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CDC Says, Isolation Period Now Five Days if Asymptomatic or Symptoms Resolving; S&P 500 Notches Record High at Monday Close; Now, Ohio Supreme Court Hears Arguments on GOP-Drawn Congressional Map. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 28, 2021 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: The agency now says you can cut the time that you need to stay at home, in quarantine, in half as long as you're not symptomatic and willing to wear a mask for five more days.

The new direction suggests people who test positive may only need to isolate for five days instead of ten days as long as they are symptom- free. And the same for people exposed to COVID. In fact, if you're vaccinated and boosted, you may not need to quarantine at all after exposure.

The relaxed guidelines come as new cases of COVID surge nationwide. Over the past week, the U.S. is averaging more than 237,000 new infections every day. Several states are at or near all-time peak COVID levels. And we're seeing more kids showing up at the hospital, nearly 2,000 children across the country, with confirmed or suspected COVID are now hospitalized. That is up from just around 700 last month.

This is leading to an overwhelming increase for demand in testing. We'll take you live to Miami where people have been waiting for hours at one testing location this morning. But let's begin this hour with that spike in children being hospitalized. Our own Alexandra Field is tracking the numbers.

Andm Alex, the hospitals in New York have seen a fivefold increase in pediatric cases and both of us are parents of kids too young to get vaccinated. So I think the fear that we have is being felt by a lot of parents across the country.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, Poppy, I just can't say it enough. This is a headline that's going to be really hard for parents to take in, especially the ones who feel that they've been battered in so many ways, trying to get through this pandemic, trying to steer their children safely through it. When you see this increase, we've got to point to it because it is indicative of the trend. There's definitely this upward count, a fivefold increase since December 11th in New York City. Statewide, you're seeing a 2.5 times increase of children hospitalized and these numbers are starting bear out nationwide

The first point to make is that the number of children who are hospitalized remains relatively small. The percent of people hospitalized with COVID who are children remains very small. And we continue to hear that healthy children should do pretty well if they have COVID. But, look, it's clear some kids do get a severe case. They are the ones who end up in the hospital. As we see this surge taking hold across the country, as there is more infection going around, more people end up in the hospital, more of them are children.

It's not just happening in New York City or in New York State. There's a hospital in Chicago that's reporting a fourfold increase for hospitalizations among children with COVID. Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C., is saying that nearly half of the children they test for COVID are showing that they are positive.

You've got children's hospitals across the country now who are all preparing for this to get worse. That's because you've got this fast- moving omicron variant. You also have a couple of other factors that are going to combine here, these holiday gatherings that you saw last weekend, more holiday gatherings that you could see this weekend. So, you have got medical professionals across the country certainly expecting that they will see more children winding up in the hospital.

Experts are saying there is no indication that the virus itself has become more severe for children. So, parents need to sort of take that in as well. But what can we all do as parents? Well, if your kids qualify to get vaccinated, the experts are saying go get your kids vaccinated, because, of course, not all children do qualify. Poppy, you and I both know, kids under five still can't get it, or the kids can't get a booster.

HARLOW: That's right, Alex. Thank you so much for that reporting, important distinctions for all of us to consider.

Across the country, Americans are finding extremely, extremely long lines at COVID testing sites due to this surge in cases. Let's go to our Leyla Santiago. She's live in Miami at a testing center where, again, today, Leyla, cars have been are lined up for hours.

LEYLA SANTIAGO, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. The last time we spoke to you, Poppy, I told you about a woman who had been waiting for three hours. We just checked with someone else who came out of the line and they waited about two hours. So, these numbers fluctuate in terms of wait times. But the bottom line, people are waiting for hours to get testing.

When you talk to the health group that is running this site, the Tropical Park, one of the busiest in South Florida, they will tell you that they were expecting an increase in demand for testing because you have the omicron variant, because you have the holiday season and the gatherings. But what they are seeing now is unprecedented. They have not seen this type of demand ever before here. So, they plan on extending hours at some of the other sites as well as opening a handful of new testing sites to try to meet that challenge with the increase in the volume of demand for testing.

We talked to people who have been here before to kind of get a better idea of how they compare and contrast what they're seeing now versus a few weeks ago. Here's how they describe it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's way too chaotic now.

