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Several Capitol Officers Suspended, Up to 15 under Investigation; Army General Denies Delay in Reinforcements; At Least 72 Cases of COVID-19 Variant in U.S.; L.A. County Reports 1,500+ Deaths in Past Week; U.S. Names Cuba State Sponsor of Terrorism; Countries Around the Globe Deal with Increasing COVID-19 Cases. Aired 2-2:45a ET
Aired January 12, 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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ROBYN CURNOW, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hi, welcome to all of our viewers joining us from around the world. I'm Robyn Curnow.
Ahead on the show, U.S. House Democrats are moving quickly to impeach Donald Trump for inciting an insurrection on Capitol Hill. The FBI warned more pro Trump protests could happen across America.
Plus growing concerns of a slow vaccine distribution with hospital admissions and deaths surging. Health experts are urging people to wear masks inside their own homes.
Then later on, the social media platform favored by Trump supporters has now gone dark. Why Amazon suspended Parler's cloud service.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from CNN Center, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Robyn Curnow.
CURNOW: We are just one day away from a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to impeach Donald Trump for the second time. Democrats accused the president of incitement of insurrection for his role in last week's deadly Capitol Hill riots.
CNN has learned Mr. Trump has privately acknowledged he bears some responsibility for the riot but a source also says House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy told his colleagues that the president acknowledged as much to him and that there is no evidence Antifa took part in storming the Capitol.
Meanwhile, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf is joining the growing list of officials resigning in the wake of that riot and the FBI's warning that armed protests are planned in the U.S. Capitol and all 50 state capitals leading up to Inauguration Day.
The bureau says it's tracking threats to President-Elect Joe Biden, Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. We get more on all of this from Brian Todd.
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BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A key focus now among federal and local law enforcement agencies, preventing a repeat of Wednesday's deadly siege of the U.S. Capitol.
According to an FBI bulletin obtained by CNN, armed protests are being planned in Washington, D.C. and all 50 state capitols this weekend through Inauguration Day. Officials monitoring online chatter in social media.
JAMES GAGLIANO, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: They're obviously looking at open source things. They are going through in following up in some of these chat rooms and some of these places where extremists tend to coalesce in the dark corners of the Web.
TODD: D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, concerned about more violent actors coming to Washington in the run-up to the inauguration, is urging people not to come into the city on Inauguration Day.
MAYOR MURIEL BOWSER (D-DC): Our goals right now are to encourage Americans to participate virtually and to protect the District of Columbia from a repeat of the violent insurrection experienced at the Capitol.
TODD: The Pentagon is bolstering the National Guard's presence in the nation's capitol, with as many as 15,000 Guardsmen to be deployed by Inauguration Day.
Meanwhile, the dragnet for the perpetrators of Wednesday's siege intensifies. At least 20 people have been rounded up across the country and face federal charges. Some are accused of bringing bombs and other weapons to Capitol Hill.
Two men were arrested after photographs showed them wearing body armor and carrying plastic restraining ties inside the Capitol. One man is accused of writing in text messages that he wanted to shoot House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that he brought guns and ammunition.
One analyst says law enforcement is using sophisticated tools to track down many more suspects.
GAGLIANO: All of the cell phone records, all of the electronic exhaust that that's given off by our cell phones crossing bridges and our and our E-ZPass and license plate readers and then matching that up with available online information, as well as conducting interviews of these people's friends and circles.
TODD (voice-over): And new fallout tonight over the breakdowns that led to the overrunning of the Capitol. Now former Capitol Hill police chief Steven Sund, who resigned last week, tells CNN and "The Washington Post" he was concerned about what was coming in the days before the siege.
Sund says he asked his bosses, the House and Senate sergeants at arms, for permission to request that the National Guard be on close standby. Sund says they turned him down, concerned about the optics.
Sund said that, when the rioting was underway, he pleaded five more times for help, including to the Pentagon for National Guardsmen to be deployed, quote, "I needed boots on the ground, immediate assistance right then and there, helping to form police lines to help secure up the foundation of the United States Capitol Building.
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TODD (voice-over): "They were more concerned with the optics."
TODD: The Army general who was on that call strongly denied Sund's claim, telling CNN he did discuss the need to get a plan approved and that a request for National Guard troops was quickly taken to the Secretary of Defense.
