Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Hospitals Hammered by Post-Holiday COVID-19 Surge; England's New Lockdown; Trump Repeats False Claims at Georgia Campaign Rally; Republicans Indifferent to Damning Trump Call; Tehran in Breach of Nuclear Pact; Mexico Offers Political Asylum to Julian Assange; California Records over 22,000 COVID-19 Hospitalizations; Austria Extends National Lockdown; Mexico's COVID-19 Czar Takes Beach Trip amid Infection Surge. Aired 2-3a ET
Aired January 05, 2021 - 02:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[02:00:00]
(MUSIC PLAYING)
JOHN VAUSE, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, you're watching CNN NEWSROOM. Thanks for staying with us. I'm John Vause.
Ahead of this third hour, Donald Trump campaigns in Georgia on the eve of an election runoff that will determine control of the U.S. Senate.
And no surprise, he says that phone call gangstering Georgia state election officials, "It was perfect."
Plus hospitals and health care workers in the U.S. hammered by a postholiday coronavirus surge. Paramedics in L.A. are told that, patients who have little chance of surviving, do not transport them to the hospital.
Also the U.K. enters its third national lockdown and England's gyms, schools, sporting venues, nonessential shops close for roughly 6 weeks. Prime Minister Boris Johnson blames the new variant of the virus, which is spreading quickly across the country.
Right now England is waking up to a third lockdown after reaching a new record in daily coronavirus cases. British papers hitting newsstands are blaring it's back to square one, warning the worst and hardest weeks are still to come. The big change in this lockdown compared to the last?
Schools are closing. The prime minister is blaming this severe measure on the new COVID variant. CNN's Salma Abdelaziz is covering all this live from London.
So I guess the concern here is that it kind of worked the last couple of times and bringing those numbers under control. But this time it is a variant and there are some concerns if the measures will be as effective this time around.
SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN PRODUCER: John, you're absolutely right, the government is facing a very determined enemy in the form of this variant, that Boris Johnson said yesterday is up to 70 percent more transmissible.
That's how quickly it is spreading through the population. He said the health care system is being overwhelmed. The number of patients entering hospital is skyrocketing. The number of positive confirmed cases is record breaking.
Essentially the prime minister laid out the facts. He said I have no option. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BORIS JOHNSON, U.K. PRIME MINISTER: It's clear that we need to do more together to bring this new variant under control while our vaccines are rolled out. In England, we must therefore go into a national lockdown, which is tough enough to contain this variant. That means the government is once again instructing you to stay at home.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ABDELAZIZ: Now as you pointed out, much of England was already under this country's toughest rules, essentially under localized lockdowns. The big difference is schools, that will be shutting down. That was an area of major concern.
I was outside a school before the Christmas break because there had been a spike in cases among young people and the government was rolling out testing for them. That was their answer.
But with the health care system so stretched, it was simply a risk they couldn't take, to bring back schools and potentially face another surge there. The hospitals simply can't take anymore.
So this takes out one variable in which infections might grow.
But is it going to be enough?
This is uncharted territory, the government facing a challenge that no one has seen before.
VAUSE: What we're seeing in the U.K. is that there's a situation for a lockdown in England but what about the other countries, Scotland, Wales, which have their own governments and their own control of health policies?
The same is true for Northern Ireland.
What's the situation there?
ABDELAZIZ: It's not a unified response; all four nations make their own determinations. Scotland was already going into a lockdown and the other nations have been a step ahead of prime minister Boris Johnson. So idea is they'd probably follow suit.
But how do we get out of this, how long does this go? The prime minister saying this new lockdown won't be reviewed until mid-February. There's another part of his address in which he said that by mid-February, he wants to have everyone in these vulnerable groups already vaccinated, over 70s, living in care homes, front line health care workers.
I think to get all of those vaccinated in six weeks, that's a pretty ambitious plan. So it could potentially mean we're in this for the long haul. This vaccination plan is going to take a while before it become readily available.
[02:05:00]
ABDELAZIZ: And there are very few tools in the government's toolkit to deal with this variant.
VAUSE: Salma, thank you so much.
Health experts are urging the U.S. to conduct more genetic sequencing of the coronavirus to watch for new mutations. Of the nearly 21 million infections confirmed nationwide, the U.S. has detected several cases of the new variant from the U.K.
Experts say the strain is likely spread all over the country by now. America's outbreak is hitting California especially hard.
