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Appeals Court Dismisses Gohmert's Suit Against Pence; Republican Senators Plan To Oppose Certification Of Biden's Win; L.A. County Reporting One COVID-19 Death Every 10 Minutes; How COVID-19 Can Prepare Us For The Next Pandemic; India Approves Two Vaccines For Emergency Use; Florida's County-Led Vaccine Plan Causes Confusion; U.S.-Iran Tensions One Year After Soleimani Killing; Life Gradually Returns To Normal In Wuhan. Aired 2-3a ET

Aired January 03, 2021 - 02:00   ET

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

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PAULA NEWTON, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): A routine congressional ritual threatens to blow up into a major political spectacle this week as a dozen Senate Republicans attempt to defy the will of American voters.

Meantime, 3 million Georgians have already cast ballots in a runoff that will shape the balance of power in the Senate with two days to the election President Trump is now casting doubt on the process.

And the coronavirus has now killed 350,000 Americans. Surging in California so bad now it's pushing hospitals to what one official calls the brink of disaster.

Hello and a warm welcome to our viewers here in the United States and right around the world. I'm Paula Newton and this is CNN NEWSROOM.

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NEWTON: So two months after Americans picked Joe Biden for president, more Republican lawmakers are falling in line behind an angry Donald Trump.

In an extraordinary show of disregard for the democratic process, at least a dozen sitting and incoming senators say they will object to the certification of the Electoral College votes to confirm Biden as the next president.

The move, though purely symbolic, now there has been no credible evidence to suggest widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. The courts are still dismissing cases. On Saturday an appeals court dismissed a lawsuit filed by representative Louie Gohmert and other Republicans after a federal court threw it out just the day before.

They were seeking to force, if you can believe this, vice president Mike Pence to interfere in Wednesday's electoral vote count. But courts, elected leaders, various officials and, of course, the American people have spoken. Biden will be sworn in as president on January 20th.

Still, you can guarantee this, expect the leadup to Inauguration Day to be chaotic. CNN's Boris Sanchez has more now from the White House.

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President Trump getting welcome news on Saturday after confirmation that a least a dozen Republican senators are planning to object to the results of the Electoral College when they're certified by Congress on January 6th.

The president had been campaigning for this publicly for some time and now these dozen Republican senators led by Ted Cruz, are saying they want to essentially look at the allegations of widespread election fraud, even though the president and his team have not been able to provide any.

Here's a portion of the statement from Cruz and crew.

They write, quote, "We are not naive. We fully expect most if not all Democrats and perhaps more than a few Republicans to vote otherwise. But support of election integrity should not be a partisan issue."

We should point out those allegations of widespread fraud are coming from the president and the White House. And they've not been able to corroborate any of these allegations of widespread fraud.

These lawmakers are calling for a 10-day audit to exhaustively review the results from multiple states. Clearly their effort is not going to work and they acknowledged that they simply don't have the numbers, especially in the House of Representatives.

Other Republicans are coming out against this effort, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, one of those states where there's a lot of debate over the results of the election, at least on the Republican side.

Here's a portion of a statement from Senator Toomey released on Saturday.

He writes, quote, "The evidence is overwhelming that Joe Biden won this election. His narrow victory in Pennsylvania is easily explained by the decline in suburban support for President Trump and the president's slightly smaller victory margins in most rural counties.

"I voted for President Trump and endorsed him for reelection. But on Wednesday, I intend to vigorously defend our form of government by opposing this effort to disenfranchise millions of voters in my state and others."

Now examining the motivation behind these 12 senators' objections, some of them are clearly trying to stake their ground for a potential 2024 run, including Senators Hawley and Cruz.

Others may simply be doing this for survival. There is serious concern among Republicans about coming out against President Trump on the issue of an objection on January 6th. Just look at the way he went after John Thune, the number two Republican senator, calling for the senator from South Dakota to be primaried over his dismissal of Hawley's objection.