We also reached to the House and Senate sergeants at arms for their response to Sund's allegations. They didn't get back to us -- Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.
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CURNOW: President Trump said nothing as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol Wednesday, searching for Vice President Mike Pence. The two had not spoken since then until Monday.
Administration officials met in the Oval Office to discuss the coming week and reflecting on the past four years. Their meeting came one day before the U.S. House is set to pressure the vice president to remove Mr. Trump from office. Ryan Nobles has the details on that.
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RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Tuesday will be a big day here on Capitol Hill. That's when Democrats will begin the process of impeaching President Trump for the second time.
They'll start with a resolution giving vice president Mike Pence 24 hours to invoke the 25th Amendment which is unlikely that he will do. And then on Wednesday they'll take up the actual articles of impeachment.
And it is expected that they'll be able to pass it relatively quickly. They have the votes and it is likely that it will get through the Democratic-controlled House without much of an issue.
The question is, what would become of those articles of impeachment once they are passed?
The current Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell does not appear to be all that interested with moving forward with a trial prior to President Trump leaving office on January 20th.
So, the question is what does Chuck Schumer do with those articles of impeachment? He has suggested that he is willing to move forward with the trial
almost right away, even after President Trump is already out of office.
Now, there is some complications that could happen in terms of the beginning of the Biden administration and invoking his agenda. Schumer has said that they're going to have to try and do both, that means getting some of these nominations confirmed for the Biden cabinet, while at the same time conducting a trial.
Now the vice -- former vice president, soon-to-be president, said that he was concerned about how this process could interrupt his first 100 days in office but he said that it is up to the Senate Democrats to decide how to handle that.
But one thing we know for sure is that it does appear that the House Democrats will move forward with impeaching President Trump once again. He will be the first president in American history to be impeached twice in one term -- Ryan Nobles, CNN, on Capitol Hill.
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CURNOW: CNN legal and national security analyst Asha Rangappa joins me now, she's also a former FBI special agent.
Great to have you on the show. What we're seeing now is an impeachment vote gathering momentum and this is impeachment 2.0.
Who would have ever thought we would get to this point?
ASHA RANGAPPA, CNN LEGAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes. Well, I think he has done a lot of things that have been impeachable. But it does take a lot of political will and capital to go through with it.
So I think the fact that the House is starting to move on this at this stage, with only nine days left to go for Trump's presidency, it really indicates the urgency and the magnitude of what we've witnessed at the Capitol last Wednesday.
CURNOW: Let's look ahead to the next few days. The FBI saying 50 states, they're preparing for armed protests ahead of the inauguration. It's going to be a pretty dangerous time in the next two weeks or so.
What do you make of this, challenges to a free and fair election at the behest essentially of the losing incumbent. This is not something you would expect from America.
RANGAPPA: No, I think it tells us how deeply damaging the lies have been over the last four years. This is not something that has happened overnight. These are lies that have been told about the efficacy, not just of our electoral process but the trustworthiness of our media, of our intelligence community, of our judicial system, that has been eroded over four years, and an information ecosystem that allows these lies to be repeated and amplified exponentially, more than say in your paradigmatic (ph) town square of yore. This is what we are seeing. And I think the fact that there is now a
threat assessment across all 50 states in the United States tells you how deeply and broadly this has spread. This was not just a bunch of loonies last Wednesday. This is a broad movement that can seriously threaten the national security of the United States.
CURNOW: You worked for the FBI, which is why I want to ask you this question. A few weeks ago, we know the Biden team asked that certain Secret Service agents, I understand, reportedly aligned with Mr. Trump, be taken off White House duty.
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CURNOW: We saw many police allowing in the rioters last Wednesday. They've also been real questions as to whatever decisions reflected compromise rather than ineptitude that led up to Wednesday.
So how concerned should the incoming administration be, that some aspects of the security apparatus are not going to be loyal to President Biden, that there could be security breaches from within the state?
RANGAPPA: It is definitely a concern. I will say that, at the level of, say, the Secret Service, the FBI, the federal law enforcement, intelligence services, there are very high barriers in terms of polygraph and background checks.