In Los Angeles County, ambulance crews have been told not to transport patients to hospitals if they have little chance of survival. CNN's Brian Todd explains why the state's crisis is now spiraling out of control.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A grim view from California's front lines.
CHUKLANSEV: Patients are dying like flies. We're full, we're at maximum capacity. We have no resources, we have no staff. Our doctors can't even intubate because they have 40 patients each. It's like a war zone.
TODD (voice-over): The number of people hospitalized in California has reached alarming new levels, straining hospital capacity and the number of deaths per day has spiked. In L.A. County, the new epicenter of the virus in the United States, hospitals are so overwhelmed. They're looking at rationing care.
SCOTT BYINGTON, NURSE, ST. FRANCIS MEDICAL CENTER: So we're able to get the equipment because somebody else you know had died. And that sounds gruesome at heart horrific but that's where we are today.
TODD (voice-over): In L.A. County, one person dies of coronavirus as often as every 10 minutes. As for the rates of infection --
MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI (D-CA), LOS ANGELES: We're seeing a person every six seconds contract COVID-19 here in Los Angeles County, the nation's largest county 10 million people.
TODD (voice-over): The L.A. County Health Services Director who warned that hospitals in her county are being pushed to, quote, the brink of catastrophe said the density of population is one reason for the spikes in the Los Angeles area. She also cited the work patterns of many county residents.
DR. CHRISTINA GHALY, DIRECTOR, LOS ANGELES COUNTY DEPT. OF HEALTH SERVICES: We have a lot out of low income workers, a lot of essential workers who are working outside of their homes.
TODD (voice-over): Experts say in California often, more people are living inside a given home and one expert points to the dynamics of family living among many groups in the state.
DR. JORGE RODRIGUEZ, INTERNAL MEDICINE AND VIRAL SPECIALIST: The Hispanic people have multigenerational living, you know and what we've seen is that the huge inequity in both healthcare and living in bias is coming to roost. There are people that are having to work multiple jobs.
TODD (voice-over): Early in the pandemic, California's leaders received praise for attacking the surge with stay-at-home orders, closures of bars and restaurants in the biggest cities. Florida, by contrast, allowed many businesses to stay open. Why is California's unraveling now worse than Florida's? One expert points to the ratio of hospital beds per person.
PROF. ANNE RIMOIN, EPIDEMIOLOGIST, UCLA FIELDING SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: California really does have one of the lower rates of hospital beds. That is a good reason why we're seeing our hospitals overwhelmed more quickly than hospitals and other states that have more hospital beds per capita.
TODD (voice-over): And one analyst says Californians living with stay at home orders longer than most of the country have been simply burned out with all the restrictions.
DR. SEEMA YASMIN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: I think COVID fatigue is a real factor here, where we are 10 months, 11 months into the pandemic, and folks haven't had the support to stay at home because they live paycheck to paycheck.
TODD: Two experts we spoke to also point to the problems of homelessness in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco, cities where the homeless populations have spiked in recent years. People living in shelters, in tighter spaces, they say, have contributed to the surge in California -- Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
VAUSE: It's another perfect phone call from Donald Trump, just like when he called the president of Ukraine, which led to his impeachment. He made the claim about his weekend phone call when he demanded Georgia election officials "find" 11,000 votes so he could reverse Joe Biden's victory.
The president went down to Georgia, apparently campaigning for two Republicans in tight runoff races which will determine control of the U.S. Senate.
Mr. President, for the next 15 days, though, as expected, made this event all about him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This could be the most important vote you will ever cast for the rest of your life. It really could be. This is so important.
If you don't go and vote the socialists, the Marxists will be in charge of our country. If you don't fight to save your country with everything you have, you're not going to have a country left.
The crime that was committed in this state is immeasurable. An immediate forensic audit of an appropriate sampling of Dominion's voting machines and related equipment is critical to determine the level of illegal fraudulent ballots improperly counted in Georgia during the 2020 general election and during tomorrow's race.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[02:10:00]
VAUSE: More now from CNN's Kaitlan Collins, traveling with the president.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KAITLAN COLLINS, WHITE HOUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It did not take long for President Trump to get on stage and to start talking about his election loss and denying that he had lost the election, later saying he would never concede that election.
And of course, it is something that closely rivals how much he was talking about why he's actually here, which is of course to campaign on behalf of those two Republicans that are going to be locked in a heated runoff happening today.
