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FDA Full Approves Pfizer-BioNTech COVID Vaccine; White House Says, U.S. Evacuates 10,400 from Kabul, Most in 24-Hour Period. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired August 23, 2021 - 10:00   ET

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

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POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: Good morning, everyone. I'm so glad you're with us. It's the top of the hour. I'm Poppy Harlow.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: A good Monday morning to you, I'm Jim Sciutto.

We have some good news this morning, breaking news. The FDA has granted full approval to the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. This is a key step in getting more Americans vaccinated. It comes more than nine months after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine was administered in this country. The decision could motivate millions of Americans who still have not received a vaccine to finally get the shot. The data is behind it. It saves lives. It keeps people out of the hospital. According to the surgeon general, this could also open the door for businesses, universities, other institutions to impose or enforce vaccine requirements.

This breaking news about the Pfizer vaccine comes as vaccination rates are slowly starting to tick up. Again, three days in a row of more than a million vaccines in a day.

Let's start with CNN's Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen, as well as Dr. Paul Sax, he's Clinical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Elizabeth, first, for folks at home who say, wait a second, this already had approval, right? I mean, 363 million doses have been administered in this country. Explain the difference between emergency use authorization, which has been in place since last December, and what full approval today means.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. So, both are done based on a clinical trial of more than 40,000 people. And that's why hundreds of millions of people felt comfortable getting the shot, including you and me and Dr. Sax, when it only had emergency use authorization. 40,000, more than 40,000 people took this shot, Pfizer and the FDA looked at the data and it got emergency authorization. But it took more months to look at that data, continuously, to look at more safety and efficacy data and now it has full approval. For those of us who are already vaccinated, it's just -- it's just sort of more confirmation that we did the right thing when we got vaccinated. For folks who have been hesitant, the hope is that they'll say, oh, now that it's fully approved and not just authorized as an emergency thing, now I'll get that. So that's one of the things that they're hoping will make a difference that folks will say, now I'll get it.

Another thing that's going to happen most likely is that restaurants, schools, businesses are going to feel more comfortable mandating the vaccine. They still could have done it under emergency authorization, but they'll feel more comfortable. And that that's what's going to make people roll up their sleeves. If they can't their kid to school or they can't go to their favorite restaurant, maybe that will make them roll up their sleeves.

Also, Pfizer can now advertise their vaccine. Pharmaceutical advertising works. I mean, we've seen it over and over again. So, hopefully the folks who weren't swayed by the government advertisements, and there has been quite a bit, maybe they'll be swayed by a Pfizer advertisement. Who knows? But I think the thinking is that those mandates, Jim, are really what's going to do it. When you can't go to a concert with your friends, when your child can't go to school, that may make you roll up your sleeve.

SCIUTTO: We'll see. And there is some polling, by the way, data that shows that among the vaccine hesitant or resistant, that many said, well, full approval would change my mind. Dr. Paul Sax, I wonder, you're a clinician, you're dealing with patients, perhaps with patients who have been resistant to getting the vaccine. Is it your sense that full approval will make a difference for them?

DR. PAUL SAX, CLINICAL DIRECTOR, DIVISION OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES AT BRIGHAM WOMEN'S HOSPITAL: I think it will make a difference for some of them. Clearly, having full approval will, as was mentioned, increase the likelihood that where people work, they're going to need to get vaccinated. Vaccine mandates do have an impact especially who are on people on the fence.

The other thing, we might see additional safety data in the full review, in particular about manufacturing and distribution. Those are things that could reassure people that the vaccines really are safe. I mean, we do have enormous safety data already. I don't want people to think that this was lacking. But getting the full approval does provide that additional layer of security.

SCIUTTO: I mean, the thing is here, right, Doctor, you have two kinds of data which are encouraging. You have the data that shows it's safe, that bad effects are a very small number of people, but that the damn thing works, right? I mean, particularly with keeping people out of the hospital and keeping them alive.