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Everybody is freaking out. But that's like the same thing that happened right before the first shutdown. Like everybody's like going everywhere about it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There is a spot right by my house where I would go. It would take less than five minutes. I would just walk there and that's it. And now the line extends until like the next street. It's crazy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANTIAGO: Yes, still very active. And we should mention, this is the busiest part of the morning for this testing site, anyway, so we are seeing that line sort of build up, and it really hasn't let up at any point at this 24-hour testing site as we've been here over the last two days.

Now, we should also mention that this is on-site testing. There's also those take-home tests. Miami-Dade County used 27 public libraries over two days to distribute 150,000, more than 150,000 at-home test kits. They are now out. They are all distributed. And so they have made a request from the Department of Health for more.

I should also mention, Poppy, that this isn't just a testing site where we are right now. This is also a vaccination site. And it is much busier on the testing side of this as it is the vaccination part of this. And that's why you're hearing a lot of local officials really pushing people to get tested but also to get vaccinated and boosted.

HARLOW: Absolutely. Leyla, thank you for the reporting.

Let's talk about this with Dr. Peter Hotez. He's a professor and the dean of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine. Doctor, thanks very much for joining us.

You told my colleagues yesterday, reacting to the late breaking news of the CDC guidance changing quarantine, you said, I think part of this is to avoid a panic and a national crisis. How much of it is that, keeping operations flowing, and how much is based on the science?

DR. PETER HOTEZ, PROFESSOR AND DEAN OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: I think it's a good balance of both, actually. And I concur with what the Centers for Disease Control is trying to do. Here's why. I mean, first of all, last week, you had the revised guidelines for the health care providers in part because so much of the virus is released by people before they become symptomatic, and then just for a couple of days afterwards often, especially if you're vaccinated. So, that made a lot of sense to keep our health care providers in the workforce because otherwise mortality is really going to skyrocket, because we've seen this the last two years. Once emergency rooms and ICUs get overwhelmed, then it's lights out. Then we see this big rise in mortality. And we wanted to forestall that even if the severity of omicron is less, it's going to be offset by having so many health care workers out of the workforce. So, that's the first point.

Point two, we're also now risking a big decline in essential services because we need our first responders and so many others to keep the country going. And this omicron variant is such a game changer in terms of its high, high transmissibility. It's like this big virus blizzard. That's why you're seeing so many kids getting infected now. We saw this in South Africa and the U.K. It's not that it's selectively infecting kids. It's just like they're just getting swept up. And what Mike Osterholm calls a virus blizzard, I call it firestorm, same thing.

So, I think it was this very thoughtful balance, and hopefully this will have some positive effect.

HARLOW: You have also been supportive of a fourth COVID vaccine, essentially a second booster akin to what we're seeing in Israel now. What data tells you that we need that? Is it that omicron is breaking through so many people that are vaccinated and boosted? And do you mean for everyone or just for immunocompromised and the elderly?

HOTEZ: Yes. So, it's based on still preliminary data coming out of the Imperial College of London, and a lot is based on modeling. And it shows something along the following lines, that after you get that third immunization, whereas it was, you know, reinstalling 90, 95 percent protection versus the previous lineages, it's around 70 to 75 percent against omicron. Still pretty good and much better against hospitalizations, but against symptomatic infections, 70, 75 percent. The problem is it's not holding up. It seems to be going down quickly after two or three months, down to maybe 30 percent to 40 percent, according to Imperial College.

So, the idea for the fourth immunization was to -- again, is another way to keep our health care workers in the health care workforce to rebump up their virus-neutralizing antibodies. So, my recommendation specifically for the health care workers, although I see now Israel is extending that not only to health care workers but those individuals either over the age of 60 or 70. And like so many other things, we depend so heavily on Israel and the U.K. for vaccine effectiveness data, and we'll see what happens with that information.

HARLOW: Dr. Hotez, you and your colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children's Hospital just secured emergency use authorization for vaccine technology in India.

[10:10:05]

What can you tell us about what that will do?