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SANCHEZ: The president clearly still holds the reins of the Republican Party and he is exercising that power in a way where establishment Republicans are clearly bending to his will -- Boris Sanchez, CNN, the White House.

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NEWTON: Georgia Republican senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler are no doubt hoping that their blind loyalty to the president pays off. Things are building to a fever pitch as you can imagine right here in Georgia ahead of Tuesday's runoff election that will determine the balance of power in the Senate.

Texas senator Ted Cruz campaigned with Loeffler on Saturday. He referred to the president's bogus claim that Democrats stole the November election.

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SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): Look, are they going to try to steal it?

I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to win by a bigger margin, ain't nobody going to steal it.

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NEWTON: Meantime, Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who has been on the receiving end of the president's wrath since November, has been trying to make it clear that, look, there has been no widespread voter fraud in the state.

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BRAD RAFFENSPERGER (R-GA), STATE SECRETARY: We just have to accept the facts of what happened in the November election. I'm not happy with it and many conservatives aren't, either. But at the end of the day, we want to make sure that we have a fair honest election coming up Tuesday.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

RAFFENSPERGER: And that's what we fight for.

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NEWTON: So more than 3 million early votes have already been cast in Georgia and Monday brings out the big political guns, President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris will head to Georgia to support Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, while president Trump and vice president Pence will stump for Loeffler and Perdue. After Georgia went blue, the Republican Party became keenly aware of

how important it is to turn out that Trump base in the Georgia Senate runoff. The president now seeding doubt about election results. The two Georgia GOP candidates will have their work cut out for them. CNN's Kyung Lah has the report.

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KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR U.S. CORRESPONDENT: Senator Kelly Loeffler is one of the three candidates crisscrossing the state days ahead of Georgia's Senate runoff elections. Three out of the four candidates are out campaigning. Senator David Perdue, one of the Republican incumbents, is not out on the trail. He's campaigning from his home, holding virtual events, after coming into contact with a COVID positive person on the campaign trail.

But from his home and the candidates on the trail, they're all focusing on Tuesday's turnout.

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SEN. DAVID PERDUE (R-GA): The energy level is exactly where it was in November, when the polls had me down 5 points. We won by 2. As a matter of fact, 52.5 percent of Georgians rejected Jon Ossoff and his Democratic liberal agenda in November.

Same thing happened in 2014. I don't put a lot of stock in polls. I look at this early voting and I'm very confident, with the president coming Monday night, the vice president coming Monday, and what we're doing with our team over the next three days.

JON OSSOFF (D-GA), U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: After 4 years of hatred and racism and division and bigotry, Georgia is going to make a statement of love and decency and compassion and unity, because that is what Georgia stands for.

SEN. KELLY LOEFFLER (R-IL): The very fabric of this country will be shred apart. The American dream will be impossible and our country will be unrecognizable. So we have to hold the line here in. Georgia

RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA), U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: Because my mama said, it's not what they call you, it's what you answer to. And in just a few days, she can call me Senator Raphael Warnock.

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LAH: Now Republicans feeling the pressure after 3 million people voted early in Georgia. That is the early vote ahead of Tuesday's election. Republicans have to turn out more of the people on Election Day.

But they're facing some headwinds. President Trump has been increasingly focused on January 6th, not January 5th. He's been tweeting that Tuesday's election is illegal and invalid.

The president is scheduled to be in the state of Georgia, supporting those two Republican senators on Monday, the day ahead of the election. And Republicans are wondering exactly what he is going to say -- Kyung Lah, CNN, Peachtree City, Georgia.

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NEWTON: Nathan Gonzales is the editor of "Inside Elections" and he joins me from Washington, D.C. He is also the elections analyst for CQ Roll Call.

You called it, saying this is going to be a historic week to start 2021 on Capitol Hill and in Washington. Set the stage for us.

How peculiar and historic are these events going to be?

