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EU and AstraZeneca Seek to Resolve Vaccine Row; Hospitals in Portugal Struggle to Keep Up with Case Surge; Pressure Mounts on Health Care Workers; Court Rules Alexey Navalny Will Stay in Detention; Backlash Over Robinhood's Move to Limit GameStop Trading. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired January 29, 2021 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

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

Well it's been anything but a smooth rollout for the COVID vaccines in Europe this week amidst a very public fight with British-Swedish drug maker AstraZeneca over vaccine delays. The European Commission is now expected to impose new rules that require vaccine exporters to get their national government's approval for any vaccine shipments outside of the European Union.

And there is a wrinkle over AstraZeneca's vaccine in Germany where health official say they will limit the vaccine to people under 65 years old citing insufficient data for its efficacy in older people.

Amid the dispute, Belgium health authorities have conducted a spot inspection of AstraZeneca's production site in Belgium and that's where we find CNN's Melissa Bell this morning. Melissa, so it must come as a shock to the millions of older Britain's who have got that Oxford-AstraZeneca shot that German scientists say they're not confident it'll work. What's behind this?

MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. What the German authority says essentially is that the data that's been provided on the efficiency of the vaccine for over 65 is simply not enough. There isn't enough there for them to allow it. Bear in mind of course, as you mentioned, Kim, that this is a vaccine that's been available in the United Kingdom since early January. Many people have now received it.

And I think it was because of those fears that you too, that we heard very quickly after the German announcement from both the U.K. regulator and once again from AstraZeneca on their belief that in fact, the data is sufficient to ensure that people can be safe even if they're over 65 and taking it.

We should hear later today about the European approval for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The European Medicines Agency is expected to deliver its verdict on the ability of the company to market the vaccine in the European continent. I think it's important to remember therefore, that the context for the row with AstraZeneca is over a vaccine that hasn't even yet been available in the EU.

So those shortages that we've been talking about are to do with the Moderna and the Pfizer vaccine so far. And it is because there are those shortages in countries like Germany, Spain, France all announcing that they're having to slow down their vaccination campaigns that you have to understand how difficult the situation is with AstraZeneca. The EU was really counting on those vaccines.

BRUNHUBER: All very complex and intertwined. Then there have been further salvos in the vaccine wars between the U.K. and the EU. Now I understand the EU is deciding whether to place export restrictions on vaccines. So explain this for us. What's the latest?

BELL: That's right, Kim. The EU has made it very plain that they are playing no games here. There was an inspection that you mentioned a moment ago here at this plant that produces the AstraZeneca vaccine here on the continent. The Europeans really want to make sure that AstraZeneca is telling the truth when it says that it's because of slow production at sites like this that the rollout is being delayed and there are those shortfalls in the European delivery. And of course, the Europeans are now urging -- and we heard from Ursula von der Leyen this morning who's working, she says to get that contract published. She says it's crystal clear Europe is going make sure that it gets all of the vaccines that have been promised -- Kim.

BRUNHUBER: All right, thank you very much for taking us through all of that. Melissa Bell, appreciate it.

Portugal will close the border in the coming hours in an effort to slow the spread of the virus. The restriction will be in place for two weeks. Cases are surging, and on Thursday Portugal set another new number with more than 300 COVID deaths. Hospitals are nearly full. Isa Soares takes us inside an intensive care unit that's struggling to keep up.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ISA SOARES, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A silent chaos fills this ICU ward on the outskirts of Lisbon in Portugal.

Here as patient after patient battle for breath, for life itself, only their heart monitors echo through these walls.

For a country that mastered the first wave of COVID-19, this is in alarming sight. An epidemic so ferocious that ICU wards are overwhelmed and nearing capacity. But what's mostly needed right now is medical staff.

[04:35:00]

DULCE GONCALVES, HEAD NURSE, CASCAIS HOSPITAL (through translator): I would love to always have one nurse for six patients, but most times I have one tending to eight.