HOTEZ: Yes. We're over the moon this morning. So, it was just announced by the Indian regulators with our vaccine producer partners, Biological E in Hyderabad. This is the first COVID vaccine specifically for global health, for the world's low and middle-income countries. It's a recombinant protein vaccine, uses similar technology used to make the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine by yeast fermentation, a phase three superiority study with the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine, it was shown to be as good or better in terms of holding up protection against the variants and other aspects. So, we're so excited about this.

They have now 150 million doses ready to go and are now producing 100 million doses a month with plans to produce a billion doses. So, as of today, our Texas Children's Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor and Bio E has equaled or doubled the U.S. government commitment to global health equity. So, it's just so exciting for us.

HARLOW: It's so important when it comes to real equity in terms of vaccine availability. Dr. Hotez, thank you for all the work you do and for being with us.

HOTEZ: Thank you.

HARLOW: Still ahead, I will speak to the head of the National Nurses Union that says the new CDC guidance on isolation she believes puts hospital staff at risk. We'll talk about that.

And it's the final week of trading and all three indices are having a banner year. We'll talk about why the market is not exactly reflective of the broader economy.

And later, Ohio State Supreme Court hears arguments today over accusations of gerrymandering driven directly by politics, why Democrats argue the new congressional map is skewed to favor Republicans.

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[10:15:00]

HARLOW: The S&P 500 is closing out 2021 at an all-time high, up more than 27 percent on the year. The Dow, the Nasdaq also having a banner year, but there are some big concerns about the broader economy heading into the New Year.

I'm happy to bring in Mohamed El-Erian. He's president of Queens' College at Cambridge University and the chief economic adviser to Allianz Group. Mohamed, great to see you.

MOHAMED EL-ERIAN, PRESIDENT, QUEENS' COLLEGE AT CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY: Thank you, Poppy.

HARLOW: For starters, when you look at this market and it keeps going up and up and up, it really is just not representative of the challenges facing the broader economy. What does it tell us heading into the New Year?

EL-ERIAN: So, the market tells you two things, and these are things that people have been repeating for a long time. The economy is not the market, and don't fight the Federal Reserve. What we are seeing in the marketplace yet again is the influence of the Federal Reserve putting in so much liquidity that it results in what's called the everything rally, everything goes up.

HARLOW: Yes. You have some major concerns about inflation, as have I for a long time. And, you know, I wonder if you believe that omicron, which is threatening economic recovery, also, though, may have the effect of tampering inflation. Because, yes, we're n the lockdowns we saw before, but I'm not going out to eat, for example.

EL-ERIAN: So, you know, I've been worried about inflation for a good six months and have been saying be careful. Let's not dismiss it as not transitory, let's be more open minded. I think now we have ample evidence that inflation is higher and more persistent than many people thought.

Look, Poppy, we were already at 6.8 percent, the highest in 39 years, and it's not going to go down much. Yes, omicron means that you don't go out to eat but omicron also means that you will find it more expensive to get things. It is disrupting supply chains. It is disrupting labor supplies as well. So, we are going to see another round of cost push, higher costs pushing up higher prices.

HARLOW: The word, transitory, I think everyone would like to forget, and when it was wrong too. And the Fed admitted as much, and Jerome Powell said we should replace that word with something else, clearly indicating that inflation really is the number one enemy facing the economy right now.

You noted in Washington Post, while highly welcome, the policy pivot by the Fed is only a start and will need to be reinforced in the weeks ahead. What kind of reinforcement does the Fed need to make?

EL-ERIAN: So, the Fed has to regain control of the inflation narrative. It has to convince people it understands what is driving inflation and it's willing to do something about it. After all, it's one of its two mandates. So, it's really critical that the Fed move quickly.

When you've mischaracterized something as important as inflation for so long, it's not enough to say, whoops, I made a mistake. That's what they said on November 30th. They have to do more. And they have to do two things in particular. One is explain to us why they made such a big mistake. It's one of the worst inflation calls in the history of the Fed. So, it matters why they made that mistake. And second, to be seen to be doing more about it, because the worst thing is that inflation expectations go up, and that starts fueling inflation all on its own.

