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Interview With Former Senior White House COVID Response Adviser Andy Slavitt; Elsa Targets Florida; President Biden Renews Vaccination Push. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired July 06, 2021 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: All right, brand-new hour. I'm Victor Blackwell.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: And I'm Alisyn Camerota.

Any moment now, President Biden will speak from the White House about his new plans to get more people vaccinated after missing that July 4 goal. He wants to ramp up outreach, but how?

Let's bring in CNN senior White House correspondent Phil Mattingly.

So, Phil, what is the president's plan to get the 100 million-plus adults who are resistant vaccinated?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, I think you can look at it through the framing of, yes, they missed the 70 percent by July 4 goal to have every adult with at least one vaccination, or 70 percent of those adults.

But I also think you view right now in this moment and what you're going to hear from the president through the lens of the urgency the White House feels right now because of the spread of the Delta variant over the course of the last several weeks, because you're starting to see case counts rise, particularly in areas with low vaccination rates.

Now, what you're going to hear the president say not necessarily a stream of new initiatives, more an expansion of a strategy that they have had in place over the course of the last several weeks, a heavy focus on really trying to get the message out about what the vaccine entails, why they believe it safe, why they believe it works, very kind of campaign-style, door-knocking, going door to door trying to let people know about that information.

Also, a key element that you're hearing a lot from White House officials, they want to get as many vaccines as possible to primary care physicians, to pediatricians, knowing that people trust their doctors, knowing that people visit their doctors, thinking that is a really good outlet or an opportunity to reach those who haven't been vaccinated yet.

Expanding mobile clinics, it's been a piece of their strategy for several months now. They want to ramp that up, and also trying to work with various workplaces to see if they can get clinic set up at different jobs, understanding that people sometimes run into issues when it comes to timing, their ability to actually get off work, if they have got families to be able to go get vaccinated.

They just see a combo of things here. One of them is obviously the ease of getting the vaccine, a key component of this, but also informationally, trying to reach those who maybe aren't willing yet to get it, but are open to it.

But I think it all kind of underscores the point that, while the White House and top public health officials make clear the United States has made progress on the vaccine front that's really unparalleled across the world, there are still, Alisyn, as you noted, more than 100 million people who have not gotten that first dose yet on the adult level.

And with the kind of emergence of the Delta variant, it is posing very, very real risk to the progress that has been made up to this point.

BLACKWELL: Well, look, we had a hospital executive on last hour who talked about the surge in cases in his ICU. More than 96 percent of the people there are unvaccinated who are in those beds.

There has to be a degree of frustration when there is a solution to this that keeps people out of those beds, that keeps people off ventilators, and they're just not taking advantage of it.

MATTINGLY: Yes, it's interesting.

I actually asked White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki this question just about an hour ago. Are you frustrated? Is the president frustrated, given the fact that there is a simple solution and it's more available than it's ever been anywhere else in the world?

She said the federal government doesn't have the luxury to be frustrated. But, behind closed doors, I think, while they knew this was coming, they understand the issues, they certainly aren't new here, they recognize that it only takes one shot, one dose, two doses to be able to solve this problem, and they would really like for people to pursue that avenue, guys.

[15:05:15]

BLACKWELL: Phil Mattingly for us there at the White House, thank you so much.

CAMEROTA: OK. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Elsa is getting stronger and zeroing in on Florida, a hurricane warning issued for parts of the state's west coast.

BLACKWELL: Where people have been filling sandbags ahead of what could be a dangerous storm surge, and are stocking up on supplies and gas.

Tampa International Airport not taking any chances. It's suspending commercial flights at 5:00 p.m. Eastern.

CNN national correspondent Randi Kaye is in Tampa.

Randi, tell us what's happening there.

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Victor, we are in Clearwater Beach, just outside Tampa. And it's as if there isn't a storm or a possible hurricane coming. I will step out here, and you can just take a look at the scene here behind me.

