never go back to their offices from 9:00 to 5:00 five days a week. Companies could reduce their office space or give up expensive leases altogether.

KEN RAISBECK, CBRE, HEAD OF OCCUPIER CONSULTING: What we're seeing from many (INAUDIBLE) lines, are people choosing to work from home perhaps two, maybe three days a week. That still would be the requirement offers. But people will come into it for a different reason. STEWART: The great work-from-home experiment has sparked long term change in the way that we work. But it isn't for everyone, whether it's unsuitable home environments, noisy children or in my case, wayward pets, some of us will be hoping to get back to the office in 2021.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: Tennis great, Roger Federer will miss the first Australian open of his career, a tournament he has won six times. Organizers announced on Sunday that he would have to withdraw. Federer is still recovering from two knee surgeries. The Australian open, the first grand slam of the year will start in early February, delayed by three weeks due to the pandemic.

Well that wraps this hour of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Kim Brunhuber, "EARLY START" is up next.

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