Obviously anyone that is going to be close to President-Elect Biden is going to have to be revetted. This is something that you do when you have a security breach but I think this gets to the radicalization that has happened, again, and how widespread it is and how these lives have been turned into a righteous cause.
That people who've served in the military, have served their country, have come to believe, some of them, that they are fighting to defend a legitimate cause. That is the harder thing to deprogram out of people who have come to believe that very deeply.
CURNOW: Finally before we go, you've written about it in "The Washington Post," about the possibility of the president pardoning himself.
Why would that be an own goal, as you write?
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RANGAPPA: Yes, well, you know, once he leaves office, there are potential crimes that the next Justice Department will have to decide whether it wants to pursue. If he pardons himself, though, I think they're going to be left with no choice but to prosecute him, because that is the only way that they can get the issue of whether a self- pardon is legally valid before a court of law because, in the United States, a court will not issue some kind of advisory opinion absent an active case or controversy inside the courtroom.
So they would need to charge him. He would need to assert his pardon, his self-pardon as a defense and then a court would have to decide. And I think that we would need to do that as a country in order to establish whether this is actually legally valid, because, if it is, we need to fix it.
We cannot have presidents who believe or who are above the law and are able to commit crimes with impunity once they are in office.
CURNOW: Great to speak to you, as always, and get your expertise and opinion. Thank you so much, Asha Rangappa.
RANGAPPA: Thank you.
CURNOW: Despite the violence in Washington, Joe Biden says he is not afraid of taking his oath of office outside and in public. The president-elect had this take on the people who took part in the Capitol riot.
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JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: I think it is critically important that there be a real serious focus on holding those folks who engaged in sedition and threatened people's lives, defaced public property, caused great damage, that they be held accountable.
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CURNOW: Biden's comments came moments after he got his second dose of the coronavirus vaccine. He said his team is working on a plan to get COVID vaccinations moving much faster. He plans an announcement about that on Thursday.
Next on CNN, the U.S. is facing its deadliest month yet in the pandemic, states really struggling with soaring infections and a slower vaccine rollout than expected. We will talk all about that next.
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BIDEN: Three thousand to 4,000 people a day dying is just beyond the pale. It's just wrong.
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CURNOW: The coronavirus variant first identified in the U.K. is appearing more in U.S. states now. There are over 70 documented cases as the pandemic overall is growing deadlier than ever. Johns Hopkins University says more than 28,000 lives have been lost in
the U.S. just in the first 11 days of this year. At that rate, January is poised to become the worst month since this all began.
Meanwhile, the vaccine rollout is still moving much slower than many had hoped; only about 35 percent of the shots distributed to state governments have actually been administered. You could see millions of these doses have gone to the two most popular states, California and Texas, with stadiums and other large venues are being converted to mass vaccination sites, like the Arlington Expo Center here, which the Texas governor toured on Monday.
A U.S. Food and Drug Administration adviser says we're seeing an unprecedented effort nationwide.
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DR. PAUL OFFIT, U.S. FDA VACCINE ADVISER: We don't have a public health infrastructure for mass vaccination and what you are seeing, I think, is we are learning to do that.
Some states are learning to do it more quickly than others but I'm really optimistic that we're going to be able to do it. We're already at about 500,000 doses a day.
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CURNOW: In hardhit California nearly 3 million people have contracted the virus, with more than 40,000 reported daily -- 40,000 a day. Health officials in L.A. County are calling this the worst disaster in decades. Hospitals just do not have enough space. Sara Sidner shows us where patients and the dead are ending up.
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SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mariachi music slices through the silence. The melody is meant to soothe the family's sorrow. The cruelness of COVID-19 on display. This is a funeral in a parking lot.
JULIANA JIMENEZ SESMA, MOTHER & STEPFATHER PASSED AWAY FROM COVID-19: My mother was a very strong woman and she fought to the very last breath.
SIDNER: Juliana Jimenez Sesma says these are the last words they exchanged.
SESMA: I told her, mom, do not be afraid, for the Lord is with us. I love and may God bless you. Keep strong for me, mom. And all she answered me was, yes, mija. Yes, mija, with that -- with that voice -- with fear.
