Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

The U.S. to Recommend Booster Shots; Dr. Jayne Morgan is Interviewed about Booster Shots; Finger Pointing over Taliban Takeover; School Districts fight For Mask Mandates; Concern Over Women's Rights Under Taliban. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired August 17, 2021 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: For Kelly when little John comes into the world here in about a month.

CNN's coverage continues right now.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everyone. I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

Breaking overnight, sources tell CNN that the Biden administration is close to recommending most Americans should get a COVID-19 booster shot eight months, that's the timeframe, after becoming fully vaccinated. This would be a major expansion, broadening the pool of people encouraged to get an additional dose far beyond those who are recommended now, those are people with compromised immune systems.

But there are immediate questions and concerns. The World Health Organization telling CNN this morning it is critical that everyone around the world get their first and second doses before booster shots are recommended for the fully vaccinated.

HARLOW: And that's key.

Also this, after a day of chaos and desperation across Afghanistan, Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby tells CNN this morning the United States will do everything it can in the coming weeks to help Afghans who worked with the U.S. to safely leave the country.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: After we've done the force flow in, all the troops are in, and then we can just keep running military aircraft in and out, just on the military craft alone, we believe we can get between 5,000 and 9,000 people out per day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: We'll have much more on that, of course, in a moment. But let's begin this hour on that news on COVID boosters with our

senior health correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.

Elizabeth, good morning to you.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

HARLOW: How is this going to work? What does it mean to people waking up to this at home?

COHEN: What it means is that for many of us who are -- just to everybody who's listening right now, there's an excellent chance that you will be getting a booster in the coming months. This should not be a surprise. This is something certainly that Tony Fauci and others have been talking about really for months and months. This is a good thing. This is saying that the vaccine, two doses of it, worked very well. Three doses work even better, especially against this delta variant that is wreaking so much havoc and that's killing so many people. So this really is not such a big deal. When you walk into a CVS or a Walgreens for your shampoo or your tooth paste, you will just go and get a vaccine as well, and that's it.

And let's talk about the groups that will be at the highest priority. What sources are telling CNN is that right now the highest priority is immunocompromised. And, of course, those folks are already able to get their third shots. Health care workers and nursing home residents and staff would be next on the list and then older populations.

So, really, kind of the same order that we saw at the beginning of the rollout. And really that's for two reasons. One, those are the folks who are most at risk. And, also, those are the folks who got it longest ago. The thinking is that after about eight months we may be seeing some waning immunity and so we're trying to start with the people who got it furthest back.

So, if you got your vaccine a month ago --

HARLOW: Right.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

COHEN: This -- this does not, right now, apply to you. But it will at some point apply to you. And, again, it's not a big deal. It's making an excellent vaccine even better.

SCIUTTO: Similar to how we deal with the flu, for instance, having additional shots every year as the virus changes.

COHEN: Right.

SCIUTTO: Elizabeth Cohen, thanks so much.

COHEN: Yes.

HARLOW: thank you. SCIUTTO: Joining me now is Dr. Jayne Morgan, a cardiologist and executive director at Piedmont Healthcare's COVID Task Force in Atlanta, Georgia.

Dr. Morgan, thanks so much. Good to have you this morning.

One thing I -- and I want to help our viewers here because viewers might be wondering, understandably, wait a second, I'm already vaccinated -- many are at least and some are not -- but I'm already vaccinated, why do I need this and what does this say about the vaccine that I've already received? Can you explain to people how this works and what additional protection it would provide, a booster?

DR. JAYNE MORGAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, PIEDMONT HEALTHCARE COVID TASK FORCE: Certainly. And thanks for having me.

One of the things we have to remember is that as we have developed increasing -- an increasing number of variants, these new clusters of mutations, we've seen the efficacy, the way that these vaccines work drop somewhat. So from 95 percent to 84 to 82 percent. And we want to make sure that we can continue to keep the efficacy, meaning how well these vaccines work, as high as possible.

And so that's why these boosters are going to come about. And we saw Pfizer submit to the FDA yesterday. They looked at all patients at the eight to nine-month mark. I think they submitted for six to 12 months out. And I think that that is entirely acceptable because certainly people who have received their vaccines say, in December and January and February, what we have seen is that we see a waning or a slight dropping now after the six-month mark of that immunization protection.

HARLOW: Doctor, good morning.