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NATHAN GONZALES, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Before we get to Tuesday's races in Georgia and later with the Electoral College ratification, we have Sunday, which is the swearing-in of a new Congress, a very narrow House majority. There's going to be a vote for the Speaker of the House, which I expect Nancy Pelosi to win again but I think it'll be close, based on the closeness of the two parties after these election results.

So it's quite a way to kick things off. By the time we get to the Electoral College ratification, it's going to be historic, one way or the other. In the end, Joe Biden is going to be sworn in as President of the United States on January 20th. This letter by these Republican senators, I don't see how it's going to work.

Fundamentally, when each state is going to -- each state's electoral votes are going to be submitted to Congress. And as long as there are members of the House and the Senate that agree to object, then they will go. There'll be up to a two-hour debate on each state. But then the House and the Senate are going to vote.

Democrats have the majority in the House, Republicans have a narrow majority in the Senate. But there are multiple senators who have said they are going to confirm the certified results. So all of this in the letter I just don't see, I think it's a lot of gamesmanship or just trying to put themselves in position for the future.

NEWTON: To that end though, can you tell me how much of an impact that this will have, even if there's a debate on the floor, does it not give an opportunity for those unfounded claims by President Trump to be front and center, as if somehow, in the middle of the Senate floor, someone might be legitimately trying to claim that Biden stole the election, which everybody, legitimate or otherwise in every state, says he did not?

GONZALES: Sure, I think that that will happen during the debate on the floor. I'm not sure as many people are going to be watching the floor debate as have listened to the president for months.

He has sown the seeds of distrust in the electoral process. I think that is why -- I find it ironic that, in the senators' letter, they point to polling that shows people distrust the process. Now first of, all Republicans are the ones that are saying we should

ignore all the polls anyway and this is one of their fundamental things. But it's going to come down to specific votes by the House and the Senate after the debate is. Over and Republicans who want to overturn the certified election results just don't have the votes to do it.

NEWTON: And yet they will get that platform to carry this on.

Now Georgia on that platform is becoming problematic because it's as if Donald Trump coming here to do the rally just before Tuesday's election, it's like he's talking out of both sides of his mouth when he is here.

In terms of how any of this will impact Georgia, will it all hinge on turnout, do you think?

And how effective do you think either side will be in getting that turnout?

GONZALES: I think it's a cliche to say that it all comes down to turnout but I think it is true. I'm not sure how many people are being persuaded and people who voted for Republican senators in November are switching or vice versa. I think it does come down to turnout.

Early voting has shown the turnout is high and the key is how many Republicans come to turn out to vote on Tuesday. Democrats have the advantage; it looks like in early voting but Republicans could overcome that on Tuesday.

I think we have forgotten because of this narrative that Republicans did so well in the 2020 elections, even though the president lost, that control of the Senate is on the, line this is not a guarantee.

What we were talking about earlier with the Electoral College, in these Senate races, are tied together because actually Georgia senator David Perdue's term ends. And he won't be sworn in. The Tuesday election won't be ratified and certified enough for him to have a vote on January 6th when the Electoral College approval comes up. So these are all tied together. But it's going to be a wild week.

NEWTON: Absolutely. Election Night in America on Tuesday, literally, the fight for the Senate on the line, here in Georgia on Tuesday. Nathan Gonzales, thank you, we will watch it all with you.

GONZALES: Thank you so much.

NEWTON: Still ahead, the hardest hit state in the hardest hit country as some of California's hospitals are getting much needed help from the military in the battle against COVID-19.

And one of the patients fighting the virus in a California hospital at this hour, a CNN legend. Details on Larry King's battle ahead.

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NEWTON: A short time ago, the U.S. crossed another morbid pandemic threshold, more than 350,000 COVID-19 deaths since the pandemic began. That's according to data from Johns Hopkins University. On Saturday the country reported almost 2,400 deaths.

Of course, the health care system is feeling the pressure. The number of people in hospitals battling the virus was more than 100,000 from the 32nd straight day.

Now Saturday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported about 4.2 million Americans have received the first dose vaccine, although more than 13 million doses have been distributed throughout the country.

