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Covid-19 Viral Blizzard About to Hit U.S.; Michigan Hospitalizations Dip; Dr. Shelley Stanko is Interviewed about Hospitalizations Rising in Kentucky; CDC Recommends Pfizer and Moderna; Trump Administration Undermined Covid Response; Potter to Take the Stand; Warrant for Baldwin's Cell Phone. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 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]

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Thank you so much for being with us. Have a wonderful holiday.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: The new co-hosts of NEW DAY, a poinsettia.

BERMAN: CNN's coverage continues right now.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Good Friday morning. I'm Jim Sciutto.

Stark warnings this morning from health experts regarding the omicron variant. One expert saying a viral blizzard is about to hit the U.S. and Andy Slavitt, a former senior pandemic adviser to President Biden, says a very rough January lies ahead despite widespread vaccinations in this country. He will join us live next hour.

Right now, at least 37 states have detected the new variant. West Virginia becoming the latest. In New York, the positivity test rate is doubling at a speed never seen before, forcing officials to debate whether New Year's Eve in Times Square, expecting a return to pre- pandemic crowds of thousands, should be canceled now.

In the sports world, the NBA and NFL and NHL are all changing Covid-19 protocols in hopes of preventing the cancellations of games. And this year's Miss World competition in Puerto Rico is now postponed after 23 of the 97 contestants tested positive.

We should say this as well, amid all of the warnings, there is a silver lining. The South African health minister says, despite record- breaking daily case rates, hospital admissions continue to be much lower than previous waves. Still, G-7 health ministers are calling omicron the biggest current threat to global public health.

Our team following all of the latest.

Let's begin with CNN's Shimon Prokupecz, on the ground in New York City.

Shimon, I mean this positivity rate in New York, this is remarkable.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Remarkable, doubling in just three days, Jim. And it's causing a lot of anxiety certainly here in the city.

I'm at a testing site here on 57th Street. The line is about 100 people deep or so. This is about a two-hour wait just to get testing. Lines we haven't really seen in probably several months, maybe even a year or so.

But all these people have been waiting here now for a couple of hours, waiting to get tested just to go inside. Many of them, that I've talked to, said they were exposed, whether it's in the office or they were in meetings in offices, some are traveling, some want to get together with family, so they are getting tested.

But testing is a premium right now all across the city with lines like this. And what's driving this is, as you said, it's the doubling of these numbers. We went from 3.9 percent, the city says, New York City officials say, to 7.3 in just days. And this has city officials concerned.

And also they're very concerned because of the unvaccinated. They're seeing an increase in the number of hospitalizations certainly for unvaccinated. And this, of course, is causing all sorts of concerns for the business industry here, with restaurants now being forced to close because they're losing workers who are testing positive, and also Broadway. We're seeing shows canceled. In fact, "Mulan Rouge," one of the Broadway shows, yesterday, while they were getting ready to start as people were sitting in the audience, they had to cancel the show because someone in the cast tested positive.

Obviously, a lot of concern here as these numbers continue to rise. The city says they're going to be issuing masks and they're also going to set up mobile test sites across the city because, as you can see here, this is now becoming a concern as people wanting to get tested are now having to wait in lines for hours.

SCIUTTO: Yes. And Broadway just -- had just come back.

Jason Carroll, he's in Michigan, where hospitalizations right now seem to have dipped for the first time in weeks, but they are asking for federal help.

Tell us the situation on the ground, Jason. JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, when you look at what's

happening right where we are here, at Beaumont Hospital, just here in Dearborn, Michigan, the doctors and the nurses here, Jim, they are a dedicated group of people, but the reality is they're understaffed and they're overworked. The situation has gotten so bad here in the state of Michigan, Michigan's governor reached out to the federal government and said, look, we need help here in the state.

And the help has come from the Department of Defense. The Army has put together a special task force of team members that head out and help beleaguered hospitals. They head out -- so far they've been to 13 states since August, including right here in Michigan. This special task force is made up of doctors, critical care nurses, respiratory therapists and basically what they do is they plug in where help is needed. The help is needed here. And it's needed now.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LISSA MADDOX, NURSE AT BEAUMONT HOSPITAL, DEARBORN: During Covid it has taken over my life. We do work more hours. You know, this is my -- this is my family. The hospital is my family.

And when you're giving your all, all that you can, and all that you are to your patients to help them survive, it's hard to go home and be a wife and be a mom or, you know, or be an aunt or whoever. You're constantly thinking about, is my patient OK? Like, I left and they weren't doing so great, or teetering.

