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Slew of Nations Halt Flights from S. Africa over New Variant Fears; U.S., Global Markets down Sharply over New Variant Fears; Fauci: "No Indication" New Variant is in U.S. Yet; Smash-and-Grab Thieves Target Luxury Stores in S. California; Ukraine President Accuses Russia of Plotting Coup Against Him. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired November 26, 2021 - 12:00   ET

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

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ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN HOST: Hi everyone! Welcome to this Special Edition of CNN Newsroom. I'm Alex Marquardt. We are beginning with breaking news on an alarming new COVID variant.

Scientists are warning that this new variant which was first identified in South Africa spreads rapidly and may show an ability to evade immunity. And there are serious concerns that the COVID vaccines may be less effective against this new strain.

New COVID cases meanwhile, have surged in South Africa in recent days, a growing number of countries including the UK and France are now banning travelers from South Africa, as well as neighboring countries. The variant has also been spotted already in Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel.

The World Health Organization is warning it will take weeks to learn more details. All of these causing markets around the world to tumble U.S. markets included. They're down sharply the DOW Jones Industrial Average you can see they're down roughly 1000 points.

So let's start with this latest news out of South Africa. That's where we find CNN's David McKenzie, he's live in Johannesburg. David, what are you hearing from South African health officials today?

DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Alex, just a short time ago, the South African Health Minister slamming these red lists and travel bans from around the world saying that they are "A knee jerk reaction and comparing the situation in South Africa where there isn't necessarily a very large scale surge of COVID right now, with the situation in parts of Europe and other parts of the world which are struggling with the pandemic.

So clearly some anger from South African officials at the worldwide reaction to this variant but it must be said that the scientists in this country and elsewhere are warning that this could be a very significant variant because of the level of mutations the possibility and I stress the possibility it's unclear yet 100 percent whether this will evade immunity and what everyone wants to know whether vaccines will be less effective about this from this parent, which at this point hasn't even officially been named yet.

In the last few days, they have been noticing an uptick of cases here in South Africa driven by this variant. And Alex, one thing that is disturbing is the way that it has dominated other variants circulating in particularly the high end particularly the highly transmissible Delta variant here in this country, still, the numbers are quite low.

And as you mentioned, Israel, Belgium and other nations are saying that they've got confirmed cases. But some scientists here say the horse has already bought Alex.

MARQUARDT: All right, South African officials starting to argue that they're being punished for their transparency David McKenzie in Johannesburg, thanks very much.

This variant, as we just mentioned, is already having a major impact on financial markets around the world, including right here in the United States stocks down sharply, especially with travel stocks, which are among the hardest hit oil prices also down significantly watching all this as CNN's Richard Quest who joins us. Richard, should we expect markets to be this jittery with this kind of news?

RICHARD QUEST, CNN INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. I would say I would be more surprised if they weren't. Two reasons obviously, volatility with high frequency markets is the norm these days. So any form of movement, any form of news will have a disproportionate volatile effect over the short term.

But more importantly, longer term? Yes, I also would expect the markets to be volatile and to be jittery as you say, because the markets don't like uncertainty. Now to paraphrase that, Donald Rumsfeld, we have the knowns and the unknowns, the unknowns are what does this mean for longer term economic growth in the United States?

How will this affect trade? What is it going to do to the flows of migration, if you will? But the knowns which we know about today are that this is going to clobber travel. We've seen it through various countries already introducing restrictions one would expect those restrictions to grow. Hence, look at the screen.

Now you have your COVID stocks. If you like Air B&B up 4 percent, Carnival Cruise down 13 percent all the major airlines, particularly those with large international route structures, like Delta in American off shopping.

So Alex, the short answer is yes, this is to be expected. This will continue and until we get visibility I can't see a reason for it not.

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MARQUARDT: All right. Investors and traders watching that news out of W. H. O. in South Africa it's certainly as closely as, as we are. And Richard, we know that you will continue to watch that closely. Richard Quest thank you very much!

Joining me now to talk about many of these new angles is Dr. Carlos Del Rio. He's the Executive Associate Dean of the Emory University School of Medicine at Grady Health System. Dr. Del Rio thank you again for joining me today with a lot more news about this new variant!