And no state is feeling the pain more than California. More than 53,000 new infections reported Saturday and 386,000 deaths. Health officials in Los Angeles County say that the virus is claiming a life every 10 minutes.

California's hospitals are struggling to keep up with the influx of patients. The health care system is said to be on the brink of catastrophe. The military is stepping in to help. CNN's Paul Vercammen is in Los Angeles.

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PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The COVID-19 tsunami in California is stretching resources so thin that the Army Corps of Engineers has now jumped into the fight here in Los Angeles, serving some seven hospitals to improve the oxygen supply line to those COVID patients, who are gasping for breath.

Here's what they are seeing at these hospitals.

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COL. JULIE BALTEN, U.S. ARMY CORPS: We went to one hospital and they had two tents outside and one of the tents -- one of the tents they were seeing COVID patients. And it is just -- they were tied into their mechanical systems. And so that's just an additional strain.

So we're trying to assess how we can reduce the strain on their facilities and their mechanical spaces and O2, oxygen distribution as well.

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VERCAMMEN: The Army Corps also serving White Memorial Hospital in Boyle Heights, where they now have 180 COVID patients. And the hospital members here, the head of the ER, celebrating the arrival of the Army Corps of Engineers.

DR. STEPHEN LIU, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN: That's exactly right. These folks just can't get enough oxygenation into their blood, into their bodies. And that's what makes it so hard. These patients need so much oxygen and there are so many patients.

And so the two taken together, it's really taxing the system. These oxygen lines can only carry so many liters per minute and we're approaching the upper limits of those.

VERCAMMEN: The Army Corps of Engineers supporting this hospital, as it is with other hospitals in Los Angeles and here at White Memorial, we're also seeing members of the National Guard helping to treat this influx, this unending influx of patients -- reporting from Los Angeles, I'm Paul Vercammen, now back to you.

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NEWTON: Dr. Stanley Perlman is a professor of microbiology and immunology at the University of Iowa. He joins me now from Iowa City.

What a year it has been, especially for someone like you, one of the leading experts on coronavirus, of about only a dozen people in the world.

What has surprised you about how this virus has behaved in the last year?

DR. STANLEY PERLMAN, PROFESSOR OF MICROBIOLOGY AND IMMUNOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF IOWA: Well, I certainly the biggest surprise to me is how contagious it is. It's unlike the previous coronaviruses that caused severe disease in people. This one really transmitted from person to person. I think that one single thing is the surprise and that has made this into such an awful pandemic.

NEWTON: And now to the new variant, there's one in South Africa, obviously the one in the U.K. Some people seem to be downplaying it.

Yet if it makes this virus more transmissible, what is your prediction about the effect it can have on the pandemic?

PERLMAN: This is a difficult question because if you have two people who are infected with it and everything is exactly the same, so far from what we know, this virus seems to spread better. I have to say, a lot of this is done by modeling so we're not 100 percent sure of that either, even though that's considered by a lot of experts to be the case.

So -- but everything has to be equal. So if you take two people, one has the variant virus and one has the original virus but one of them is wearing a mask and the other isn't, any contagion is blocked.

So even if the person has the more transmissible variant, it'll be easy to stop it if the person is social distancing and wearing a mask. So it's only more transmissible when everything else is equal, including human behavior.

NEWTON: But that brings us to human behavior right?

We have already seen what's happening in the U.K., arguably it's happening in the United States, with or without the variants. You can see the cases today already spiking. I try and explain to people, this is not a medical issue, it's a math issue.

If you start to do the math on some of these cases, where do you think we could find ourselves in 2-3 weeks post holidays?

PERLMAN: The issue there is the keyword you just said, post holiday. So if people didn't take precautions during the holiday because they relaxed and were with their family and if we get more cases -- and again, everything else being equal, if there are more cases and this is more transmissible, then there will be even more cases.