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HARLOW: It's quite a statement, one of the worst calls in the history of the Federal Reserve. And it seems to have increased your concerns about a recession. Are you talking near term? EL-ERIAN: Yes. So, what we worry about when central banks are behind on inflation and the Fed is behind is they do nothing for a long time and then they overreact. Think about it. They are driving the monetary policy car with their foot still on the accelerator. They still are stimulative. And the concern is that because they're not lifting their foot off the accelerator, they're going to hit the brakes. And, unfortunately, history tells you that tends to increase significantly the probability of recession. So, that's why it's really important for the Fed to catch up to reality.

HARLOW: You wrote last week about what we're seeing happen in Turkey and Erdogan's intervention to try to boost the lira, which worked in the near term, and now we're seeing a reverse of that. What is the global impact of that or the message that what is happening with Turkey's currency market telling us for the world?

EL-ERIAN: So, the message is you can't define economic and financial logic. They have an inflation rate of over 20 percent. And yet because of political interference, the central bank has reduced interest rates by 5 percentage points. And the victim of all this has been the currency. And the problem with the currency weakening is that in itself becomes inflationary.

So, basically, Turkey is being reminded that there's limit to how long you can defy economic and financial logic.

HARLOW: Important reminder for all of us, especially right now. Mohamed El-Erian, happy holidays. Happy New Year. Thanks again.

EL-ERIAN: And to you.

HARLOW: Next, Democrats in Ohio accuse Republicans of rigging the new congressional maps and they're going to the state supreme court this morning over it. The big picture implications, next.

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[10:25:00]

HARLOW: This morning, oral arguments are under way in the Ohio State Supreme Court over whether a Republican-approved congressional map violates changes to the state constitution designed to limit partisan gerrymandering. You can see the left, an old map, and the dramatically different one on the right.

Democrats say it only leaves three competitive districts by taking voting power away from Democratic strongholds and minority voters. Republicans claim at least seven competitive districts.

Ohio's governor, Republican Mike DeWine defended at the bill-signing last month, saying, quote, when compared to the other proposals offered from house and state caucuses, both Republican and Democrat, the map makes the most progress to produce a fair, compact, and competitive map.

We should note, in 2018, more than 70 percent of Ohio voters approved to the changes, how these maps would be drawn, but there's a whole more to this story. And there's also a second case in front of the Supreme Court over the way the statehouse districts are being drawn.

Let me bring in David Pepper. He is the former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, also the author of a new book, Laboratories of Autocracy. It's great to have you, David. Good morning.

DAVID PEPPER, FORMER CHAIRMAN, OHIO DEMOCRATIC PARTY: Thanks. Thanks for having me on.

HARLOW: Well, look, obviously, you're playing off of states being laboratories of democracy, and you are sounding the alarm bell. Explain the significance first for our viewers about what's happening today at the Ohio Supreme Court.

PEPPER: Sure. Today is the oral argument over the congressional map. You know, respect to Governor DeWine on some instances, but to say this map is better is a joke. Our map for the last ten years has been 12-4, guaranteed Republican 12, and the voters voted 70 percent plus to change that. Well, this map would lead to 12-3 or 13-2 guaranteed Republican wins. So, it's worse than the map that came before the voters said they wanted to change this broken system.

So, today was the oral argument. My guess is we'll get decisions in both the statehouse map, the congressional map in the near future. And obviously my hope, and the courts are evenly split court, my hope is they'll send this legislation back to the drawing board to actually follow the Constitution the second time around.

HARLOW: But this is actually, David, as you argue, much bigger than Ohio and much bigger than this fight. And in many ways, you know, we're talking about a system created by the founders that didn't expect what we have now with all of these norms being just thrown out the window. You call it parallel to the Jim Crow era. And you lay out steps in your book not just for how dire this is but what average people can actually do about it in their states.

PEPPER: Sure. So, one thing, actually, the founders actually worried about what's happening because they had recent history of state legislatures running amok. They actually worried that statehouses, if they ever became undemocratic, that they could threaten the entire nation's democracy. And they wrote a clause in the Constitution that the federal government needs to guarantee that all states were basically democratically run where the people were sovereign. So, they worried about this, and they would expect us all to do something about it.

And that's exactly what's happening right now. We have literally -- and this is why it's happening in Ohio, in Tennessee, in Florida, Texas.

[10:30:03]

Because of the gerrymandering of ten years ago, which rigged elections for a decade, we literally have a --