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For folks who may be listening here who have not yet gotten vaccinated because they're hesitant, explain that to them what you've seen. SAX: Yes. I think that the way to look at it is you can get the vaccine for both your own personal health as well as for public health reasons. And the personal health part has been very strong. Even with delta, delta variant, which has caused some more vaccine breakthrough cases, most of the cases are mild and not -- do not end up putting people in the hospital. When you look at the rate of COVID-19 serious enough to cause hospitalization or death, it is so much higher in the unvaccinated. I cannot even begin to describe.

The other thing is that we know that the vaccines reduce the risk of transmitting the virus to other people. It's not 100 percent but it does do that. So it protects other people. It protects people in your family, protects people in your workplace. That's another important reason to get vaccinated. So, the data are stronger and stronger all the time, that this is our best pathway out of the pandemic to get as many vaccinated people as possible.

SCIUTTO: Yes. There's a big difference between getting a breakthrough infection and getting something when you're unprotected that sends you to the hospital or worse. And we do see data there that shows the vast, vast majority of people who are getting hospitalized and dying are the unvaccinated.

Elizabeth Cohen, when we talk about the potential for vaccine mandates here, we talk about a whole host of organizations. They are private companies, maybe educational institutions. We know that the U.S. military planning to mandate vaccines coming up. Do we have a sense of how many millions of Americans this will impact?

COHEN: Oh, it could be millions upon millions, if not, tens or hundreds of thousands of millions depending upon how many organizations take that up. And I think the feeling at the beginning of the vaccine rollout, Jim, was among public health experts was, oh, don't worry. Once we speak truth to Facebook nonsense, to stuff that garbage the people are reading on social media, people will get the shot.

I think the feeling now is, you know what, we're not going to convince them. This is going to be -- have to be done by mandate. As Dr. Sax talked about, vaccine mandates work. It's one thing to say, I don't feel like getting this shot. But when your boss says to you, okay, well, you don't have a job anymore, that may make you roll up your sleeve. The hope is that the mandates are really going to be the thing that turns this around.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Listen, I read one of the top Facebook posts this weekend was something with disinformation about the vaccine. I mean, it is still getting out there.

Dr. Sax, before you go, just one more question because, of course, the next group, the next milestone would be granting emergency use authorization for children under 12, and kids are going back to school, right, across the country. Do you have any sense of timeline for that?

SAX: It's a bit more complicated because the FDA has asked for additional safety data and they wanted to increase the size of the trials. It may be that they're collecting more information about the rare cases of myocarditis occur in children who are vaccinated. From an infection prevention perspective, however, I think the data are going to be very strong that getting kids vaccinated is important for preventing the spread of COVID-19.

As you know, there have been more kids, more young -- more adolescents hospitalized and sick with COVID-19 since delta came along then before, and this is something that we're all very concerned about as schools open. And as a result, I hope that the FDA approval for the younger groups can be accelerated.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And, listen, I worry about my own kids and the risk to them from the unvaccinated, as I know a lot of parents do. Elizabeth Cohen, Dr. Paul Sax, thanks for helping us break down this very important news.

SAX: Thanks, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Speaking of students, nearly 20,000 students in school, staff had to be quarantined since in-person classes began in Florida, this according to a CNN analysis of the public data. More than 6,000 COVID infections were identified among the state's 15 largest school districts. With infections surging, Miami-Dade County begins in-person classes today with a mask mandate firmly in place despite the Florida governor's ban on mask requirements and vow to punish districts who impose such mandates.

CNN's Leyla Santiago, she is in Miami-Dade. Leyla, you spoke with the superintendent there. What did he say? Is he going to stick with this despite the government's fight?

LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: He says he will. And that's not something new. He's been saying that since Miami-Dade School District passed that mandate last week. The superintendents that are moving forward with these type of mandates are well aware of what could be financial consequences. The state already notifying two districts saying, we plan to withhold state funding in the amount of salaries when it comes to superintendents or school boards.