I want to start with some of that news that David McKenzie brought us, the Health Minister there in South Africa blasting countries for their travel bans, calling it a knee jerk reaction. Do you feel that South Africa, its scientists, its doctors are being very quickly punished in a situation where frankly, we don't know all that much right now?

DR. CARLOS DEL RIO, EXECUTIVE ASSOCIATE DEAN, EMORY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AT GRADY HEALTH SYSTEM: Well, Alex, I agree 100 percent. I think we need to be thankful that countries like South Africa have invested in genomic sequencing, and have been able to pick up strains like this; again, variants are going to be popping up continuing to grow globally until we control this pandemic.

And the worst thing we can do is, is to punish countries for doing the right thing for reporting the variant if because then what was going to happen is countries are going to stop reporting what they find we're going to stop sequencing, and that's going to be worse.

So if we want transparency, we need not to have this kind of travel bans, because at the end of the day, what we need to do is see increased vaccination, you know, South Africa only has about 20 to 30 percent of the population vaccinated, many of them vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which we know is not as effective.

So rather than travel bans, what we need to implement right now is a rapid scale up of vaccination in countries like South Africa.

MARQUARDT: But when you look at this map, and I want to show it to our viewers, this is a map of vaccinations darker the blue the more country's population is fully vaccinated. And you can see there, the shade of blue in Africa is much, much lighter. So you don't believe that travel bans help with in combating the spread, especially of a new variant.

DR. DEL RIO: You know we've seen this over and over with respiratory viruses. By the time you implement travel bans, the cat is out of the box, right? I mean, you already told me that this has been identified in Hong Kong, in Israel and many other places. Once you get it there, it really doesn't matter.

I mean, you already have a spread globally. So I think what we need to do is, again, implement not travel restrictions, but implement the kinds of things we know that control the spread, of that's why the U.S. has now approved a boosters for everybody over the age of 18.

And I would encourage people who have been vaccinated to the booster and I'm going to encourage people who haven't been vaccinated to use this opportunity to start getting vaccinated.

MARQUARDT: We have heard from the President's Chief Medical Advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci about this. He spoke with CNN earlier today. And he really did emphasize, frankly, about what little we know, take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF MEDICAL ADVISOR: It's in a fluid motion; we're finding more about it. And literally, it's something that in real time, we're learning more and more about.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Is it possible it's already in the U.S.?

DR. FAUCI: You know, of course, anything is possible. We don't know that there's no indication that it is right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MARQUARDT: Doctor there of what Dr. Fauci said, in terms of how concerned we should be at this moment, and we just got this news.

DR. DEL RIO: Well, I mean, I think we need to be concerned. And we need to see what the science shows. And we need to see what we learn as the - as we - as we get more data. But at the end of the day, let's not forget that there's still significant spreads of the Delta variant, we don't need a new variant for the U.S.

We have an ongoing transmission problem in the U.S. with many states, having increasing cases without having a new variant in. So at the end of the day, let's be worried about what we have right now, not what we're going to have in the future if we have.

MARQUARDT: And this new variant, notably, at least not yet has not been given a Greek name, or Greek letter rather like Delta, and that indicates that not yet at least the W. H. O. doesn't see it as a variant of concern. But let's go back to when we didn't know what the Delta variant was? How similar is what we're hearing now out of South Africa to what we're starting to hear then about what would become Delta?

DR. DEL RIO: Well, I think it's in a way similar, right? We started to see a very rapid increase in cases in India, that's where the Delta variant emerge, and then it went to the UK and then it went to other places around Europe, and then it came to our country.

So at the end of the day, these variants spread very rapidly. And the biggest concern with Delta is how transmissible it is? And we still don't know how transmissible this variant is. We think it may be even more transmissible than Delta. And if that's the case, if that is confirmed, that will be incredibly concerning to me, because again, viruses that have high transmissibility are really hard to control.

MARQUARDT: And of course, the major question is going to be how this variant responds to the vaccines? And Dr. Fauci also said that the next couple of months and this is a "Are going to be up to us".

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MARQUARDT: So between this new variant, the vaccine efficacy waiting and there, you know, doctors like you telling us all to get boosters. 60 million Americans still unvaccinated, what do you anticipate the next few weeks to look like? Particularly because they are - there are some major holidays in there?

DR. DEL RIO: Well, I'm very concerned because again, you have - Europe having major increase in cases, again, even without this new variant, and many of those European countries have 65, 70 percent. Some of them even higher vaccination rates.