SOARES (voice-over): And they, lead nurse Dulce Goncalves tells us, are overworked and beyond exhausted.

GONCALVES (through translator): I don't even have words to say it. The difficult part is really working too many hours.

SOARES (voice-over): But there's no respite for the lot, as hospitals feel the immense weight of this latest wave.

DR. NUNO CORTE-REAL, CASCAIS HOSPITAL CLINICAL DIRECTOR (through translator): The hospitals are all overwhelmed and the Cascais Hospital is no exceptional. We are nearing our limit if we're not there already. And what we're seeing is that the services that exist in Portugal are starting to be overrun by this tsunami.

SOARES (voice-over): Across the country, hospitals are struggling to cope with the rapid surge in new cases. But doctors telling CNN they estimate 25 percent of all new cases have been caused by the variant discovered in the U.K.

So it's all hands on deck here. With large military health units being set up in Lisbon and Porto. Even cafeterias are being turned into wards.

All in a bid to avoid scenes like this. Patients being triaged in lines of ambulances waiting outside overcrowded hospitals in Lisbon.

But as the admissions grow throughout the country, so do the scars they carry.

Dr. Gustavo Carona tells me --

DR. GUSTAVO CARONA, PEDRO HOSPITAL, INTENSIVE CARE PHYSICIAN: We are dealing with the patient suffering in a way that we have never seen before, and it's a very slow disease. It's not like they arrive in the hospital and then they die. They are there for hours, for days.

SOARES (voice-over): Doctor Carona has been on the front lines of wars in the Middle East and Africa. But this, he tells me, isn't a war.

CARONA: It's quite complex to deal with intensive care patients. So you cannot find specialists in a vending machine. And the problem is that people don't understand that there is a limit to our capacity.

SOARES (voice-over): Doctors say the messaging out of Portugal has been clear. Though many have criticized the government for relaxing measures at Christmas, including allowing families to gather and for going ahead with presidential elections just days ago. A debate staff at this hospital simply have no time for.

Here there's only a spirit of mission. But the fear is that this will soon fade away as exhaustion and anxiety begin to set in.

SOARES: Isa Soares, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER: The pandemic is piling enormous amounts of pressure on health care professionals. And some of them are using brutally frank language to describe the conditions they and their patients are facing. They say some people are making matters worse. Earlier I talked Dr. Katie Sanderson in London. She's with the Doctor's Association U.K. I asked her if she had experience, any backlash from COVID-19 deniers and this is what she told me.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATIE SANDERSON, MEMBER, DOCTORS ASSOCIATION U.K.: It is so upsetting and demoralizing. And I think we need to be very, very careful about these two separate issues. So, it's completely legitimate to have a debate about how to manage COVID in the midst of society from a public health perspective, what measures should be in place. What degree of lockdown we should have?

I think that's a totally legitimate debate. That is completely different to denying something, which is a fact, which is that COVID does exist, it is very infectious, it makes a proportion of people it infects extremely ill, and it will make some of them die, even with the very best medical care. And I think it's really important to differentiate between those two things.

And the reason it is so upsetting, people saying COVID is a hoax is because you know that it will cause some people to behave in a way where they take risks they wouldn't otherwise have taken. They get COVID, and they potentially become very, very unwell. And that's preventable, and I think when you are in hospital, absolutely doing your best to look after people, to get them through it, it's just horrifying. The idea that people are getting this infection needlessly when they could not have done.

And I suppose that's why we feel so, so strongly about this. You know, people are entitled to hold whatever views they want, but I don't think we should be tolerant of views that endanger other people's lives.

BRUNHUBER: And often those in power aren't helping either. In the U.K. we've seen, you know, something we see here, you know, medical populism, basically government led anti-science views. In the most recent case in the U.K. there are member of parliament reportedly endorsed his conspiracy theories. Said that COVID numbers are being manipulated to exaggerate the scale of the pandemic, which sounds very familiar to those of us here. So how is that made the situation, you know, worse and harder for you to deal with?