And, you know, Jim, you just went over the numbers, right? The numbers still very troubling for school boards and superintendents who say, we are listening to the medical experts, as the governor doubles down, saying this is about parent choice.

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So we asked the superintendent what his communication been like since he made the announcement that they're moving forward with mandates last week with the governor's office. Here is what he had to say.

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ALBERTO CARVALHO, SUPERINTENDENT, MIAMI-DADE COUNTY: I received any correspondence from the governor or the commissioner. But I have no doubt that probably we will considering the messages that were sent to Broward and Alachua Counties. But, look, I've said it. I am very proud of the actions taken by this school system, very proud of the courage demonstrated by our school board and intimidation threats or consequences will not deter us from doing the right thing.

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SANTIAGO: And here is why Miami-Dade is so important. This is the largest school district in the state, 334,000 students enrolled in this district. And they are now one of seven school districts moving forward with these mandates. And, Jim, I can tell you in checking in with a few other districts, there are others that, as we speak, are considering moving down the same path.

SCIUTTO: Understood, Leyla good to have you there and seems a lot of parents support it. Thanks so much.

Still to come this hour, President Biden now says that U.S. troops may not leave Afghanistan on that self-imposed deadline of August 31st. Taliban responding those troops must be out by the end of the month. Are we going to listen to them?

Later, a spike in COVID cases fueled by the delta variant has forced an entire Texas school district into quarantine. Will that make the state's governor change his mind on mask mandates? We'll see, or do the politics rule?

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SCIUTTO: This morning, U.S. officials confirmed 10,400 people have been evacuated from the Kabul airport in just the last 24 hours. That is the most so far in a single 24-hour period. Still, President Biden says his administration might need to keep troops in Afghanistan beyond the self-imposed August 31st deadline, a little more than a week away. This over concerns that the evacuations simply won't be done by then.

The Taliban pushed back this morning, saying they want all U.S. forces out of the country by the end of the month as promised.

CNN's John Harwood joins me now. John, does the White House care about that? Do they listen to the Taliban?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Oh, I don't think the Taliban's statement is going to be determinative of what President Biden does, as he has indicated. Look, there have been several adjustments made to the evacuation process in the last couple days. One is some operations outside the airport walls, we saw those Chinook helicopters rescuing 169 Americans from a hospital, getting them inside the airport.

President Biden said yesterday they have, to some degree, secured the ability to operate outside the wire around the Kabul airport, which is protected by U.S. troops. And they've also invoked a little used law to enlist civilian aviation companies to provide planes to assist in what they're calling the throughput, that is once planes leave Kabul and land at U.S. air bases elsewhere, the civilian aircraft are being used to move them on to other destinations to allow that flow to continue.

So, 37,000 over the last nine days, that's a significant number, Eight days to go. We expect the G7 partners to discuss the possibility of extending that deadline beyond August 31st. President Biden has said, if there are Americans that we know of that are in Afghanistan that have not gotten out, we will stay to get them out.

So, it's a fluid situation, but the bottom line is it's looking a lot better than it did a week ago at this time, 37,000, a significant number, an indeterminant number of both Americans and Afghan allies yet to be evacuated.

SCIUTTO: And so many more still asking for the same rescue. John Harwood at the White House, thank you.

Joining me now to discuss, Ambassador Ronald Neumann, he's former ambassador to Afghanistan, current president of the American Academy of Diplomacy. Ambassador, thank you for taking the time this morning.

RONALD NEUMANN, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO AFGHANISTAN: Thank you. Good to be with you. I was in Kabul just a week -- a month ago.

SCIUTTO: Goodness. Given that experience there, long experience there, I've spoken to Afghans, particularly those who worked for the U.S. government, who say their lives are in danger. The Taliban is looking for them right now. Is it a fact that it's a matter of life and death, that if you're an Afghan who has really any tie to the outgoing U.S. forces there, U.S. government, that you'll be a target?