And so the president was up here, he was going after the Georgia secretary of state and the Georgia governor who, we should know, were Republicans who voted for the president.
But now he is promising to come to the state next year and primary that campaign on behalf of whoever is running against them, really giving an indication as to just how upset the president is on what's happening here and how they refused to do his bidding and he does not like that.
And it was notable at one point, he was echoing a phrase that we heard a lot last year, which is, "It was a perfect call." Of course, this time he's referring to the call he had with the Georgia's secretary of state and not the leader of Ukraine, like when he was impeached.
But the president said he will be unveiling more evidence on election fraud on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. Of course so far, they've come up entirely short in every single election case.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Kaitlan Collins there, thank you.
VAUSE: Now the president-elect, Joe Biden, traveled to Georgia, campaigning for Democratic candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. If they win, Democrats will control the U.S. Senate and that will determine the fate of Biden's ambitious agenda. CNN's Arlette Saenz has this report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President-Elect Biden traveled here to Atlanta, Georgia, with a simple message for voters, urging them to vote for the Democratic candidates in the Senate runoffs on Tuesday.
The president-elect's goal was to mobilize those same voters that helped him flip Georgia from red to blue back in November. So much of what the president-elect hopes to accomplish, issues like climate change, health care, immigration, hinges on the results of this election and whether Democrats are able to take control of the Senate.
Take a listen to his message to Georgia voters.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: You voted in record numbers in November. Your voices were heard. Your votes were counted. The will of the people prevailed. We won three times here.
And now we need you to vote again in record numbers, to make your voices heard again and again to change Georgia, to change America again.
And this is not an exaggeration. Georgia, the whole nation is looking to you. The power is literally in your hands. Unlike any time in my career, one state, one state can chart the course, not just for the next four years but for the next generation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAENZ: So the president-elect will be closely watching the results of these Senate runoffs here in Georgia. But he is also looking ahead to rounding out his cabinet. There are still five positions that Biden needs to fill, including his choice for attorney general.
One of his top advisers, Congress man Cedric Richmond said, that he has not yet made up his mind on who will lead the Department of Justice. Two men believed to be in consideration for that job are former Alabama senator Doug Jones and also Merrick Garland.
Those are decisions that the president-elect will make in the coming weeks -- Arlette Saenz, CNN, Atlanta, Georgia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: The polls are open in Georgia in just a few hours more. Many have been left outraged by Donald Trump's attempt to bully state election officials. CNN's Kyung Lah reports many Republicans don't seem too bothered.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KYUNG LAH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On this final full day of the Georgia senate runoff campaign, the two Democratic challengers are on the attack, using President Trump against his own party.
JON OSSOFF (D-GA), U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: The president of the United States on the phone, trying to intimidate Georgia's election officials to throw out your votes. Let's send a message.
RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA), U.S. SENATE CANDIDATE: He is being aided and abetted by two United States senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.
LAH (voice-over): On the Republican side, Senator Loeffler dodged direct questions about Trump's recorded phone call while Senator David Perdue turned his fire on the recipient of Trump's phone call, Georgia's Republican secretary of state.
SEN. DAVID PERDUE (R-GA): To have a statewide elected official, regardless of party, taped unknowing -- to tape without disclosing a private conversation with the president of the United States and then leaking it to the press now is disgusting.
[02:15:00]
LAH (voice-over): Even as Senator Perdue defends a sitting president attempting to undermine an election, there is little sign it matters to the GOP faithful, at least among those who came to see vice president Mike Pence in Milner, Georgia. They claimed they haven't heard anything about this call.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, I have not.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No, I have not.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I know there was election fraud. Have a good day.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's rock and roll again. It is Groundhog Day again.
LAH (voice-over): Georgia is split into two worlds, claim versus facts, say exasperated Georgia state election officials. The secretary of state office displayed this poster-sized message at its first press conference since Saturday's controversial phone call. TRUMP: A lot of people are not going out to vote. And a lot of Republicans are going to vote negative because they hate what you did to the president, OK? They hate it. They're going to vote.
And if you would be respected, really respected, if this thing could be straightened out before the election.
LAH (voice-over): Democratic voters who say they all heard the Trump phone call --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I did.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes I have heard them.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, I've read about the tapes, most certainly.