[04:40:00]

SANDERSON: It's appalling. And I think what we need to be realistic about is this is the situation we are in the U.K. with a radical lockdown. Which is that we have nearly 4,000 patients on ventilators. We have hospitals where 70 or 80 percent of the beds are taken up with patients with COVID in hospitals which would normally be full of patients with other illnesses at this time of year.

We have huge amounts of elective surgery which is being cancelled. With thigs like knee replacements, hip replacements, cancer operations, which have a massive impact on people's lives. And this is a situation with a radical lockdown. And sometimes you just have to ask yourself, what would convince these people?

Desmond Swayne who you are referring to, said that this was a manageable risk, and it was being over exaggerated. You know, this is the situation we're in with these measures and you just sometimes wonder, what do these people want? Do they want people to be dying in a hospital car parks, dying in streets, dying in corridors before they will accept that this is -- this is serious? It's sort of a beggar's belief.

And I think people are saying the NHS isn't overwhelmed. We have intensive care units where one intensive care nurse is looking after two or three patients which is sort of unheard of previously. Intensive care is an environment where people have one to one nursing.

We are under so much pressure. And I think, you know, people need to be careful what they wish for, and none of us want to be living with these kinds of restrictions. But we also just want to make sure that life isn't lost, you know, preventively through getting into a situation where people who need medical care aren't unable to access it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BRUNHUBER (on camera): Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny will stay behind bars after losing an appeal. What the U.S. State Department is saying. A live report from Moscow is next. Stay with us.

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[04:45:00]

BRUNHUBER: Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny will stay in a Moscow jail after he lost his appeal to be released. Yesterday a judge said his 30 day detention is lawful as he awaits another court date next month. Police grabbed Navalny last week as he returned from Germany where he spent months recovered from Novichok poisoning.

White House says President Joe Biden brought up the case in his call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. With more on this here's senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen who joins us from Moscow. Fred, so Navalny staying in jail wasn't really a surprise to most of us really. But obviously, it's going to make those tensions between his supporters and authorities a lot worse. What's the latest?

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well I think you're absolutely right. I think that the tensions certainly are going to grow because of that. And I can tell you, I was inside the courtroom and I saw that feed, Alexey Navalny of course was on a video link from the jail where he's being held -- which by the way is one of the toughest jails in all of Moscow, which is already saying a lot.

And I think if anything Alexey Navalny went into that hearing pretty much believing that his detention was going to be prolonged. But he did understand that he did have a platform there to speak not only to his supporters, but of course that all of that would then also be inside the international discussion as well.

Alexey Navalny wasted no time, he ripped into the court. Ripped into his detention and also ripped into Russian President Vladimir Putin. Let's have a look at what happened.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PLEITGEN (voice over): Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny not backing down despite being kept in jail after a Russian court hearing that he called a sham.

This is demonstrative lawlessness aimed at intimidating me and everyone else, he said. And it's not even done by the judges because the judges here are just obedient slaves. It's done by people who have been stealing from our country for 20 years.

Navalny was detained immediately when he landed in Moscow after recovering from poisoning by the chemical weapon Novichok. Tens of thousands came out last weekend to demand his release despite a massive police response.

Far from being intimidated, Navalny, who was only allowed to attend his own hearing via video link from the notorious Moscow jail where he is detained, called on Russians to keep protesting.

I support those who protest, he said. They are the last barrier preventing this country from slipping into complete degradation. They are the defenders of our country, and the true patriots. He won't be able to scare us. We have the majority.

Vladimir Putin recently took the unusual step of publicly denying ownership of a palatial Black Sea residence that Navalny's group alleges was funded by corruption. The opposition leader's lawyer tells me he believes the authorities are nervous and looking to lock Navalny up for a long time.

VADIM KOBZEV, NAVALNY'S LAWYER (through translator): Today's decision is a clear signal that next week he will be essentially sent to prison.