But there would be more cases anyway because of the lack of following the rules, of prudence in terms of large gatherings. So it's not a one-on-one correlation here. If people wore masks, the risks would go way down.

NEWTON: Dr. Fauci had predicted this in the last few years, that this would happen. Perhaps you predicted it as well in terms of the global pandemic.

How do we prevent the next one?

Have we learned a lot of lessons from this one in order to contain the next one?

PERLMAN: Well, one can only hope so.

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PERLMAN: First of all we have, learned that some countries did a better job than the U.S. in maintaining and controlling the infection, whether be Korea or Japan. When the infections hit those countries, they were much better about doing contact tracing, both from previous contacts of that person and who that person is in contact with now.

So we know that. We know that you need to be ready to have much better testing. We know that you need to have these protective gears at high enough levels so that health care workers and others can get them as required.

So those are the kinds of things we learned and we've actually learned a lot about other things as well. We've learned from vaccines, protocols and methods to develop vaccines quickly, assuming that we have certain information about the virus.

So I think we have learned a lot and preparedness is the big thing and being wary of quick fixes. These are the things, you look at what New Zealand did particularly and a few countries like that. They were on top of it from the beginning, because they said this is a big problem, it's serious and we have to figure out where the infection is coming from, where it's going, to and we have to stop transmission.

NEWTON: I certainly hope given all the tragedy that so many people have suffered through in the last year that those lessons will be learned. Dr. Stanley Perlman, thank you so much.

PERLMAN: Thank you.

NEWTON: Now sadly one of the 20,000 plus people in California hospitals at this hour battling COVID this year is Larry King. The former CNN host has been at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for more than a week now according to a source close to the family. He's 87 years old. We're learning a few more details about his situation. CNN's Brian Stelter has more for us.

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BRIAN STELTER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Larry King, a giant of broadcasting, is the latest high-profile individual to come down with the coronavirus and require hospitalization.

King is 87 years old; he has been at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles for more than a week, according to a source close to his family. Due to COVID-19 protocols, his sons have not been able to visit him in the hospital. King is in isolation, like so many others, who are struggling with COVID-19 at this time.

Right now, we know that in the United States about 125,000 Americans are hospitalized. That was the figure on Friday; just a slightly lower figure on Saturday, as coronavirus continues to challenge, in some cases, overwhelm the hospital system in areas like Los Angeles.

King is a television mainstay and a CNN legend. His program, "LARRY KING LIVE," aired here on CNN for 25 years and he remained active in his days and weeks and years after CNN. He hosted a program for Ora TV as recently as November, covering the 2020 election.

Of course, he is an expert at telling other people's stories. Right now his own story is in the news. Hopefully, soon he will be able to recover and tell his own experience, share his own story about having to fight off this nasty virus -- Brian Stelter, CNN, New York.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: Coming up on CNN NEWSROOM. Americans desperate to get the coronavirus vaccine are waiting in long lines and yet there is no guarantee of delivery. That's next.

And Israel is in fact leading the way with coronavirus vaccinations with more than 10 percent of the entire country already getting the first dose of the Pfizer BioNTech shots. The reasons why next.

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NEWTON: And welcome back. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Paula Newton.

India has just formally approved emergency use of two coronavirus vaccines, the Oxford AstraZeneca and the Covaxin. The country has more than 10 million coronavirus cases and, that's only second to the United States. On Saturday, India conducted a national drill ahead of mass vaccinations.

Authorities are hoping to vaccinate 300 million people. Johns Hopkins University says more than 13 million vaccines have been distributed across the United States but only 4.2 million have been administered to people.

And two and half weeks after the first dose was given, the slow rollout and limited supply mean it is a scramble to get in line to get a shot. These people you see there in front of Houston's first public vaccine COVID clinic. Saturday was its first day open, and it reached capacity in late afternoon.

Meantime the state of Florida has its own approach to distributing vaccines and it's causing more confusion. Dianne Gallagher has more.