SIDNER: Sesma lived with and cared for her mom who had a lung condition. Her stepdad had asthma and diabetes. Her brother lives right next door with his young family.
How many people ended up getting it?
Everyone --
SESMA: All of us.
SIDNER: Her stepfather and then mother ended up here, Martin Luther King Jr. Community Hospital. They fought to live like those filling all the ICU beds now but they died within 11 days of each other. Dr. Jason Prasso treated both of Sesma's parents.
DR. JASON PRASSO, PULMONARY & CRITICAL CARE PHYSICIAN, MLK JR. COMMUNITY HOSPITAL: I just want her to know that we here tried our hardest and, you know, we're really sorry that things went the way that they did.
SIDNER: The terrible scenario was not unusual, as COVID ensnares those who live in multigenerational families and are part of the essential workforce.
PRASSO: We have had the misfortune of seeing this disease run through families and all too frequently take multiple members of a single family.
SIDNER: The state of the art hospital is an oasis of care in the health care desert of south Los Angeles. It is no wonder the heavily Black and Latino neighborhood is suffering disproportionately. The inequities in health care invites death.
DR. ELAINE BATCHLOR, CEO, MLK JR. COMMUNITY HOSPITAL: Diabetes is three times more prevalent here than in the rest of California. Diabetes mortality is 72 percent higher. The life expectancy is 10 years shorter here than in the rest of the state.
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BATCHLOR: And all of that is related to this being an under-resourced and underserved community.
SIDNER: That was before coronavirus arrived.
PRASSO: We're running like well over 100 percent capacity.
SIDNER: The 131-bed facility is suddenly treating more than 200 patients, 60 percent of them are COVID patients. They've made space everywhere, tents outside, inside hallways, the prayer room, a former gift shop -- the battle to save a life physically and mentally exhausting.
But on this day, a surprise reminder of why they fight.
ELAINE STEVENS, COVID-19 SURVIVOR: I'm here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi!
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, my goodness. You look amazing!
STEVENS: I'm back.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Oh, let me see, let me see, you got dancing moves. Oh, yes!
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SIDNER: Seventy-four-year-old Elaine Stevens returns to thank her doctor and nurses. She spent more than 40 days in this ICU before walking out alive.
STEVENS: I made it. A lot of days, I didn't want to make it. But I did it.
SIDNER: As she celebrated a second chance at life, the ceremony for death was still playing out in the parking lot for the Sesma family.
SESMA: Don't let this be you. If you truly love your loved ones, don't let this be you. Continue to, you know, take all the cautions. Take all extra precautions, exaggerate if you have to.
SIDNER: Sara Sidner, CNN, South Los Angeles.
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CURNOW: Thank you to Sara Sidner for that extraordinary piece.
I'm joined now by Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider, an internal medicine physician at California Pacific Medical Center.
Doctor, hi, thanks for being here. Sara just laid it out in her piece. This has been called the worst disaster in decades for California; 40,000 people being infected a day. I think one in 10 people as the latest numbers have it. Where you are, it's almost incomprehensible, isn't it?
DR. SHOSHANA UNGERLEIDER, CALIFORNIA PACIFIC MEDICAL CENTER: You know, things are so bad in California and Southern California in particular that they are rationing medical care, something I never thought it would see in the 21st century in America.
Emergency medical staff and paramedics and physicians are having to decide who lives and who dies. This is a truly devastating situation. L.A. County, for example, has a population of more than 10 million people, with such high rates of poverty and homelessness and huge numbers, as we heard, of essential workers. Some of the densest neighborhoods in the nation. All of which lead to the potential for increased spread of the virus.
So I do think that Californians overall had a very false sense of security leading up to November because the numbers here were not so bad. And people let their guard down and traveled and gathered for the holidays.
And we now have this highly contagious variant of the virus spreading through our community. So there is hope on the way with vaccines being available but the situation on the ground is truly frightening and it will get worse before it gets better, unfortunately.
CURNOW: Yes. That's a pretty sobering statement. With that in mind, we have been hearing from health officials, saying essential workers should wear a mask at home as an extra layer of protection, just to get through the surge.
Do you think -- would you recommend that?
And do you think people should be doing that?