MORGAN: Hi, Poppy.

HARLOW: How necessary is this given that you've said we could face a variant that could overcome the vaccination status of the immunized, right? Until we have large swaths of this country decide to get vaccinated initially, the virus keeps mutating, getting more contagious, more dangerous, threatening young people more.

[09:05:09]

Will these booster shots help prevent against at least that rapid acceleration?

MORGAN: Yes, that's such an excellent question. We absolutely want to get first doses into everyone as soon as possible, such that we can reach herd immunity and it could be, then, that boosters will become unnecessary at some point in the future. But we're not there yet. And because we're not there and we continue to be challenged by these variants because of the development in our unvaccinated population, then Pfizer and others are moving to get ahead of this inasmuch as we possibly can to protect those who have already been vaccinated and to keep that level of protection as high as possible. We certainly don't want a situation where we now have two populations that are at risk, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated. So we're trying to make certain that that population can still remain protected.

HARLOW: Right.

SCIUTTO: And just quickly, as a practical matter, will this happen -- would boosters happen like vaccinations, first vaccination shots happened? In other words, free, available, provided by the government, et cetera?

MORGAN: They will be free as far as I have heard. They are going to be free and available. And the rollout will be very similar to the rollout that we saw with the initial single-dose Johnson & Johnson and double-dose Pfizer and Moderna. We will see that rollout in that -- in that order with health care workers, front line workers, those 65 and older, and we'll continue to see it become younger and younger and younger. But we'll have our most vulnerable and most at-risk populations first.

HARLOW: Dr. Jayne Morgan, thank you very much.

MORGAN: Thank you, Poppy.

HARLOW: All right, now to Afghanistan, where the Taliban claim they will grant amnesty, that's what they say, to all employees of the ousted government and that they should continue coming in to work.

SCIUTTO: Well, a lot of genuine doubts, and I've heard from (ph) people on the ground there about whether that's true.

The situation at the airport in Kabul has also stabilized a day after a scene like this, Afghans desperately trying to flee simply afraid for their lives under the Taliban. And there are thousands more like that, many feeling abandoned, betrayed by the U.S.

CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward, she's in Kabul, pressed the Pentagon press secretary about their plight this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Can I have your word? These people are depending on you. They are depending on America. Their lives are a threat. They have given everything to work with America to rebuild this country. And now they are asking simply for an assurance that they will not be cast aside, they will not be abandoned, that America will step up and take responsibility for the lives that are in its care at the moment.

ADM. JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: Clarissa, there's nothing hollow about the obligation that we know we have to these Afghans who so bravely helped us over the last 20 years. Believe me, nobody in the United States government more than the Pentagon understands that obligation of these individuals. And as I said before, we will continue to do whatever we can to help them get out of the country, in concert with our State Department colleagues. We are absolutely committed to that and we're going to stay and we're going to do it as -- as -- for as long as we possibly can up until the end of the month. Certainly that's when the mission ends. We're going to continue to work on that very, very hard. That's why we're continuing to flow in more forces, that's why we're continuing to flow in more aircraft.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: One senior White House official tells CNN that, quote, there is no second guessing of the president's strategy, but this official acknowledged they are under scrutiny after being blindsided, they say, by the Taliban surge. That has led to a blame game inside the administration.

HARLOW: Let's get straight to our chief national affairs correspondent, Jeff Zeleny, and CNN White House reporter Natasha Bertrand.

Jeff, good morning to you. Thanks for being with us again today.

Can you tell us what those conversations are like inside the White House right now?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Poppy and Jim, good morning.

The White House is trying to contain the fallout really from the questions of competence about the administration's handling of the situation in Afghanistan. You're right, there is no second guessing of the president's strategy. A White House official telling me that just a short time ago and saying the administration is looking forward, not backward. But it is those questions about how the government fell so quickly and why the U.S. government was not prepared that is raising questions about competence. Never in the seven months of the Biden presidency have these questions been so blistering and acute. Many from allies of this president.

Now, look at this one comment from a senior White House official to me a short time ago that really capsulizes all of what they are saying and doing here. It says, this official told me, yes, our competence is being questioned. The only way to fix that is to stabilize the airport and safely withdraw Americans and our partners to the best of our ability.

So that, of course, is the central question here going forward. We know the president is at Camp David this morning receiving his security briefings on the updates at the airport there in Kabul.