LAH (voice-over): -- admit they don't know if it will change Tuesday's election.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think it's incredibly disappointing. And I hope it galvanizes people to turn up for Democratic candidates but I'm not optimistic it will make that much of a difference.
LAH: Well, Senator Loeffler tweeted that she is going to object to President-Elect Joe Biden's Electoral College win on January 6th. Senator Perdue also indicated he supports the effort, although he can't officially vote because his term ended on January 3rd -- Kyung Lah, CNN -- Atlanta.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: With us this hour from Washington is Norm Eisen, former ethics czar for the Obama administration and cofounder and outside counsel to the non-partisan Voter Protection Program, a much needed program that we've seen these days.
Norm, good to see you.
NORMAN EISEN, FORMER OBAMA ETHICS CZAR: John, thanks for having me back.
VAUSE: OK. Well, under Georgia's state law, I've been reading up because I knew you were coming on, it's a crime. If anyone solicits, requests, commands, importunes or otherwise attempts to cause the other person to engage in election fraud.
Under federal law, anyone who knowingly and willfully deprive, defraud or attempts to deprive or defraud the residents of the state of the fair and partially conducted election process is breaking the law.
In that context, here's Donald Trump on the phone with Georgia's secretary of state. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TRUMP: Look, Brad, I've got to get -- I have to find 12,000 votes and I have them times a lot. And therefore I won the state. I only need 11,000 votes.
Fellas, I need 11,000 votes, give me a break. You know, we have that in spades already.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
VAUSE: You know, proving intent is never easy.
But is there at least enough evidence in that entire hour-long conversation to bring credible charges?
EISEN: John, I do think that there is a credible case that could be made out either on the federal level or on the state level in Georgia brought by the Fulton County district attorney, because this is not one or even two statements. It is an hour full of statements.
And at one point the president says, "I just need 11,780 votes," one more vote than he needs to win. These votes are not kept in bushels under the desk. We are talking about a state electoral count that has been repeated three times. The outcome is clear.
So I think there is ample evidence of intent here. The greatest danger, in my view, is from the state; that is the district attorney of Fulton County, Ms. Willis.
Remember, the single criminal case that is already the most advanced against Donald Trump, John, is another state case, the one brought by the D.A. of Manhattan, Cy Vance, for Trump's financial shenanigans.
Guess what?
He just earned himself a bookend in Georgia.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: Thanks to the former Obama White House ethics czar, Norm Eisen.
Please stay with CNN for our special coverage of this crucial Senate runoffs, happening today right here in Georgia. It's going to be a long night. Election Night in America.
With this economy crippled by sanctions, it seems Iran is lashing out again and seizing a South Korean flagged tanker over mar (ph). More now of the tension growing between Seoul and Tehran.
And we're following a developing story on the U.K., COVID cases reaching new record highs and a tough new lockdown underway in England.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [02:20:00]
(MUSIC PLAYING)
VAUSE: More than two years after the U.S. withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement, Tehran is now openly violating the deal with the resumption of uranium enrichment to 20 percent.
Iran's parliament passed a law last month to boost enrichment, also to block U.N. inspections if sanctions were not lifted.
Also comes one year after the U.S. killed Iran's top general, Qasem Soleimani. Separately Iran seized a South Korean flagged tanker off Oman, claiming it was polluting Gulf waters.
South Korea has sent its destroyer to the Strait of Hormuz and diplomatic efforts are reportedly underway to try to secure the release of the tanker and its crew. Live to CNN's senior international correspondent Sam Kiley in Jerusalem for more on this.
They're talking about diplomatic efforts to try to get this resolved. You also have this military operation on the way, with troops and ships being sent to the region.
Is that just to back up diplomacy?
SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think the short answer is absolutely. A bit of gunboat or aircraft carrier diplomacy coming from the United States, who had ordered the Nimitz Aircraft Carrier Group to return to home base. That order was rescinded. It has now been told to remain lurking in the region to reinforce threats, frankly, from the United States and also from Israel.
But Iran will not be allowed, in their view, to develop a nuclear weapons capability. This latest announcement from Iran has provoked the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to say -- to repeat that threat. And the threat has no particular power behind it, in terms of they haven't revealed what they would do if they were to get to the stage when they decided that Iran was nuclear capable.