This is the beach, beautiful white sand beaches. It is packed. The beach is crowded. Everybody is out and about enjoying the sunshine. In fact, we couldn't even get a parking space for a bit. The parking lot is so crowded here.

So, people are certainly--

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: Randi, sorry to interrupt. We will be back to you.

But President Biden is speaking now on his vaccine outreach.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: -- from this deadly virus.

Today, after receiving a briefing from my entire COVID-19 team, I'm proud to announce that we're getting even closer because of our wartime effort to administer 300 million shots in arms in just 150 days. More than 182 million Americans have received at least one shot, including nearly 90 percent of seniors and 70 percent of adults over the age of 27.

By the end of this week, will have reached the mark of 160 million fully vaccinated Americans. And that's a goal I set in March, and I'm thrilled we're going to hit just a few days after July the 4.

So, we will have 160 million fully vaccinated Americans, up from roughly three million when we took office five months ago. We see why it matters. COVID-19 cases and deaths are down by 90 percent since January.

Millions of fully vaccinated Americans are getting back to -- they're living their lives as they did before. Businesses are reopening and hiring and rehiring. And projected economic growth is the highest it's been, projected growth is the highest it's been in four decades.

And the bottom line is, the virus is on the run. And America is coming back. We're coming back together.

This is one of the greatest achievements in American history. And you, the American people, made it happen. But our fight against this virus is not over. Right now, as I speak to you, millions of Americans are still unvaccinated and unprotected. And because of that, their communities are at risk. Their friends are at risk. The people they care about are at risk.

This is an even bigger concern because of the Delta variant. In today's briefing, we discussed how the Delta variant is already responsible for half of all cases in many parts of this country. It's more easily transmissible, potentially more dangerous. And it should be, because of reconsideration -- look, let put it another way.

It seems to me this should cause everybody to think twice. And it should cause reconsideration, especially in young people, who may have thought that they didn't have to be vaccinated to worry about it and didn't have to do anything about it up to now.

But the good news is that our vaccinations are highly effective. Fully vaccinated Americans have a high degree of protection, including against this Delta variant. Study after study after study has shown that, since early May, virtually every COVID-19 hospitalization and death in the United States has been among the unvaccinated.

So, if you're vaccinated, you're protected. But if you're unvaccinated, you're not, and you're putting yourself, more importantly, maybe from your perspective, your family and your friends at risk.

So, please get vaccinated now. It works. It's free. And it's never been easier. And it's never been more important. Do it now, for yourself and the people you care about, for your neighborhood, for your country.

It sounds corny, but it's a patriotic thing to do. In today's briefing, we discussed how our administration is going to devote the remainder of the summer to a special focus on five ways to make gains in getting those of you who are unvaccinated vaccinated, because here's the deal.

We are continuing to wind down the mass vaccination sites that did so much in the spring to rapidly vaccinate those eager to get their first shot, and their second shot, for that matter, if they needed a second.

[15:10:08]

Now we need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and oft times door to door, literally knocking on doors, to get help to the remaining people protected from the virus.

Look, equity, equality, it remains at the heart of our responsibility of ensuring the communities that are the hardest hit by the virus have the information and the access to get vaccinated.

So, as we shift from these centralized mass vaccination sites, where we're doing thousands of people a day, we're going to put even more emphasis on getting vaccinated in your community close to home, conveniently, at a location you're already familiar with.

First, first thing we're going to do, this includes 42,000 local pharmacies where folks with questions can talk to the pharmacist they know and already have done with -- dealt with. These locations overwhelmingly allow you to walk in without an appointment, get the vaccination when you're picking up your prescription or just going in to get your toothpaste or something else you need from a drugstore.

Second, my team is going to place renewed emphasis on getting the vaccines to more and more family doctors and health care providers, so more Americans can get this shot at their doctor's office from the folks that they know and they trust the most.