(CROWD CHANTING)

PLEITGEN (voice-over): Surprisingly, turnout at last weekend's pro- Navalny demo was high not only in Moscow but in many regions across all of Russia. Lawyer Elsa Nisanbekova helps those who get into trouble for protesting in Kazan, about 500 miles east of Moscow.

ELSA NISANBEKOVA, LAWYER (through translator): I was honestly surprised by how many people came out. We usually have small demos under 1,000 people. But this time, this was a huge event.

PLEITGEN (voice-over): The Kremlin has ripped into what it calls, quote, illegal protests. But despite remaining in detention, Alexey Navalny and his movement so far show no signs of slowing down.

(END VIDEOTAPE) PLEITGEN (on camera): And Kim, Alexey Navalny at the end of the hearing obviously showed himself to be quite disappointed and angry. The last thing we heard on the video link as it was being cut from that prison that he was in was that he didn't expect anything different even as that hearing began.

Alexey Navalny later published a letter where he said that he continues to support those who are protesting on his behalf. And of course, his organization and himself are calling for further nationwide protests here in Russia to happen this Sunday. So certainly this looks like it's something that at least in the near and midterm is not going away. Of course, increasingly also becoming an issue for Russian President Vladimir Putin -- Kim.

BRUNHUBER: All right, thank you so much. Senior international correspondent Frederik Pleitgen in Moscow.

A no fee trading app that dared to pump the brakes on GameStop's wild run is now accused of market manipulation and not just by millennials but also by prominent Republicans and Democrats. We'll have details next. Stay with us.

[04:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRUNHUBER: The U.S. Senate Banking Committee will meet over the turbulent state of the stock market. That's after investors on the online platform Reddit banded together to stick it to the Wall Street establishment and get rich quick. They drove up stocks in several companies, including GameStop, a struggling chain of video game stores. So much so in fact that Robinhood, the trading app, blocked trading for the company sparking outrage.

So to make sense of it all is John Defterios joining us from Abu Dhabi. John, so for nearly a month these day traders could basically trade at will. But now that's all changed. So explain to us how this is happening.

JOHN DEFTERIOS, CNN BUSINESS EMERGING MARKETS EDITOR: Well, it's extraordinary because this has been a one way bet before the attention and then the attention and boom attracts some regulation. That's how we saw at play here.

Take a look at three major stocks that have been on the radar of 13, right, GameStop, AMC Entertainment, Bed, Bath & Beyond. And you look at the wave that I was talking about and then they pulled the plug on the trade, how much volatility and the correction that we saw.

Robinhood suggesting, Kim, they had to do this. Because they are regulated by the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also they have to have capital requirements to cover those trades and losses, depending on their investors. So the first time they did so in a major way.

[04:55:00] We also spoke to the founder of the investment page on Reddit, the CEO of the group WallStreetBets, and he was saying the game has changed because the day traders have more sophistication than people think and are armed with technology. Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAIME ROGOZINSKI, FOUNDER WALLSTREETBETS: The access, which is the key to your question, is the biggest part. Because this is so easy, free, readily available, completely gamified on people's cell phones, they're able to instantly get in and participate and start using these sophisticated leveraged tools that they're able to exploit the asymmetry of money, right? A lot of people, little money but they're forcing the big guys to -- you know, they're forcing the hands of the big guys.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DEFTERIOS (on camera): And that's the view on Capitol Hill challenging the big guys and the question being raised is why would they stop from buying the stock yesterday? So we have this kind of strange alliance between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leftist progressive and Ted Cruz, an alt-right conservative from Texas. Both are saying that should not have happened, trying to protect their ability to trade, and that's why they're calling for investigations on Capitol Hill.

A former regulator at the Securities and Exchange Commission was saying, we'll have to take a bigger look. You have a herd of 2 million traders here acting in unison. If that's the case, it may need to be regulated in the future because of the volatility.

BRUNHUBER: Yes, it a fascinating story that obviously we'll keep following. Thanks so much for explaining it all for us. John Defterios live from Abu Dhabi.

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

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