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DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: As of Saturday, just over 4.2 million Americans have received the first dose of one of the approved COVID-19 vaccines, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

Now that is out of the more than 13 million that have already been distributed across the country. Therein lies an illustration of the problem the United States seems to be having, actually getting those shots into people's arms.

Now here in the state of Florida, the governor decided not to adhere to the recommendations of the CDC when it comes to who got that next phase of vaccines. Initially of course, it's the health care workers and those in the long term care facilities but the CDC says that Americans over the age of 75 and front line essential workers should be getting them next.

In the state of Florida, the governor decided anybody over the age of 65 will get the vaccine. And since making that decision, we have seeing long lines in the state of Florida and really a lot of confusion.

Each county within the state is doing something different. Some of them are administrating vaccines to those over the age of 65 on a first-come, first-served basis. We saw elderly people literally camping out overnight for a shot at, well, getting the shot.

Other counties were deciding to use appointments and they saw their phone lines and their websites crash from so much interest. Now we have talked to different people who have attempted to get the vaccine. [02:35:00]

GALLAGHER: They say that the confusion is discouraging but, more than anything, they want that protection. So they are going to keep trying until they get it. But take the county I'm in, Lake County, they ran out of vaccines today. They're currently waiting for another shipment before they will be able to be continue vaccinating people who are over the age of 65 here in Florida -- Dianne Gallagher, CNN, Lake County, Florida.

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NEWTON: Israel's health minister says there could be more restrictions to come since new COVID-19 case numbers are at their highest level in nearly three months now. That's even though Israel has one of the most impressive vaccination programs out there. Elliott Gotkine explains why.

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ELLIOTT GOTKINE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Just two weeks in and Israel has already administered vaccines to more than 1 million people. This out of a population of 9 million. There are three main reasons.

First and foremost, health care is universal, it's cheap and the HMOs know how to reach out to their members and to pluck out at risk groups to prioritize. And it's also set up for big events such as this vaccination campaign.

Second is politics. It's in the government's interest to vaccinate people as quickly as possible, not least because there are elections coming up in March.

And finally is geography. This is a small country. The population is pretty centralized. So logistically, it's much easier to vaccinate people here than in a country like the United States -- Elliott Gotkine, CNN, Tel Aviv.

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NEWTON: The U.K. is adding a new coronavirus vaccine to its arsenal. Starting Monday, the country will be ready to administer those first doses of the AstraZeneca Oxford vaccine. Phil Black has more.

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PHIL BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The British prime minister has a reputation for prematurely predicting an imminent return to normal life. His latest forecast:

BORIS JOHNSON, U.K. PRIME MINISTER: April the 5th, Easter, we really are confident that things will be very, very much better.

BLACK (voice-over): During one of the darkest moments of the pandemic, Johnson and his government are telling the British people, it will be behind us by spring. Could he be right this time?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Maybe. It's about logistics more than anything.

BLACK (voice-over): The government's optimism is fueled by this vaccine.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. So I will need a scratch.

BLACK (voice-over): Developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, it's the most low-maintenance vaccine option so far because it doesn't need ultracold storage. And the British government got in early, speeding up the regulators' scrutiny and securing supply.

One hundred million doses are coming plus another 30 million doses of the vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech. Together, it's more than enough to protect every British adult.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The U.K. government has made a lot of mistakes in this outbreak. But the thing it's done really well has been the vaccine development.

BLACK (voice-over): Public health experts say the U.K. has another big advantage for pulling off the next phase of the plan, which involves getting the vaccine to around a third of the population, including everyone over 50 and everyone at greater risk due to an underlying condition.

LINDA BAULD, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH: We have a National Health Service that is funded through general taxation and is highly integrated in a way that is not the case in so many other countries.

BLACK: That's a structural institutional advantage that other countries don't have.

BAULD: That's correct. Many other countries, particularly larger, more complex countries, where health systems, for example, we have multiple partners, insurance companies or many more private providers, when you have a system like that, it's much more complex to deliver at scale and nationally batimo load (ph).