NEUMANN: There is a high probability because the Taliban are speaking in two directions. On the one hand, they're saying, oh, amnesty and nobody needs to be afraid. And on the other hand, we have constant reports coming in of Taliban going door to door looking for people and some reports of executions. So, a very high risk and information somewhat situation confused.

SCIUTTO: Before I get to blame here because I do want to ask your view given your many years on the ground there, talk about now. Is there any way to turn this around? Beyond saving as many lives as possible, is the Afghan experiment dead?

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Is there any future to negotiations with the Taliban government?

NEUMANN: Immediately, the answer I think is no. No. There's a whole generation that have come of age in 20 years, people that have balked at our values. A lot of them would like to leave but probably aren't going to get out. The country has changed. It's now going through a period, in all probability of a lot of oppression.

Where the seeds sprouted in those years might grow in the future, who knows? But in the short-term, this is a disaster. I mean, this is an American defeat. The Taliban know it. Al Qaeda knows it. And all of our allies know it. I'm not sure if President Biden knows it, but the British parliament had a two-hour session condemning the United States from one of our oldest and best allies?

SCIUTTO: Yes. I spoke to former British member of parliament yesterday who made exactly the same point, abandoning not just Afghanistan, in his view, but the U.K. as a close U.S. ally. For Biden, in your view, would it have been smarted to do as many of his military commanders recommended to leave a small U.S. military footprint there, perhaps 2,500 soldiers given them both counter-terror ability but also apparently much needed confidence to the Afghan military?

NEUMANN: Yes, it would have been. And you put your finger on the key point, which is confidence. Because when the administration says the Afghan army wouldn't fight. Well, hey, man, for the last three years, they've taken thousands of casualties, more casualties every year than we've taken in the whole time in Afghanistan. So what changed? What changed was confidence. And that confidence was sucked out now in part by lousy governance in Kabul.

Afghan government gets good half of the blame, but we get the other half. Our actions progressively undermine the confidence that there would be any support and this is not a secret or a surprise. I wrote about it in the Washington Post when I came back from Afghanistan back in July. We have another article where several of my colleagues, former ambassadors, several weeks ago before the final disaster, in which we made these points there were actions the administration could have taken. They are trying to keep the focus on the need for the decision to leave, to avoid the debacle of how that decision was executed. The point is they could have executed it very differently.

SCIUTTO: The president said -- in the final analysis, it was his decision. He said it in so many words, the buck stops with me. However, it is the job of a national security adviser to advise the president, carry out his decisions, the secretary of state, Tony Blinken, to advise the president, perhaps to contradict the president, right, when giving advice. Do you believe, from your perspective, that folks at that level should consider resigning?

NEUMANN: Well, that sort of depends on what advice they gave. If any of them were smart enough to see the problems coming and pushrf for change and got overruled, then they're professionals. They salute and execute the decision.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

NUEMANN: If none of them took the -- took seriously the -- all the advice they were getting, just take one point. They could have begun a massive program to remove the special immigrant visa applicants who had not finished this laborious, labyrinthian process that we have created. They could have just started moving them out three months ago, whether it was to third countries or whether it was back to U.S. base and just keep them on the base while you finish the evaluation. If they had done that, you would have had probably 70,000 or 80,000 people we wouldn't be dealing with now for evacuations. SCIUTTO: Yes, foresight, planning. Ambassador Ronald Neumann --

NEUMANN: -- take a lot of foresight. This took just listening to people -- you know, you publicized this dissent cable that we've heard about, I haven't seen it, from Kabul, which was a couple weeks ago saying the same thing. They didn't take the advice they were getting on how to avoid disaster.

SCIUTTO: Ambassador Ronald Neumann, thanks for your service there in Afghanistan and as a diplomat many years and we appreciate you coming on this morning.

NEUMANN: Thank you. A pleasure to be with you.

SCIUTTO: Well, many school districts are now requiring students and staff to wear masks this year, but San Antonio is going one step further. It's mandating that all staff is vaccinated. Now, the state is suing that district's superintendent. I'm going to speak to him coming up.

But, first, here is what else to watch today.

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