Third thing we're going to do, we're going to step up efforts to get vaccines to your family doctors and other doctors who serve younger people, so that adolescents ages 12 to 18 can get vaccinated and as they go for back-to-school checkups or getting ready for the physicals they need for fall sports.

Fourth, we're also intensifying our efforts to meet people where they are outside of the neighborhoods, pharmacies and doctor's office. This includes continuing to work with employers to make vaccination shots available at work, on a work site, if possible, or -- and/or give their employees paid time off to get vaccinated at a nearby facility.

And, fifth and finally, we're sending out more mobile clinic -- more mobile clinic units out there to help people with -- at special events, summer festivals, sporting events, as well as places of worship, wherever we can find people gathered.

In addition to these initiatives to continue to vaccinate the unvaccinated, we're stepping up our preparations to respond to the outbreaks we're going to see among the unvaccinated. For that, we're mobilized what I'm calling COVID-19 surge response teams.

These teams are made up of experts from FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and elsewhere across our government, other groups. And they're going to help states that have particular problems prevent, detect and respond to the spread of the Delta variant among unvaccinated people in communities with low vaccination rates.

And some states have very low vaccination rates. They're going to be able to do -- we're going to deploy things like testing to expand detection of the virus, medicines to help treat the infected. And we're going to provide federal personnel to fill gaps in staffing and technical experts to help investigate outbreaks, because they're going to happen in states with very low vaccination rates.

The bottom line is, my administration is doing everything it can to lead a whole-of-government response at the federal, state and local levels to defeat the pandemic. But we need everyone to do their part. Millions of Americans have already done that. We have to keep it up, though. We have to keep it up until we're finished.

Let me close with this. We are emerging from one of the darkest years in our nation's history into a summer of hope and joy, hopefully. Think about where you were -- where you were last year, where you are today, what you were able to do last year at this time and do today.

It's a year of hard-fought progress. We can't get complacent now. The best thing you can do to protect yourself and your family and the people you care about the most is get vaccinated. The best things community can do to protect themselves is to increase vaccination rates.

You can do this. You can do this. Let's finish the job, finish it together.

God bless you all. And, please, please get vaccinated. It makes a big difference. As I said, it's the patriotic thing to do.

May God protect our troops. Thank you.

QUESTION: Mr. President, on the latest ransomware attack, can you tell us if you believe that rises to the level of U.S. retaliation?

[15:15:02]

BIDEN: I can tell you a couple things.

I received an update from my national security team this morning. It appears to have caused minimal damage to U.S. businesses, but we're still gathering information to the full extent of the attack. And I'm going to have more to say about this in the next several days. We're getting more detailed information.

But that's what I can tell you now. And I feel good about our ability to deal and respond.

(CROSSTALK)

CAMEROTA: OK, you have been listening there to President Biden spell out his five-pronged approach to getting more people vaccinated.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

CAMEROTA: He did say that he's going to -- that they think they're going to hit that ambitious goal that they had set for July 4 later this week. But that's still not enough. It's 70 percent of all adults.

So now they have this five-pronged approach for how to get the reluctant vaccinated.

BLACKWELL: Yes, and a lot of what he focused on was access to make it easier for people to get the vaccine, to make sure that there are these mobile units at these summer festivals and sports events, or that you can get them at your pharmacy when you're going in for toothpaste.

What we're hearing, though, from the medical professionals -- and we spoke with one last hour -- we got one coming up -- is that it's not exactly about access. It's just people, in large part, those who are reluctant to get it. It's not that they can't get a shot. It's that they don't want it yet.

So, that door-to-door education may be the most useful element of this. So, we will see how successful the administration is in reaching that goal in the next couple of days; 160 million fully vaccinated in the next few days looking forward as well.

CAMEROTA: Joining us now is the former White House senior adviser for COVID-19 response, Andy Slavitt. He's also the author of the new book "Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response."