But it is the absolute horror story for the Jewish state and it's a strategic nightmare for the region. It is perhaps for that reason that Saudi Arabia and Qatar have begun to put aside their very acrimonious differences and the Qataris will, for the first time in several years, be attending the Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Saudi Arabia today after the Saudis ended or agreed to open their borders, both in air, on land and at sea to the Qataris.
Of course those two nations both looking across the Arabian Gulf, the Persian Gulf, toward Iran and very, very anxious about these regional tensions that periodically ratchet up and down as a consequence largely of the United States' withdrawal, as you mentioned there, John, from the JCPOA, the nuclear deal, that was supposed to get the Iranians to set aside their nuclear program in return for lifting of sanctions. Since the Trump administration left that and went for a campaign of
maximum pressure, we have seen an increase in tensions. And, as you rightly point out, this is pretty close to the anniversary of the killing of Soleimani, General Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, who was responsible for what the Americans, Israelis and others would describe as Iran's destabilizing operations in the region, in particular, Syria and Iraq but also, of course, in Yemen.
So none of those tensions have gone down through the Trump administration. There is a sense here that everybody is just holding their breath until the Biden administration can get back into power and perhaps de-escalate and return to real diplomacy. But at the moment, things are pretty tense.
VAUSE: There is a lot on Biden's to-do list 15 days from now. Sam Kiley in Jerusalem, thank you, we appreciate it.
A British judge has denied a U.S. request to extradite Julian Assange and now Mexico is offering him political asylum. Mexico's president defended the WikiLeaks cofounder, calling him, "a journalist who deserves a chance," as well as protection. Side note here: Mexico remains one of the most dangerous countries or the most dangerous country in the world for journalists.
[02:25:00]
VAUSE: Assange is wanted on 18 accounts of espionage and conspiracy in the U.S. over the secret files released by WikiLeaks. The U.K. court blocked the extradition request over concerns about Assange's mental health.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
VAUSE (voice-over): With more COVID-19 patients than ever before, hospitals in the United States are nearing capacity and a slow vaccine rollout is doing very little to help. When we come back, the very latest on the health crisis.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
VAUSE: Welcome back. Thank you for staying with us. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM with me, John Vause.
What was warned of weeks ago is now reality in the U.S., in a post holiday coronavirus surge, with more than 200,000 new cases on average each day. And with the passing of 33 seconds, another death from COVID-19 in the United States.
Hospitals across the country are treating a record number of COVID patients and experts fear many will be pushed beyond capacity as the rollout vaccine rolls out at a slower than expected pace.
To try to make more vaccine shots available, officials have considered cutting Moderna's vaccine doses from two injections to one for certain people. But the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, has rejected that idea, saying everyone must receive both injections. More details now from CNN's Nick Watt.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK WATT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A nurse in New Jersey among the first people in America fully vaccinated against COVID-19. That's her dose number two.
Such a big deal, the governor came to watch, applaud, elbow bump.
MARITZA BENIQUEZ, EMERGENCY ROOM NURSE, UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY: I now have body armor.
WATT (voice-over): But the overwhelming majority of Americans still awaiting dose one.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: We're senior citizen. All we want is get the vaccine, please give us the vaccine.
DR. MONCEF SLAOUI, CHIEF SCIENTIFIC ADVISER, OPERATION WARP SPEED: Nothing has gone wrong. What we have committed to was to have 20 million doses of vaccine available for the American people to be immunized.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: No, no, Mr. Slaoui --
SLAOUI: We have worked --
CAMEROTA: No. It was that 20 million Americans would be vaccinated --
WATT (voice-over): -- by New Year's. Now he says 20 million vaccinated was a hope, not a commitment.
Bottom line is it's January 4th. More than 15 million doses have been shipped, only around 5 million actually injected into arms.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: No excuses. We're not where we want to be but hopefully we'll pick up some momentum.
WATT (voice-over): Meantime, the virus remains rampant.
MAYOR ERIC GARCETTI (D-CA), LOS ANGELES: We're seeing a person every six seconds contract COVID-19 here in Los Angeles County.
WATT (voice-over): California in crisis, hospitals are running out of beds and equipment.
SCOTT BYINGTON, CRITICAL CARE NURSE, ST. FRANCIS MEDICAL CENTER: We needed high-flow oxygen.
[02:30:00]
And we were able to obtain it because a patient recently died in the ER. So we were able to get the equipment because somebody else had died.
And that sounds gruesome and horrific but that's where we are today.