[09:10:04]

Officials here are really trying to work through getting out Americans and partners from Afghanistan. But that is going to be certainly something that's not going to happen imminently. It will take several days, perhaps longer than that. The White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has many questions to answer for his role in this, if he prepared the president for this. He'll be taking questions this afternoon here at the White House.

SCIUTTO: Natasha, the saying goes, failure is an orphan, certainly in Washington. What have you learned about pointing -- internal finger pointing within the White House? NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes, Jim, so it's already

kind of begun, the blame game here, internally about what went wrong, particularly about how the U.S. failed to evacuate all of those American citizens and all of those Afghans who helped Americans sooner, before this became a very dangerous and rushed emergency evacuation.

What we're hearing is that some at the White House believe that the president got bad advice from his top military and intelligence officials. And the president has been grilling his advisers in recent days from Camp David on how they failed to predict that the Taliban would take over so rapidly.

But what we're also hearing is that the military itself is saying that they were urging the State Department to act much sooner. That they were urging them to close the embassy in Kabul because the sooner that they closed it and the sooner they were able to start getting people out of the embassy, then the less dangerous it would become if such an emergency evacuation became necessary.

Now, the State Department, in turn, is saying that they were relying on intelligence assessments that said that they had more time here. As we know, and as we have reported, the intelligence community was kind of shifting the timeline up until very recently as to how long it would take the Taliban to overtake Kabul.

The intelligence community, meanwhile, is saying, look, we have long predicted the possibility of a rapid Taliban takeover in Afghanistan. And this -- this is what we have been telling policymakers for quite some time.

SCIUTTO: Natasha Bertrand, Jeff Zeleny, thanks so much.

Still to come this hour, I'm going to speak to former National Security Adviser John Bolton about how this happened and where the U.S. will go from here.

HARLOW: Plus, nearly 6,000 students and staff in one Florida school district are in isolation or quarantine this morning after an outbreak of COVID there. And, still, the legal battles over school mask mandates are raging.

And torrential rains are battering Haiti right now as Tropical Storm Grace moves over the country already devastated by an earthquake. We'll take you there live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:17:10]

HARLOW: All right, this just in from the American Academy of Pediatrics, child COVID-19 cases have steadily increased, those are their words, since the beginning of July. We're now learning that there were 121,000 new cases last week amid all this. Texas is now leading the nation in COVID hospitalizations for children, surpassing Florida, which also has an alarming number of pediatric COVID cases. SCIUTTO: The surge is causing local officials in both states to fight

back against statewide bans on mask mandates. A mask, after all, help prevent transmission. In Florida, the Miami-Dade County Public School superintendent says after meeting with medical experts, he expects to follow their guidance on masks in defiance of the Florida governor's ban.

CNN's Leyla Santiago has more on the growing fight over masks.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you going to -- are you going to bully him?

LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): In Florida --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Masks work.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is America.

SANTIAGO: And Texas.

MICHAEL HINOJOSA, SUPERINTENDENT, DALLAS INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICT: We need to get back to some normalcy despite all of this madness that's going on around us.

SANTIAGO: As students head back into the classroom, school districts are defying the governors, essentially banning mask mandates. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis --

GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): Parents are in the best position to know what's best for their kids.

SANTIAGO: And Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): Kids will not be forced by government or by schools to wear a mask in school.

SANTIAGO: Both Republican governors ignoring the science and data. According to CDC research, in places where mask use was required, fewer people ended up in the hospital. But Abbott and DeSantis are doubling down on their fight against mandatory masks. Schools that do not comply will face financial consequence according to both of the governors' orders.

In Miami-Dade County, the superintendent says his decision will not be made out of fear of losing his salary, but advice from his medical task force.

ALBERTO M. CARVALHO, MIAMI-DADE SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT: I am accepting 100 percent of their recommendations inclusive of mandatory masking with accommodations as determined are in the best medical interest of students.

SANTIAGO: Abbott and DeSantis are both pushing back on legal battles.

JUDGE CLAY JENKINS (D), DALLAS COUNTY: The governor is looking at polls. He's no longer even talking to his own medical experts. He's looking at polls of what Republican primary voters want to hear and working from there.

SANTIAGO: As both states see rising numbers in the latest COVID-19 case surge, a small school district in west Texas sent students and staff home to self-quarantine for two weeks after school had already started to, quote, ensure the safety of our students and staff. Florida's third largest school district, Hillsborough County, already has over 5,000 students and 300 employees in isolation or quarantine because of the rise in COVID cases.