We have in the U.S. still around 58 percent of our population vaccinated. And in many states, like in the State of Georgia, for example, around 51 percent of the population is vaccinated. So unless we get our vaccination rates up, we are going to see major problems with transmission in the U.S. So we have to really, you know, take vaccination seriously.

I think that's why mandates make sense. And at the end of the day, it really is important that we get as many people vaccinated in the U.S. as quickly as we can. We have ample vaccines. I think what you're seeing globally, is countries like the U.S. where there's too much vaccine and not enough demand.

And you have countries like South Africa, there's a lot of demand and not enough vaccines. We have to deal with that.

MARQUARDT: People don't get vaccinated allows these variants to spread and mutate and continue this awful cycle that we've been living with. Dr. Carlos Del Rio, thank you very much for your time.

DR. DEL RIO: I appreciate it Alex.

MARQUARDT: A growing issue hangs over retail shopping on this Black Friday a rash of smash and grab robberies, particularly in California. We will be speaking with San Francisco's Police Chief. He joins me next.

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MARQUARDT: A growing wave of smash and grab robberies, particularly in California has put businesses on high alert this Black Friday from drugstores to luxury stores organized gangs have stolen thousands often tens of thousands of dollars-worth of products in the past week.

In L.A. on Wednesday, thieves attacked a security guard at Nordstrom before running off with stolen purses. In the San Francisco Bay Area high end shops have been hit repeatedly yesterday, more than $20,000 worth of merchandise was stolen from a Santa Rosa Apple Store in broad daylight.

Joining me now to discuss all this is San Francisco's Police Chief Bill Scott, Chief, thank you so much for taking the time! I know how busy you are this time of year.

CHIEF WILLIAM SCOTT, SAN FRANCISCO POLICE: Thank you, Alex for having me on.

MARQUARDT: As I mentioned, Chief, this is a growing wave. And we are seeing this happen not just in California but elsewhere as well. But in San Francisco, how is your police force going about preventing more of these types of attacks before they can happen?

SCOTT: Where we were hitting this at multi facets, the first thing is we have to put the resources in the retail locations, the retail corridors. You all saw what happened at Union Square last Friday. And we need the resources out there to help deter and prevent some of this and not just in Union Square, but in other parts of the city as well.

The second phase of this is our investigations have to be relentless; you know the resources out in present. Last Friday night we had an increase in deployment. And that is what led to the arrest that we made on Friday night. And so we know that helps.

But the second part of this is there's a lot of backend work that has to be done on that case, the case is from last Friday, and ongoing and we our investigators are working nonstop. There's a lot of video evidence that we have to go through search warrants are happening that have happened since that incident and will be ongoing.

And I'm confident that we'll make additional arrest. But the third phase of this is we have to work with our community members and our retailers which we've been doing to make sure that we are working together. And we're resilient and preventing these types of heinous and brazen crimes from occurring in the first place.

And we have done just that here in San Francisco. Look I spent the two days after Friday's incident talking to the people that were impacted the most. I'm talking about the frontline workers who work in these retail stores and they were terrified, rightfully so nobody expects to come to work and have their store robbed and taken over by a - in that fashion.

And then on the other side talking to our officers, you know, all they're asking is give us the resources that we need and get the job done.

MARQUARDT: Well, speaking of resources, your Mayor Gavin Newsom, the Governor of California, he said earlier this week that the mayor's must "Step up". Do you think it should fall in the mayor's when it comes to the resources that you need? Chief can you hear me?

All right, we lost the Chief William Scott of the San Francisco Police. We'll try to get him back. Meantime, we're going to take a quick break.

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MARQUARDT: And we are back with Chief Bill Scott, the Chief of Police of the San Francisco Police Department we've been talking about this growing wave of smash and grab robberies. Chief I want to talk about who's carrying out these robberies and in some cases they really do look like a tax on these - on these shops. We see both of the high end luxury stores whether it's Louis Baton or Apple and then also at the lower end, like pharmacies. Walgreens announced that they were closing stores because of what they called rampant shoplifting. So who is carrying out these robberies?

SCOTT: Well, there is there's a variety of players in this problem. You know, on the lower end we have individuals that are - this is what they do. This is how they earn not earn this is how they survive. On the upper end it's organized and very organized at the very upper hand and we have everything in between.