BLACK (voice-over): But nationalized health care hasn't prevented the U.K. from recording one of the highest numbers of deaths in the world.

BLACK: Britain's track record through the pandemic also shows that it does not guarantee success in handling a complex operations.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, quite. Quite. I'm slightly more confident in their ability to do this than their ability to do this than other big parts of this pandemic simply because it's been that they have been pushing.

BLACK: So there are good reasons why the U.K. finds itself in a hopeful place. And we will see needles plunging into arms relatively quickly. But to meet that Easter deadline and effectively end the threat of the pandemic in this country, that will take a medical logistics operation unlike anything seen here before -- Phil Black, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: Vigils mark the one-year anniversary of Qasem Soleimani's death as tensions ratchet up between the U.S. and Iran.

Is it just saber rattling or is the threat real?

We'll have details next.

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NEWTON: A candlelight vigil has been held at the site of the U.S. drone strike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani one year ago today. He was the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Quds Force. He was killed while traveling in a convoy in Baghdad.

U.S. President Elect Joe Biden hopes to engage with Iran when he takes an office but, as Arwa Damon reports, there's a lot of unease about what may happen in the final days of the Trump administration.

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ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There are commemorations underway of Baghdad's airport road at the exact location where the U.S. strike hit the vehicle hit, carrying top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, killing him alongside a key Iraqi paramilitary leader.

Since then, tensions between the U.S. and Iran have only been escalating, with some U.S. officials saying the threat being posed by Iran is the most significant since Soleimani's killing.

And they're pointing to intelligence saying that Iran has been moving short-range ballistic missiles into Iraq.

But this is where it gets confusing. Other senior U.S. officials say that there is no actual evidence to corroborate this claim of a greater threat.

Either way, President Trump is not shying from warning Iran that, if one American is killed, he would be holding Iran responsible. There still continues to be, on a fairly regular basis, mortars and rockets that fall inside the heavily fortified green zone.

On December 21st, a number of them landing inside the U.S. embassy compound itself. All of this is leading to growing concerns across the region, that the situation could escalate even further, that President Trump could do something that would potentially be quite destabilizing and devastating, not just for the region's stability but specifically for the stability in Iraq.

[02:45:00]

DAMON: This is a country that has, for a long time, emerged as a proxy battlefield between what's meant to be its ally, the United States, and its neighbor, Iran -- Arwa Damon, CNN, Istanbul.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NEWTON: Coming up for us, Wuhan, China, is getting back to normal after the coronavirus pandemic threw the city into the international spotlight. We will talk about that coming up.

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NEWTON: Officials in Tokyo and surrounding areas are calling for more drastic measures to fight a new surge of COVID-19 cases. They're asking the Japanese government to declare a state of emergency. Local officials say infection rates are so high that the health care system is now on the verge of a crisis.

Now Tokyo confirmed more than 800 new cases on Saturday after reaching an all-time high of more than 1,300 on Thursday.

Just over a year ago, the world's focus zeroed in on the city of Wuhan, China, where an outbreak of a mysterious illness was spreading. One year later, there is still so much we do not know about the coronavirus.

[02:50:00]

NEWTON: But the people of Wuhan have persevered after enduring months of sickness, lockdowns and, of course, the stigma of being the location where many believe the virus began.

Wuhan is gradually returning to normal with no recorded cases of community transmission since May. Businesses now trying to rebound, people are starting to enjoy mixing together again at social events. But questions, of course, remain. The World Health Organization is set to visit the city this month.

They will be asking why did the virus take hold here and what could be done to make sure it does not happen again.

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NEWTON: Yuli Yang is a former resident of Wuhan and the founder of the Go Wuhan Campaign. She previously worked for a number of media organizations, including right here at CNN. She joins me now from Singapore.

It goes without saying, it is great to see you. I understand many of your family members still live in Wuhan. Kind of just describe what it is like there now. We've seen some of the pictures.

But what's it like for your family a year on?