[09:20:06]

And school has only been open for one week.

DR. LEANA WEN, FORMER BALTIMORE CITY HEALTH COMMISSIONER: We want to get our kids back in school. We don't want schools to have to close. And masking is I think a lot of us would say is something pretty small that we can do.

SANTIAGO: As public health gets mixed with politics, the president's feud with the Florida's governor is escalating.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I know there are a lot of people out there trying to turn a public safety measure, that is children wearing masks in school so they can be safe, into a political dispute.

SANTIAGO: Caught in the middle are children at school.

DESANTIS: Joe Biden suggests that if you don't do lockdown policies, then you should, quote, get out of the way. I'm standing in your way. I'm not going to let you get away with it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANTIAGO: And, you know, both governors really emphasizing parents' choice. We've been checking in with the school districts that have mask mandate with an opt-out. The overwhelming majority of parents are not opting out of the mask mandate.

Today, we expect the state board of education to hold an emergency meeting to discuss two counties, that is Alachua and Broward. They are two counties that have a mask mandate with no opt-out, something that the governor says is non-compliant with his executive order here in Florida.

HARLOW: Leyla, thank you for that critical reporting. We'll see where it all goes.

Meantime, Afghanistan's first female mayor says she is waiting for the Taliban to, quote, come for people like me and kill me. That is how terrified women are in the country right now. Her comments come as women and girls across Afghanistan fear what is next for them under Taliban rule. We will discuss with the human rights activist in Afghanistan ahead. SCIUTTO: And we're moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Futures are down. This comes as we wait for key retail data to be released. Wall Street ended the session mixed Monday, but the Dow and S&P 500 managed to finish at fresh all-time highs. We're going to keep an eye on the markets.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:26:51]

HARLOW: This morning, one of the most crucial questions out of Afghanistan is, what is the fate for millions of women and girls who are now once again under control of the Taliban. Our Clarissa Ward is on the streets of Kabul giving us an inside look.

Watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: This shop here, which is selling burkas, burkas are all-consuming, all-covering attire that are very common in Afghanistan, were particularly common under the Taliban, and are enjoying now something now of a renaissance because as the Taliban have come back into town, more and more women are afraid to walk down the street, even wearing very conservative attire like I am wearing now. And so we actually talked to the shop keeper a little while ago and he told us that he's been selling a lot more burkas because people are frightened. They're coming out. They're buying them for their wives, their daughters, whoever it may be because they feel that from now on this is the way for women to be safe on the streets.

And this is how it starts, OK, because we hear from the Taliban again and again, women's rights will be protected. Women will be allowed to be educated. Women will be allowed to go to work. But when you have women so afraid that they're going out to buy burkas because they're worried to be seen on the streets, even dressed very conservatively as I am, you start to understand how the space for women becomes smaller and smaller, how their rights become marginalized and how they ultimately become disenfranchised.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Joining me now, Pashtana Durrani, founder and executive director of LEARN, an organization that promotes digital literacy across Afghanistan, and Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, adjunct senior fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations, also spent years speaking with, interviewing on the ground with women, their struggles and their triumphs, across Afghanistan.

Thank you both very much for being here.

And, Pashtana, I want to begin with you because you have said, I have to put up a fight today so that the next generation does not have to face all of this conflict. And now you have students coming to you and saying, was it all for nothing? Look -- look where we are now. Are your students safe?

PASHTANA DURRANI, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, LEARN: Hi there.

So, I'm going to say -- go on record and say that, yes, the war is over because nobody's fighting right now. So, yes, they are safe. But it's a matter of, like, you know, a narrative (ph), do they feel safe going out? No, they don't. That's an important thing, do they feel safe getting an education? No, that's not. So you have to understand that physical safety and mental safety, they are two different things.

HARLOW: Right, and you just heard Clarissa's reporting on how it begins, right? What do you think, Pashtana, when you hear the Taliban promise, as they have to our Nic Robinson, to our Christiane Amanpour, no, women and girls can continue to live their lives, they continue to be fully educated, do you believe that?

[09:30:02]

DURRANI: See, it's like, you know, you have to walk the talk, right? If they are so willing (INAUDIBLE) study, then how come they are not