UNGERLEIDER: I think everybody needs to, as we said from the very beginning, evaluate their own individual risk profile based on their age and the people they live with, underlying health conditions, the situation that they are in.
Honestly, at this point, with the degree of community spread that we are seeing in California and across this country, with this potentially much more transmissible virus out there, it really could not hurt to wear a mask at home as much as possible.
CURNOW: I realized as you were talking, I got Georgia, where we are, and L.A. County mixed up. I think it is one in 5 people who have it there. And one in 10 where I am here.
The numbers give us some understanding of the scope of this. But I think what has also hit home is ambulances being told, do not pick up certain folks, making decisions, oxygen supplies, as you say, bed availability, doctors saying they were over 100 percent.
This is also just the real practical examples of how tough it must be for, at least, medics on the ground as well.
UNGERLEIDER: Oh, it is incredibly challenging for everybody on the front lines of medical care, specifically in Los Angeles County last week, they told the emergency medical staff to, if they did encounter somebody who had a cardiac arrest or a trauma in the field to, of course, attempt CPR.
But then if they are unable to be revived in the field to leave them there and not bring them in to the hospital because we simply do not have enough beds. Again, this is just truly unprecedented.
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UNGERLEIDER: We are turning away people who are having heart attacks and strokes from being able to receive care. We are running out of things like oxygen. For a respiratory virus, to not have the most basic treatment available, it's just truly unbelievable.
And I think that, while the news right now is largely focused on what is going on in Washington, D.C., and rightfully so, people cannot forget that all of our behavior continues to matter -- mask wearing, social distancing, handwashing and really trying to stay home and refrain from being indoors with people you do not live with -- are very critical right now.
CURNOW: As you look to the next 2 weeks, after the Biden administration takes office, how do you see the vaccine rollout being boosted?
Or do you still think there's going to be this very piecemeal, haphazard, quite slow-stop start vaccine rollout, particularly at state level?
UNGERLEIDER: To say to the vaccine rollout has been completely blundered, I think would be an understatement at this point; 24 million doses of the vaccine have been shipped various states. As of today, only 6.5 million have been administered thus far. So that's 2 percent of the overall U.S. population. We are nearly a month into this.
Robyn, we are a nation with some of the most efficient supply chains on Earth. And we really can and must do better here. I think what should have happened early on is that the federal government needed to pay attention.
What we still can do is create Amazon style fulfillment centers that can deliver vaccines to sites where they are needed, either on demand or following some sort of schedule. This would really help ensure that sites holding back doses don't receive more than they need.
And on a public facing side, there is so much we could do to create an online platform that is easy to use, whether you're 28 or 88, in trying to figure out where to get your shots. There's so many ways we could improve this process. And I am really hoping that we will see this start to happen in 9 days with a new administration.
CURNOW: I think we all are. Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider, thank you very much for your time and all of your work. Stay safe.
UNGERLEIDER: Thank you.
CURNOW: Coming up here at CNN, the former U.S. Capitol police chief speaks out about these deadly riots last week. Why he says his officers were ill-prepared for the violence. You will want to hear this.
Also peddlers of conspiracy theories face yet another purge. Parler, the darling of the far right, has lost its home online. Now the social media platform is taking aim at Amazon. We have a live report on that, too.
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CURNOW: Welcome back to CNN. I'm Robyn Curnow, live from CNN World Headquarters. Exactly 30 minutes past the hour. Thanks for joining me.
At least two police officers at the U.S. Capitol have now been suspended and several more are being investigated for their actions during last week's deadly riot.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK! OK! OK! OK!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Guys, we need more back up. OK!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Back off! Back off! Back off! Back off!
CURNOW (voice-over): The former believe chief said he takes responsibility for these kinds of scenes, for the lapse in security, telling CNN, his officers did not participate -- anticipate a riotous and violent mob.
He also claims to have requested help from other agencies when the situation got out of hand but said he was met with resistance at first. Now there is still a lot we don't know about Wednesday's events but law enforcement agencies have yet to hold a news conference to explain how rioters were able to breach the building in the first place.
On Monday, the former U.S. director of cybersecurity called the situation "a breakdown for democracy."