LT. COL. THERESA NOWAK, ARMY NURSE CORPS OFFICER: We have nurses, critical care nurses, working in their progressive care unit and we have physicians that are embedded and helping in the emergency department. And then myself, who's also -- or, excuse me, a colleague of mine who's also a nurse practitioner are floating around to the different inpatient units to help facilitate patient care in those areas.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CARROLL: So, sending in the military to help. The task force will be here for a month, maybe longer, Jim, if that is needed. And it should be noted that the overwhelming number of people, patients that they're seeing here in the hospital, are unvaccinated. That accounts for most of those who are in ICU and most of those who are on ventilators.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes. That's been a consistent fact of this pandemic.

Jason Carroll, Shimon Prokupecz, thanks so much to both of you.

In Kentucky, "Bloomberg" reporter Drew Armstrong was allowed inside a Covid ward in one of the state's hardest hit hospitals, Saint Joseph London Hospital, and he tweeted about the alarming things he saw there, writing, one man was in a high flow oxygen mask. He was lying in bed, making tiny, fast bites at the air, gasping. He looked like he was suffocating, like a dying fish, washed up on the beach.

Doctors at that hospital are increasingly frustrated with the general public's attitude that things are all back to normal.

Joining us now, Dr. Shelley Stanko. She's chief medical officer at Saint Joseph London Hospital in London, Kentucky.

Doctor, so good to have you on today.

I often think that the view that you get, you and your colleagues, in wards like this, are canaries in the coal mine, right, because you often see the effects of surges before others, but the worst effects of this. Tell us what you're seeing right now there.

DR. SHELLEY STANKO, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, SAINT JOSEPH LONDON: Thank you, Jim, I appreciate the opportunity to speak today.

Certainly the biggest overwhelming numbers we had were late summer, during delta, but right now we're already beginning to see the slow creep back up. Numbers had come down a bit before Thanksgiving. And while I don't think omicron has yet caused the doubling it has in New York, we are just seeing the effects of the winter and people coming inside and spending more time together. And, unfortunately, those close quarters are starting to have those hospital numbers climb.

SCIUTTO: In terms of hospitalization, because one thing from omicron, but also other variants of this disease, has been that vaccination really provides great protection against serious illness, hospitalization and death, even as we're seeing breakthrough infects here. Based on what you're seeing there, is that still true?

STANKO: That's certainly consistent with our experience. I can't say we've had no breakthrough cases that require hospitalization, but it is a small, small, small minority compared to the unvaccinated population.

SCIUTTO: OK. Is that moving people there, do you find, because there's still a portion of this country, right, who is -- who is hesitant. And I think a sad fact of omicron is there are more breakthroughs is that folks might misread that and say, well, I guess the vaccine doesn't do anything, right?

I'm curious, on the ground there, do you see folks responding and making changes or are they kind of digging their heels in?

STANKO: We saw a small uptick with vaccination in September and October when numbers were really bad. Unfortunately, it's really still not adequate. I'm in southeastern Kentucky and the vaccination rates are not -- not even close to what we really need to be well protected. That's our biggest anxiety really at this point, Jim, is that we are going to see more hospitalizations than we would have to.

I think that the message is not that you can avoid Covid altogether necessarily with immunization, but you can certainly avoid the level of illness, the hospitalization, and potentially the death. SCIUTTO: So, tell us what you're preparing for now because, as you

say, you're still experiencing delta, right, and the effects of people going out and, you know, socializing and often indoors. Now you have omicron coming. What do you think January post-holiday is going to look like?

STANKO: We're bracing for it. We are -- we are fully expecting to see surge numbers. We hope they look more like what we had last winter, which was not nearly as high as we got with delta this summer and fall. But we are realistic. We have our contingency plans in place. That may be the only positive is having now lived through several waves, maybe we're a little bit better prepared.

But the reality is, you can't -- you can't just create humans in order to provide that care. And, you know, staffing is a challenge everywhere. And we also have anxiety about the fact that even though, with omicron, you know, our staff is largely vaccinated, that there could be breakthrough that take staff out of work because if they're (INAUDIBLE) they've got to be home, even if it is mild.

[09:10:08]

So -- so, lots of -- lots of preparedness, but also lots of anxiety.

SCIUTTO: I get it. Listen, we wish you the best of luck. It's going to be tough for you and we appreciate it. And I know a lot of folks watching appreciate the kind of work that you and your colleagues are doing.

Dr. Shelley Stanko, thank you.

STANKO: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, the CDC is now changing its recommendations for Covid- 19 vaccines, making clear that Pfizer and Moderna are preferred over Johnson & Johnson. This comes as new data shows that a rare blood clotting syndrome among people recently vaccinated with the J&J vaccine is more common than previously believed.

CNN's senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now.

Here's the key question because I imagine some folks are watching now who might have gotten the J&J, what do they do now?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know what, if you got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine more than two weeks ago, you need -- you do not need to worry about anything. This side effect, which is very rare but very dangerous, it shows up within the first two weeks, usually within the first nine days or so after vaccination. So this is not a problem for people who have been vaccinated. If you've been recently vaccinated, certainly keep your eye out for this, but it's very rare.