Andy, great to have you here. I'm sure you were listening in there to President Biden. He laid out this five-pronged approach to getting the millions, the 100 million-plus adults who are reluctant, vaccinated.

Can you just dumb that down for me? What's the one thing that could change today, what's the one thing that could get the reluctant to get vaccinated?

ANDY SLAVITT, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE ADVISER FOR COVID RESPONSE: What president really described today is a ground game.

And I think he and the White House team are all over kind of the details, which is essentially getting to people where they are, listening when they're thinking about it, et cetera.

But there is one thing that he didn't mention, because I think it -- he knows it would be inappropriate from to mention, that is a big thing that they are -- that is going to happen shortly. And that is that the FDA is going to offer final approval for Pfizer and then at some point after that Moderna.

For many of the people that he's talking about and you were talking about that are on the fence, that will be a telltale sign for them to say, why am I on the fence any longer? This has now been fully approved by the FDA. And even though it's got a great record already, that will, I think, be another stamp of approval.

CAMEROTA: When will that happen?

SLAVITT: I think we can expect hopefully this to happen during the month of July for the FDA. I mean, there's a lot of moving pieces.

It's not as easy. But it could be in August. But I think it'll be sometime hopefully in the next four to five weeks. And I think that will be very, very good news.

CAMEROTA: That's really interesting, Andy, because I have spoken to just a small focus group of vaccine-reluctant, resistant, really, people.

And they did cite that, I mean, not every one of them. But they did bring that up, that there was lack of full FDA approval. But do you have some sort of -- does the White House or you have some sort of data points that that has been a big holdout for people?

SLAVITT: Yes, I mean, you think about people who haven't gotten vaccinated, it's probably for two main reasons.

I mean, and one of them isn't necessarily that they're anti-vaccine, because most people have gotten most of their vaccine shots. It's either because they're sort of indifferent. Generally speaking, they're under 25. And God bless the under 25. I have got two of them in my family. They're wonderful people, but they got a lot going on in their lives and getting vaccinated against COVID isn't at the top of their list.

So, really, you got to make it convenient for them. And then the second are people to whom this is a more considered decision. The decision to put something in their in their body is something that they want more questions answered. For some of us, we didn't need a lot of questions answered.

But for some people, very reasonably so, they want to understand about long-term side effects, et cetera. So I wouldn't be very -- I wouldn't be surprised if many of those people, when they see the news coming from the FDA, use that as an opportunity and they should use that as an opportunity if they haven't already to get vaccinated.

And, finally, the third thing I'd say is, this Delta variant, while we don't want to scare people, the Delta variant and what's going on around the world should be something that people pay attention to. It's not a matter of getting vaccinated for the fun of it.

[15:20:06]

It's a matter of getting vaccinated so you don't end up in the hospital or worse.

CAMEROTA: Here's this -- the latest map. This shows the new cases in the past week.

And you will see that there are 10 states that are going in the wrong direction. Those are the states in the red. What's going to happen in those states in the next month?

SLAVITT: Well, there's no question that in communities around the country that have low vaccination levels, we're going to see outbreaks, like the one we saw in Galveston, Texas, at a summer camp, where we have a lot of 12-to-16-year-olds that were not vaccinated, presumably.

And so we're going to continue to see that. Now, it won't feel like it did last year. It won't -- those aren't the kind of things that should overwhelm our hospitals. But for everybody that gets COVID, those are preventable cases. Those are preventable cases, because we have the tools now to help people not get vaccinated -- I mean, sorry -- not get COVID by getting vaccinated.

So it really is a shame every time we will see one of those outbreaks. And it could be a wedding, it could be a church event, it could be a camp, it could be any kind of gathering. But we can expect to see that more and more in those communities, because the Delta variant spreads easier than the 2020 vintage.

CAMEROTA: One of the things that President Biden said he's going to work on is getting the vaccine into primary care physicians' offices, so that you can go for your annual checkup or whatever and your doctor can give it to you and your doctor can speak directly to you.