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CHRISTOPHER KREBS, DIRECTOR, DHS CYBERSECURITY & INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY: This is the equivalent of ignoring that pain in your chest for a couple weeks and, all of a sudden, you have a catastrophic heart attack. We are -- we are on the verge of what I feared to be a pretty significant breakdown in democracy, in civil society here.
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CURNOW: After the siege, tech companies took action to stem the deluge of conspiracy theories online. Amazon kicked the far-right's media favorite, social media site Parler off its cloud hosting platform. Now Parler is suing Amazon, saying it has been dealt, quote, "a death blow."
Parler accuses the tech giant of breach of contract and antitrust violation. Amazon says the claims have no merit and that Parler failed to remove content which incites violent and violates Amazon's terms.
John Defterios is live in Abu Dhabi with more.
Parler lashing out, suing the tech giant.
What do you make of Amazon's reaction?
JOHN DEFTERIOS, CNN EMERGING MARKETS EDITOR: This is clearly a David versus Goliath scenario, small tech versus Big Tech in a real way. As you noted here, Parler is challenging this idea that they don't have a hosting platform because Amazon Web Services took them down.
Also the issue of free speech, let's take a look at the Amazon response, which was pretty clear and basically holding its position, saying, "We respect Parler's right to determine for itself what content it will allow.
"However, it is clear that there is significant content on Parler that encourages and incites violence against others," going on to say that, "Parler is unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove this content, which is a violation of our terms of service," which is the most crucial aspect here, saying they have a legal right to do so.
Parler is looking for a temporary restraining order from the courts here, which it has not gotten yet. But this raises a much broader issue and we've had international response. Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader in Russia; Bruno Le Maire, the finance minister in France and also Angela Merkel in Germany said, yes, it's a violation of free speech but it is not regulated in the United States and that needs to change.
CURNOW: Let's talk about the impact, not just the political impact and political crisis but also the pocketbook economic issues. We've seen corporate America rethinking funding to the Republican Party. We see corporations, donors reluctant to be associated with the party and the president that essentially incite insurrection.
DEFTERIOS: Yes, a very quick response but there's actually two camps. One camp just does not want to donate at all and is pausing all political donations, kind of taking the neutral ground and those, as you're suggesting, targeting senators like Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley, who went against the electoral votes.
We have a list of -- a mixed group of this camp here. But the biggest names in America which are standing up, which I think is the point, JPMorgan, Citi, Federal Express, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, AT&T, which is the parent company of CNN.
AT&T actually specifically targeted the Republicans, saying that this is not for the support of democracy going against the electoral votes. It's also even the payment processing group called Stripe, which was managing the donations to Donald Trump to fight against the election results. It's now stopping the processing.
But we are talking about $200 million raised by the Trump Organization here in support of the president. So this is new ground entirely, Robyn.
CURNOW: It certainly is. John Defterios, thank you so much. We appreciate it. So the Trump administration has added Cuba back to the list of state
sponsors of terrorism.
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CURNOW: Once again undoing an Obama-era policy just days before the president leaves office. Patrick Oppmann is in Havana with the details on that.
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PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Trump administration has placed Cuba back on the list of countries to support state terrorism, potentially complicating President-Elect Joe Biden's plans to restart talks with the Communist-run island just days before he takes office.
The State Department on Monday said Cuba deserved to be back on the terror blacklist for harboring U.S. fugitives, supporting rebel groups in Colombia and propping up the regime of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.
Critics said the State Department did not prove any actual support to terror groups and that the decision was politically motivated and could hurt U.S. efforts against international terrorism elsewhere.
While inclusion on the terrorist usually triggers a series of economic penalties, it's unclear how damaging that will be for Cuba, a country that already faces a long list of U.S. sanctions.
President-Elect Biden has said he wants to reestablish a dialogue with Cuba and remove some of the Trump administration sanctions to improve the lives of the Cuban people. And that very likely could mean beginning the process to once again remove Cuba from this terror list designation -- Patrick Oppmann, CNN, Havana.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CURNOW: Now to Indonesia where search and rescue have recovered human remains from the site of a crashed passenger plane, enough to fill more than 70 body bags. Officials expanded the search area on Monday as well.
Indonesia's transportation ministry will be conducting checks on maintenance issues with airlines following Saturday's crash as a precaution. The jet plunged into the sea on Saturday with 62 people on board.