This is really about moving forward. So let's take a look at what the CDC advisers talked about yesterday. So what they found is they looked at data and they said that 17 million people have received Johnson & Johnson in the U.S., 54 developed this rare blood clotting condition, and nine of those people died.

The people who were most at risk are women in their 40s. It was two deaths per million for women in their 40s. But it's not clear exactly which -- who would be more at risk. So it's not possible to say, well, you shouldn't have it or you shouldn't have it, it's not clear.

But what is clear is that patients deteriorate rapidly. This is a quote from a CDC doctor, we've been struck, when reviewing the cases, by how rapidly patient status deteriorates and results in death.

So this is the bottom line, is that moving forward, get a Pfizer or Moderna. Do not get Johnson & Johnson. If you've already had Johnson & Johnson, unless you've had it quite recently, there really is no reason to worry. And even if you have had it within the past two weeks, these are rare events. If you're concerned at all, you can look online and you can see the CDC has put out what signs to look for.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: All right, good to know. Elizabeth Cohen, thanks so much.

Experts are warning that this year's flu shot may not offer as much protection against one of the main influenza viruses circulating right now. Studies show that strain has now changed and the current vaccines don't match it well anymore. Researchers say the rapid mutations found in flu viruses help it escape the antibodies the body makes in response to those vaccines. Despite indications that the shot may not do much to prevent infection, it is, though, and this is important, expected to prevent severe illness.

And also this breaking news we're following this morning, a new critical report from the House Oversight Committee finds the Trump administration made, quote, deliberate efforts to undermine the nation's coronavirus response for political purposes.

Let's get to CNN Washington correspondent Sunlen Serfaty on Capitol Hill.

I men reading this report, remarkable. You have Trump administration officials saying they felt pressure to do things, make decisions and give guidance that put people's lives in danger.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jim, there is certainly a lot here and it totally paints a very damning picture of the Trump administration's Covid response in the early years of the pandemic.

Now, this is a report that was done by the House Oversight Committee. They conducted months and months of interviews with former Trump administration officials, and they concluded, according to the committee, quote, the Trump administration officials engaged in a staggering pattern of political interference in the pandemic response and failed to heed early warnings about the looming crisis. These decisions placed countless American lives at risk, undermined the nation's public health institutions, and contributed to one of the worst failures of leadership in American history. And the report here cites many powerful anecdotes where the committee

shows, based on their investigation, where officials were blocked from speaking out publicly, where there was watered down testing guidance coming from the administration. One official according to this committee report said that they wanted to hold a briefing around an update to recommendations of wearing masks. And also the number of pediatric cases that was going on across the country. And this official was specifically blocked by President Trump.

In another case, Trump was so angered by one briefing that he blocked CDC officials from giving any public health briefings for three months afterwards.

The report also, interestingly, shines a real bright light on how -- how much agony was going on, on Trump administration officials.

[09:15:05]

Some of them who were frustrated and concerned by the guidance they were having to give to the public.

Dr. Jay Butler, who was then deputy director of infectious disease for the CDC, he tells the committee that he was concerned about the guidance that he was forced to give, updating mask guidance for communities of faith. He says, quote, to the committee, I was doing a lot of soul searching about whether or not I should have even agreed to make changes in the document. Clearly it was a directive. But that was a real struggle as I felt like that had been done -- what had been done was not good public health practice.

And Dr. Debbie Birx, who, of course, was a Covid response director at the time, she talks and tells the committee about how she's purposefully sat out a meet at the White House. She says that she didn't want to be included in a meeting where there were, quote, fringe doctors included in that meeting, Jim. So certainly this paints a very damning picture.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

SERFATY: And, notably, CNN has reached out to the people named in this committee report. We also have reached out for corroboration of these allegations in this report.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Sunlen Serfaty, thanks so much.

Next hour, the former Minnesota police officer charged with manslaughter for the fatal shooting of Daunte Wright will be back in court. Kim Potter expected to take the stand today. We're going to bring that to you live when it happens.

Plus, a judge in New Mexico has issued a warrant for Alec Baldwin's cell phone in the investigation into the shooting on the set of his film "Rust." Hear how Baldwin's attorney is responding. And, I have new reporting this morning about Russian troop buildups on

Ukraine's border. Congressman Seth Moulton, who just got back from a trip to Ukraine, will join me live. What he thinks the U.S. should do to deter Russian action.

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[09:21:11]

SCIUTTO: Former Police Officer Kim Potter, charged in the deadly shooting of Daunte Wright during a traffic stop in suburban Minneapolis in April, is soon expected to take the stand in her own defense. Potter, who claims she mistook her gun for a Taser, is facing first and second degree manslaughter charges.