WATT (voice-over): Nationwide, record numbers in the hospital; 100,000 plus for 34 days straight. And over the past week, one person has died from COVID-19 every 33 seconds.
No words of sympathy from the president, just a tweet brushing off the death toll as "fake news."
His own surgeon general disagrees.
DR. JEROME ADAMS, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: I have no reason to doubt those numbers.
WATT (voice-over): The president's lie compounds the pain of the bereaved.
ROSA CERNA, DAUGHTER AND NIECE OF COVID-19 VICTIMS: It's an insult to every family. Because there's absolutely no way for somebody to say that it was fake because my dad is not fake dead.
WATT: Now a case of the U.K. variant confirmed in New York State for the first time, a few more here in California bringing this state's total to six now.
It is still unclear if vaccines will work against this new variant -- most experts believe they will. But it's still being studied and until we know for certain, there is, of course, some understandable anxiety -- Nick Watt, CNN, Los Angeles.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: With the highest ever number of daily coronavirus cases across the U.K., prime minister Boris Johnson has ordered a third lockdown for England. The British newspapers warn the toughest stretch is still to come and declaring we are back to square one.
That means staying at home with exceptions only if working from home is not possible, schools for most students and nonessential shops and services, gyms, sporting venues are all now closed.
The prime minister is blaming the surge on the new variant of the coronavirus. Earlier I spoke with Dr. Erin Bromage, a biology professor, specializing in immunology at the University of Massachusetts. Here's what he has to say about the variant.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. ERIN BROMAGE, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: If this virus is truly more transmissible, as they're saying, the old things won't be good enough. We need to up each of them just a little bit, to knock it back down to where it's not spreading as fast.
VAUSE: Yes, we've been kind, of those measures work but we just haven't been great at implementing them in many places around the world.
We also heard the U.K. prime minister stressing that this variant of COVID is unlikely to severely affect children. But at the same, time London's Imperial College has gathered evidence, which seems to indicate a shift in the age composition of reported cases, with a larger share of under 20-year olds among the reported variant of concern, the U.K. variant, compared to non-variant of concern cases. That's the old COVID-19, if you like.
It goes on to say it could be just circumstantial and there's need for further research.
At this point how concerned should parents be?
Isn't it simply a numbers game: the more people to catch the virus, the more people will die?
BROMAGE: Yes, I don't think should be really focusing on the variant per se. As I said, it's still the same virus that it was. It just spreads a little bit more effectively. What we might find is, part of the reason we're seeing it move through the younger population at a higher rate may not be to do with the virus but how younger people move around.
You know, as we're seeing infection rates going up, people that are older are going to withdraw a little bit from society and drop their infection rates down; whereas the younger people feel a little more resilient to it and still move around.
That doesn't mean that we should just ignore what it's doing; it's clearly there and spreading very fast and at a faster rate. But there may be other mechanisms that are not necessarily the virus that are responsible for the disproportionate rate we're seeing in young people.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: That was CNN contributor and biology professor Dr. Erin Bromage.
French health officials have promised to step up the rate of vaccination after a slower than expected start to national immunization. They spent half 1 million doses of the vaccine on hand, that same number expected to arrive this week but a little more than 500 people have been actually vaccinated. CNN's Jim Bittermann reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JIM BITTERMANN, CNN SR. INTL. CORRESPONDENT: I'm Jim Bittermann in Paris, where the government is facing fierce criticism over the slowness of the COVID vaccination campaign.
While neighboring Germany has managed to inoculate hundreds of thousands since the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine became available just over a week ago, here in France, the numbers vaccinated are only in the hundreds.
After starting with people in senior care facilities, health authorities today began inoculating older medical workers and promised that 1 million people would be vaccinated before the end of the month.
Front line medical workers are skeptical. At this rate the head of one ICU said, it will take 3,000 years to vaccinate everyone. The regional president of one of the hardest hit areas said, "We have to accelerate. We are at war."
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: With England entering a third national COVID-19 lockdown, the cases are soaring around the world.
How are other countries grappling with its deadly pandemic and the recent surge?
[02:35:00]
VAUSE: More on that in a moment. Also millions of Americans flew this past holiday season, record highs for the pandemic, and airlines want the White House to ease restrictions so even more so even more can fly. Details in a moment.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
VAUSE: As we begin 2021, the numbers for this pandemic continue to be painful. Johns Hopkins University reports more than 83 million cases worldwide, more than 1.7 million deaths since the pandemic started.