Why isn't that happening? Why don't -- why doesn't every primary care physician already have the vaccine?

SLAVITT: Well, a couple things.

First of all, as you may recall that these vaccines require a level of storage and deep freeze and distribution. They also come in pretty big lots. So those are things that have been in the process of changing, so that more doctors are able to hold those vaccines.

Right now, many primary care physicians, particularly those that work in larger settings, do have access to the vaccine. But the problem is, we have got lots of small practices, one doctor, two doctors, a remote setting, and they may not have the freezer or the refrigeration, et cetera.

So, in the meantime, people should have their doctor send them right over to the pharmacy, where they have got plenty of vaccines. But I think putting them in more places will just mean that you can get people real time when they walk into the doctor's office. So it's a smart idea.

CAMEROTA: Well, some of our on-air doctors have said that one thing that we at least in the media should change is the messaging around this. So, of course, we focus on the Delta variant. Of course, we focus on the states that have -- are seeing spikes, because that's kind of the definition of news, but that the real story, at least Dr. Reiner was saying, is the medical marvel that are these mRNA vaccines and how fast they have been able to be rolled out and how 116 million Americans -- adults have gotten it.

And so I'm just wondering if you think that the White House should change their messaging too and just sort of start telling a more positive story, including the fact that research suggests that some of these vaccines even work on other viruses, that it's even more of a marvel than we had thought.

SLAVITT: Well, Dr. Reiner is right on, as he usually is.

And I think what I think we know is that it's -- people want to hear from their own medical professionals. The people that are -- that sort of trust the government to tell them about vaccines, I assure you, have mostly almost entirely gotten vaccinated.

But -- so people want to hear from physicians. They want to hear from pharmacists. They want to hear from people they trust. They want to hear from people locally. And so the ground game the president described today is -- the reason it's a ground game is because it's all about getting people in the local community, whether it's an employer, doctor, some other influential person, like a clergyperson, to have the information they need to answer people's questions reliably.

What we don't want is, you don't want people who are thinking about whether to get a vaccine or not to go on Facebook, because the people on Facebook are really good at knowing how to plant doubts. We want them to go to reliable sources.

So, ground games are harder, necessarily, than doing an air game and just saying, hey, here's one great message. But they're more permanent, they're more lasting, they're more effective. And with this current group of people considering things, that's where they're going to get their decision made -- decisions made.

CAMEROTA: Andy Slavitt, always great to talk to you. Thank you for the time.

SLAVITT: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK, still ahead, we're going to take you back to Florida, as we track Tropical Storm Elsa.

Plus, U.S. Central Command says the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan is now 90 percent complete. CNN is on the ground to see what happens next.

BLACKWELL: Plus, an in-depth look at how pervasive former President Trump's big lie will be in the 2022 midterms. Hundreds of candidates are already backing that conspiracy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:29:17]

BLACKWELL: Tropical Storm Elsa is headed toward Florida's west coast. And it could be a hurricane by the time it makes landfall.

A live look now at EarthCam there. This is Naples. You can see a few people there. Of course, there's a raindrop down the center of the screen. So that gives you an indication of the weather. Some people with umbrellas there on the pier as well, surf kicking up just a little bit.

CAMEROTA: I mean, it's definitely looking more ominous, I would say, the gray skies.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

CAMEROTA: CNN meteorologist Tom Sater is tracking it at the Severe Weather Center.

So, Tom, when exactly do we expect landfall in Florida?

TOM SATER, AMS METEOROLOGIST: I think by tomorrow morning around sunrise, it'll be up to the Big Bend. And that's a good place if you're going to have a landfall in Florida, because it's mostly unpopulated.

But it's going to skirt the entire coast. Now, remember, this hour, where Randi Kaye was enjoying some sunshine, and said the beaches were full in the Tampa area. They're just on the edge now of seeing the rain move into the area.