Now what we have been seeing that this wave of people invading stores by in large numbers there has to be a degree of organization in that.

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SCOTT: You know we don't - there's no way in my mind that we can have a situation where 20 you know up to 80 people can invade a store series of stores, and there not be some communications in some organization, how up that goes in terms of retail fencing organizations that might be sponsoring this.

I believe we believe through our investigations that there's a degree of that. We've done a number of search warrants here in our city and with our collaborative partners in the Bay Area. And we've - arrested some of these folks, and we've recovered millions of dollars-worth of property.

So there is that element. And I think that's driving some of this. But the fact of the matter is, some of this is just people that this greed, you know, is motivated by greed, motivated by people that are just brazen, and don't want to buy by the laws that we have. So we're going to attack this at all angle.

MARQUARDT: Do you think that this wave is growing because of the copycat element; some see others doing it and say, hey, that looks easy, we can do it too?

SCOTT: Well, I do believe there's a degree to that. And I think there's some truth to that. And the bottom line is, that's why on our end, we have to do everything that we can to make the arrest, or there has to be consequences when those arrests are made. And the evidence is there. Because if people see people getting away with this, what's the disincentive?

So we all have to lift on this, we all have to do our jobs, and there has to be consequences at the other end. And when people get arrested and the evidence is there, we hope to see consequences so we can deter some of this activity from occurring.

MARQUARDT: This, of course, is a huge shopping weekend kicked off with Black Friday, tomorrow, we've got Small Business Saturday, at least where you are, can you reassure retailers? Are you reassuring retailers, and buyers' shoppers, that there's nothing to fear?

SCOTT: Absolutely. You know, this, this is, you know, nothing can be guaranteed, but I can say this as far as reassurance, you know, our officers are out on the streets right now as we speak and have been out on the streets.

And if you come to San Francisco, particularly in these retail corridors, like Union Square, you're going to see a lot more officers and our officers are engaging, our command staff is engaging, and we are trying to reassure people.

You know, when you go and talk to the people that have been directly impacted by this, they need that reassurance, because the fear of crime is almost as bad as crime itself when people show up for work. And they don't know whether they're going to be robbed or assaulted or somebody is going to run in the store with hammers and golf gloves and guns and, and take advantage of that situation.

We have to reassure people and I say we as a community, police departments like ours will do our part in that. We need to be out there. We need to be visible and we need to be seen. But on the other side of that this; this is a community lift. I mean, we all are working together here in San Francisco to make things better.

MARQUARDT: Well, Chief, I wish you and your force the best of luck in fighting this. Chief Bill Scott, thank you so much for your time!

SCOTT: Thank you for having me, Alex. Happy holidays to you and your family.

MARQUARDT: And to you. Have a great weekend. Developing this hour Ukraine's President is accusing a group of Russians and Ukrainians of planning a coup against him. The Ukrainian President said that that would happen next week with the help of Ukraine's richest man.

Meanwhile, NATO is urging Russia to de-escalate, as it continues to build up its military presence near that border with Ukraine. CNN's Matthew Chance has more.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It underlines those concerns that have been sort of made very public over the past couple of weeks about the threat that Russia poses to the State of Ukraine. There are two concerns is that military one, with the idea that's been, you know, put out there by U.S. intelligence agencies, that Russia is massing troops near the borders of Ukraine, something the Kremlin categorically denies, by the way.

And then there's that second sort of internal more covert threat that Russia poses to the Ukrainian state, which has been articulated by President Zelensky today in Ukraine, saying that he believes the intelligence services in Ukraine have discovered that there is a coup that's planned for the first and the second of December.

So just a few days from now, involving Russians and Ukrainians and as you rightly say, involving Russia's sorry, Ukraine's richest man Rinat Akhmetov is his name. Now, to be clear, there's been a categorical denial from Mr. Akhmetov's press departments, basically saying that it is a lie, and there's no connection that he has with any kind of conspiracy to be involved in, in anything, anything like that. But you know, Alex, you know, there is this real threat that that is posed to Ukraine by Russia, but you also have to look at what's going on inside Ukraine? President Zelensky is cracking down on oligarchs the rich businessmen that control a lot of economic power and a lot of political power in Ukraine as well.

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