And in the next few months all the experts are saying it will be dark and painful, even though there is a glimmer of hope as more people receive the vaccine. Some countries are struggling to get vaccines into arms.
But India is now preparing for a massive vaccination drive. A nation of 1.3 billion people have reported more than 10 million coronavirus cases, second only to the U.S. Indian drug regulators just approved two COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use. Officials say they plan to inoculate 300 million people by August. Vaccinations should start in 7-10 days.
In Austria the national lockdown has been extended to January 24th. All nonessential stores, restaurants will remain closed. Travel restrictions for international visitors will stay in place. Those entering from high-risk areas will have to quarantine for 10 days.
The Austrian health minister says new variants of the coronavirus have been detected nationwide there.
In Ireland, where COVID-19 cases have been skyrocketing over the past week, according to Johns Hopkins University, and in Northern Ireland, 94-year-old Eileen Lynch (ph) became the first person in the over-80 category to receive the vaccine, developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca.
The man who is leading Mexico's COVID response now accused of hypocrisy. He was seen at the beach, ignoring the safety guidelines which he has been calling for for months. As CNN's Matt Rivers reports, it comes as Mexico is facing its worst wave of the pandemic so far.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So imagine for a moment if Dr. Anthony Fauci of the United States went to the beach in Miami, maybe sat outside in an oceanfront restaurant. Critics here in Mexico are saying that the basic equivalent of that happened over this past weekend because of what we saw from Dr. Hugo Lopez-Gatell.
Now Lopez-Gatell is the deputy health secretary that is leading the Mexican government's response to the coronavirus. But he was seen in the beach town of Zipolite in Mexico.
He was photographed there, those photos subsequently, quickly went viral and many people shouted "hypocrisy," because what we have heard from Lopez-Gatell for months now is that people, to avoid spreading this disease, should stay in their homes, when at all possible and only leave when it is essential to do so.
Now Lopez-Gatell addressed the controversy at a press conference Monday night, basically admitting that he went on this trip.
[02:40:00]
RIVERS: He said he went to visit friends, close relatives that live there. He said he had nothing to hide.
But based on what he said it would seem that that trip would be nonessential and that would mean that he is not following his own advice which is only to leave your house for essential activities.
And he also took this trip at a particularly fraught time here in Mexico during this pandemic. Cases have been on the rise, deaths have been on the rise since the beginning of October and here in Mexico City, for example, the occupancy levels of hospitals is a huge issue.
Nearly 30 public hospitals here in Mexico City are reporting capacity levels at 100 percent and more hospitals could soon be to come -- Matt Rivers, CNN, Mexico City.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: In the United States, air travel fell by more than 60 percent last year and in the midst of the pandemic, amid warnings from all the leading health experts in the U.S., still more than 300 million people flew on commercial airlines, many of them over the Thanksgiving Day period as well as the recent Christmas break. More now from CNN's Pete Muntean.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The CDC is urging people to stay home but, even still, millions of people are traveling. The TSA says a record number of people passed through security at America's airports on Sunday, 1.3 million people, the most of the pandemic.
That means about 17 million people have flown since the start of the holiday travel period, an average of about 1 million people each day.
It is those new numbers that have public health experts worried about another post-holiday travel surge of coronavirus like we saw after Thanksgiving. The TSA thinks travel numbers will keep spiking around the holidays and, in general, trend up in 2021 but not like what we saw before the pandemic.
Airlines want passengers to come back. In fact, they just wrote the Trump administration, asking for relaxed restrictions and new testing regimens, like those being used for travelers coming in from the United Kingdom, as a way to open up travel for more countries -- Pete Muntean, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
VAUSE: There is some good news for an old friend of the CNN family. Former talk show host Larry King is out of the intensive care unit. A source close to the family says his condition continues to improve. He has been in a hospital in Los Angeles for more than one week, suffering from COVID-19.
I don't need to remind you, he hosted "LARRY KING LIVE" for more than 25 years. We wish him a continued and speedy recovery.
Japan's top ranked sumo wrestler is among more than 3,300 new cases reported nationally on Monday. Wrestlers who had been in close contact with him are now being tested.
On that, I say thank you for watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm John Vause. Stay with us. "WORLD SPORT" is up next. See you tomorrow.
[02:45:00]
(WORLD SPORT)
[03:00:00]