YULI YANG, FOUNDER, GO WUHAN CAMPAIGN: Thank you, Paula. I know that, as the world is still struggling, in your previous reporting as mentioned on this virus, especially with the new strains, it is hard to imagine that is true, that life is basically back to normal now in Wuhan, with my friends and family and the rest of Wuhan.

People have been back to work for months now, kids are back to school, traffic is back on the streets. Obviously, in this new normal, we have masks, we have temperature checks everywhere, we have to scan QR codes for contact tracing purposes.

But there is this real sense of safety and normalcy in Wuhan. Of course, among family and friends, people still pay extremely close attention to any news that is virus related, especially domestic news. And if there is any important stories, people share those quickly through the social media, like WeChat apps, to their friends.

There is especially close attention put on the elderly, wanting to make sure they're nowhere close to any danger.

NEWTON: Yes, I can only imagine having gone through what the city went through, that the community vigilance is quite important. Yuli, I remember seeing the first pictures out of Wuhan, thinking, wow, what a strict lockdown, how can they do that?

How can these people endure this?

And yet here we are now, the people at the time seemed to have so much fortitude given that they had no idea what they were facing, right?

It was back at the beginning when they did not know much about the virus.

I mean, how did they get through, it really?

YANG: I know, now thinking back, it really felt like those were some of the darkest days that I can remember for my own family and for my friends in Wuhan.

Really, thinking back at the beginning of the year, when Wuhan all of a sudden went into lockdown, it felt like time all of a sudden stood still. It felt like the city was under attack by this invisible attacker, the coronavirus. And we had very little knowledge of how exactly to protect ourselves fully from the virus.

And also we had zero idea about whether any of this is ever going to end. And that is really terrifying. And, for example, you would basically have no idea whether you would have enough food to eat at the beginning days.

Obviously, as the lockdown continued, there was a lot of volunteering, a lot of solutions that communities have come up with to make sure that people had supplies and food. But when it all began, it felt like endless darkness really.

NEWTON: Yes, just what you just described there is terrifying. You did start your campaign.

How much did the people of Wuhan need that kind of support?

YANG: Thank you so much for mentioning that. So at the beginning of this whole crisis, I'm sure you recall as well, there was quite a bit of racial-based hate and some attack instances as well because of the coronavirus.

And obviously, as we all know now, the virus kind of attacked all of us indiscriminately. We should not be attacking amongst ourselves; we should be giving compassion, support and care for people who are suffering from the virus.

That's why we started this #GoWuhan campaign, hoping people would support and be compassionate about the people in Wuhan. I am very grateful to say that is what we have received from across the world.

[02:55:00]

YANG: And that does make a difference to people, especially for their mental well-being, knowing they are not fighting this virus alone, even though they are under this very strict lockdown in their own homes.

But they know they are not only being the victims of hate and attacks. There are also people out there who are hoping that they will recover soon. That -- I am very grateful for all of the messages we have received through this campaign across the world. And I do want to say that that support is important for Wuhan at this time.

NEWTON: Such a great message of hope to end with. And really such an example, such optimism, looking at the pictures from Wuhan from New Year's as we did at the top, with everybody there celebrating in masks but still celebrating. Yuli, thanks so much for this, really appreciate it and it's really good to see. You

YANG: Thank you, Paula. It is great to see you, too.

NEWTON: Now the girl who many people considered to be the face of the climate change movement is celebrating a birthday. Greta Thunberg turns 18 today. Yes, she is an adult.

The fearless young activist has passionately led her generation in an effort to save the Earth from environmental disaster. She has pulled no punches in publicly shaming world leaders for their lack of action on global warming. So think about it, what would be the perfect gift for "Time's" 2019 Person of the Year?

Of course, it would be to save the planet. But here is what's interesting. There were some new headlights for her bicycle as well and I am relieved to hear that she is a normal teenager in that regard.

I'm Paula Newton. My colleague and friend, Robyn Curnow, will take over for me now. More CNN NEWSROOM in just a moment.