CNN correspondent Adrienne Broaddus is outside the Hennepin County Courthouse in Minneapolis.

Adrienne, quite a moment. Kim Potter taking the stand. What do we expect to hear from her?

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This will be a pivotal moment, Jim. It's likely she will tell members of the jury what she was thinking on that day in April. Keep in mind, the one question everyone has, only Kim Potter can answer, why did you confuse the two? What led to this mistake? What was going through your mind? She has the opportunity to look members in the jury in the eye and tell them what happened during that moment.

She recently spoke with a local reporter here in Minneapolis and she spoke with them and she told them the aftermath of that day destroyed her. It's likely we will hear more about that.

On the body camera video, which we've seen replayed over and over, you see and hear a distraught Potter. And at one point she talks about ending her life, telling Sergeant Johnson, who was with her during that shooting, she says to him, no, let me kill myself. It's likely she will talk about that.

And she also told the local reporter here in Minneapolis that she valued the life of Daunte Wright. And she says she prays for the Wright family every day.

So expect to see a sympathetic Potter on the stand. Throughout the course of the trial, our pool reporter has told us she's been in the courtroom crying. That could very well happen today as she recalls what happened on that day in April, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Adrienne Broaddus, see how the jury reacts, thanks so much.

Well, this morning, a judge has signed a search warrant for Alec Baldwin's cell phone. Part of the police investigation into the fatal shooting on the set of "Rust" -- the "Rust" movie in October. Court documents say officials are looking to obtain messages, call logs, photos and videos related to the movie.

Joining me now to talk about the legal implications of this, CNN legal analyst Paul Callan. He's a former New York City prosecutor.

Paul, I know you've been looking at the warrant here. You say it's got a lot of unusual detail. What kind of detail?

PAUL CALLAN, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Jim, it's a remarkably detailed search warrant. Usually, a search warrant, it merely has to establish that there's probable cause to believe that there's evidence relating to a crime on a cell phone or in a certain place. This warrant, however, outlines in detail the entire investigation that's been done to date with respect to the "Rust" shooting. And it's chock full of interesting details.

Like, for instance, Alec Baldwin was administered his Miranda warnings when he was first questioned by the police. Now, you usually don't get Miranda warnings unless you're considered to be a suspect in a murder case, or in any kind of a criminal case. So that's unusual that they would have, at that early date, issued Miranda warnings to him when they spoke to him.

But it's full of other details as well.

For instance, the armorer who has been the subject of the investigation also, has stated that she loaded the gun with five rounds before lunch, then left it with the camera crew and went to lunch and came back and then she added one additional, what she described as dummy round, to the gun before it was handed to Alec Baldwin.

So, it's a very, very detailed warrant.

SCIUTTO: The significance of that, because reading it here, I mean she says she loaded the guns with five dummy rounds before guns checked on set, but then it was locked up at lunch, and didn't check it again because it had been locked up at lunch.

[09:25:10]

I mean does that get to potential criminal liability here for the armorer to not have checked again after lunch?

CALLAN: Well, I think it does in a couple of ways because if you read on through the warrant, you'll see that when she says it was locked up for lunch, apparently it was locked up, meaning it was put in an area where the camera crew was, and that this was a high security area because of Covid precautions. There's no mention of it being placed in a safe or under lock and key, specifically.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

CALLAN: So, I think that may be an issue of negligence that might be alleged clearly in civil litigation later on and maybe even in criminal charges if they are brought against somebody.

SCIUTTO: If it's negligence, whether civil or criminal, how far does that negligence from a legal standpoint extend? Does it land on the shoulders of the armorer or does it go up to the producers of the film as well?

CALLAN: Well, it certainly could land with the armorer. And I'll tell you, because there's another statement that she is quoted as having made that I find to be very, very strange. She describes loading the dummies from a box of dummy loads. Now, these are loads that just don't have, you know, the tops of the bullets, the projectiles on them.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

CALLAN: And she says some of the dummies were, quote, wonky. Now, I don't know what that means that they were wonky. It's not -- it's not defined in the quotation area.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

CALLAN: But certainly that's suggestive that if you're putting something called wonky dummies in a gun that's going to be brought out on a set and fired by an actor, that certainly sounds like a dangerous practice to me. But we'll have to see what else develops.

SCIUTTO: No question. Notice the difference but didn't act on noticing the difference.

CALLAN: Yes. Yes.

SCIUTTO: Anyway, much more to learn.

Paul Callan, thanks so much.

CALLAN: Thank you, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Still ahead, CNN has brand-new reporting on Russia's latest steps to amass troops near its border with Ukraine. Congressman Seth Moulton, who just returned from a trip to Ukraine, says what he saw there was unprecedented. He's going to join us live next.

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