Still to come here on CNN, hospitals across Europe are overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. Find out what's going on in some of the hardest-hit nations. We will be back with that.
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CURNOW: Great to have you back.
We are following these new developments in Uganda, where the opposition presidential candidate, Bobi Wine, says the army has now raided his home and arrested his security staff. He says no reason was given for the arrest, which comes just two days before the country's elections.
Wine is a popular singer turned politician, who is challenging the incumbent president, Yoweri Museveni, the man who has been in power for more than 30 years.
Now back to the COVID pandemic. Countries all over the world are dealing with devastating numbers with South Africa's president extending restrictions because of the contagious variant discovered there.
We also know that over in the U.K., thousands of new vaccination centers are opening. That is good news. You can see Boris Johnson, the prime minister, visiting one in Bristol, England, on Monday. He says it is a race against time to roll out these vaccines.
In France, officials say they cannot rule down a third lockdown as a, quote, "last resort."
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CURNOW: Let's go there to Paris. Melissa Bell is standing by with an update on the situation in Europe.
Melissa, hi. What can you tell us?
MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: In terms of that vaccine rollout, things have been patchy here in Europe. We've seen the United Kingdom ahead of other countries, nearly 2.3 million people vaccinated there already, because that process started there on the 8th of December.
Here in Europe, however, we have to wait longer; the process only began on the 27th of December and it has been fairly patchy, according to different countries, with different countries reporting different difficulties in terms of that rollout and getting its pace up to speed.
Here in France for instance, organizational issues, too much paperwork, we were told by doctors in Spain, a shortage of nurses; in Germany, a shortage of vaccines although now with the arrival of the Moderna vaccine there, things should improve.
Have a listen to what the NHS' chief medical officer had to say about the vaccine rollout in the U.K. because it applies to what we can expect over the coming months to so many countries around the world.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) STEPHEN POWIS, NATIONAL MEDICAL DIRECTOR, NHS ENGLAND: We are in a sprint from now until February as those top four priority groups are offered their vaccination. We will then kick off another sprint up to April, as we get the rest of the vulnerable groups protected and, finally, a marathon to the autumn as we deliver vaccination to everybody else.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BELL: It is in terms of that sprint so many countries around the continent have been slow out of the starting block. But I think it's important to remember that for the time being, it isn't so much the vaccine rollout that's going to have an impact on the very impressive rises in those COVID-19 figures in several countries in Europe but rather the restrictions that so many countries for the time being have not ruled out in terms of bringing further ones in the U.K. but also France, as you mentioned.
CURNOW: One place where we see the skyrocketing numbers is Ireland. They'd done it right at first, they had pretty low rates. Suddenly, authorities there warning of worst-case scenarios.
Why?
BELL: It is always difficult to find the adjectives to describe it. It is what one Irish official said just these last few days. Over the course of the last 7 days, the infection rates announced by Ireland have been the worst in the world. They have gone from a situation where they were having about 400 new cases a day, just a matter of weeks ago, positivity rate of about 5 percent to one where they have got 7,000 cases a day. A positivity rate of 25 percent.
The explanation for that is a couple of things. First of all, the new variant arriving even as Christmas and holiday period led to a rising number of cases. That is something we are seeing across Europe.
That combination of those 2 factors really leading to a fresh stage in this crisis and great difficulty for the governments in terms of how they are going to deal with those exponential rises.
CURNOW: OK Good to see you. Thanks for that update. Thank you so much. Live there in Paris, Melissa Bell.
When two gorillas at the San Diego Zoo began coughing last week -- yes, you know where I'm going -- their handlers feared the worst. Now it has been confirmed; the gorillas have become infected with the coronavirus. It is believed that an asymptomatic staff member passed the virus on to the animals.
Because gorillas live as a family, the zoo assumes all the members have now been exposed. Luckily, other than some congestion and a little bit of coughing, these chaps seem to be doing well so far.
Thanks for watching. Everybody needs to stay safe and wear a mask. I really appreciate you joining me at this hour. I'm Robyn Curnow. Be sure to find me on Instagram and Twitter. @RobynCurnowCNN. "WORLD SPORT" starts right now.
