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CNN INTERNATIONAL: NYE Celebrations, Flights Canceled Amid Omicron Surge; U.S. And Russia To Hold Security Talks On January 10; Russian Court Rules To Shut Down Human Rights Group. Aired 3-4p ET

Aired December 28, 2021 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:27]

LYNDA KINKADE, CNN INTERNATIONAL HOST: Hello everyone. I'm Lynda Kinkade live in Atlanta.

Tonight cities across Europe will be ringing in the New Year with new restrictions and new record COVID case counts. Governments are rushing to clamp down on omicron spread and relaxing isolation rules could help get some planes back in the sky.

Russia is also accused of trying to rewrite its own history. We're going to go live to Moscow as human rights organization dedicated to tracking Soviet era crimes is ordered to shut down.

And Kylian Mbappe says his future with Paris-St. Germain for now. Hear his extended interview with CNN.

With New Year's Eve celebrations are being scaled back or canceled on both sides of the Atlantic as the omicron fuels a new COVID surge during his busy Holiday season. More than 2,500 flights have been cancelled around the world today. That's on top of the 2,800 flights, which were canceled yesterday.

The tracking site, FlightAware says there have been more than 16,000 delays since Sunday, and a lot of those numbers are driven by airline staff calling in sick and having to quarantine.

Germany has started enforcing a strict limit on the size of gatherings. It has also prohibited New Year's Eve parties and some public celebrations during 2022 have been canceled in Paris, Rome, and London.

Our Salma Abdelaziz is live for us in London with more on all of this and Salma, thousands upon thousands of flights have been canceled in just the last few days, certainly not a great time to be traveling with all this disruption.

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN REPORTER: Absolutely, Lynda. And more of it really is likely to come. You have this perfect storm for the airline industry right now, dropping consumer demand, many people afraid of the omicron variant or simply testing positive themselves, forced to cancel their travel plans.

And then of course, the other side of this, the other point of this is airline staff themselves are getting sick with COVID-19 and are being forced to isolate. So, you're having staffing shortages, which United Airlines says has impacted its ability to fly, its operational and logistical standing due to staffing shortages.

You're having these huge cancellations and delays. We heard from Delta Air Lines essentially pleading with their customers that they are trying to get any stranded passengers home as quickly as they can.

We've seen from British Airways that they're now using larger carriers, using less of the small planes. Again, because of that drop in demand rather than doing these small flights, using bigger carriers.

Lufthansa, it canceled 10 percent of its scheduled winter flights. So after nearly two years of a really difficult economic period, of course for the airline industry, this is going to hit hard.

This is the busiest period of the year, Lynda and absolutely, thousands of cancellations, thousands of delays meaning also families are not getting to see each other -- Lynda.

KINKADE: Yes, exactly. And Salma, as we approached the New Year's Eve holiday, there seems to be this patchwork of rules and restrictions across Europe, which vary from country to country, city to city as some planning live celebrations, others canceling them completely.

ABDELAZIZ: I mean, you are looking at some really eye watering numbers here, Lynda.

Multiple European countries reporting basically record breaking infection rates. Both the U.K. and France yesterday seeing the highest number of record of cases in a 24-hour period since the start of the pandemic.

France a hundred -- nearly 180,000 cases in one 24-hour period, but these numbers are not translating into the rate of hospitalization and the rate of death that you would expect. Yes, these are record breaking infection rates, but we don't have record breaking hospitalizations and death rates yet, thankfully.

And that's again because we are seeing that this variant and from researchers initial indications that the omicron variant is much milder, especially of course, if you are fully vaccinated, if you have your booster jab, then you are more likely.

So restrictions across the region are really varying to deal with the surge. You have countries here like in England where Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said there's going to be no tougher rules before New Year's Eve. France also doing some something very similar. No curfews, no lockdowns.

But then you have other countries like Germany, as you mentioned, putting in tougher restrictions and then there is that fine balancing act, Lynda, because restrictions often means opposition. In Germany we've seen protests that have turned violent. You have political opposition as well to restrictions, so really a fine balance in rolling out restrictions, but trying to keep the public abiding by those restrictions as they move through the surge -- Lynda.

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KINKADE: Yes, and certainly that COVID fatigue setting in. All right, Salma Abdelaziz, good to have you with us. Thank you.

Well, France has hit a record high of new COVID cases. Nearly 180,000 over the last 24-hour period. Italy, Portugal, and the U.K. are also seeing large increases in cases but so far, hospitalizations have not kept the same pace.

We're joined now by Eva Schernhammer, an Epidemiology Professor at the Medical University of Vienna. Good to have you with us, Professor.

EVA SCHERNHAMMER, EPIDEMIOLOGY PROFESSOR, MEDICAL UNIVERSITY OF VIENNA: Good evening, Lynda.

KINKADE: So we all want to know immediately what the next couple of months will look like, as we are seeing a surge in COVID cases around the world. What's your take right now based on the latest data?

SCHERNHAMMER: Well, you know, in Europe, we were basically stumbling from the delta wave in the fall into something that many people are worried about the omicron wave, and what is the outlook?

Well, it seems we are playing catch up with the virus since the beginning because after the delta wave, we finally felt we have starting to have a handle on it with enough people being vaccinated. And slowly, the numbers coming down.

But now here comes omicron, which sort of turns the tables on us again. But like you said, it's still to be weighted, what exactly we are headed into. And this is, in part, the worry in Europe right now that it's not entirely clear yet, whether or not the disease that is associated with omicron will be less severe than what we have seen with delta.

If it's not the case, then we are into something real bad, and so until we can feel a bit more certain about it, many countries are nervous. And while they are still coming out of the delta outfall, if you will, with intensive care units being pretty full still, they want to make sure that they are not running into trouble again with omicron now.

KINKADE: So it's just a few days out from New Year's Eve and many countries, as we have already been discussing are canceling celebrations. What's your advice for people who want to welcome in the New Year together? Can it be done safely?

SCHERNHAMMER: Yes, absolutely, especially in Europe, where we really had a lot of success with testing. The advice that generally governments are giving and for sure, in Austria can say is that people should get tested whether or not they're vaccinated, they should make sure if they get together with others to have a PCR test that is fairly recent. And of course, really, really important is to get the booster shot, which if somebody hasn't gotten it yet, this is really the one thing that can help, you know, prevent omicron infection the best today.

So having a booster shot and testing can make any getting together safer. And of course, you know, two masks, which are very much recommended since months already in Europe are also advisable to wear, especially in indoor setting. So typical safety measures that we all know fairly well now.

KINKADE: Yes, we certainly know them really well now.

Professor, I want to ask you about how the omicron variant is playing out in children, because we have new data that shows a five-fold increase in pediatric admissions in New York City. Nationwide across the U.S., we are seeing pediatric cases up 35 percent and we're seeing a similar rise in cases in children in countries like South Africa and Canada.

Why are we seeing more children in hospital right now with COVID?

SCHERNHAMMER: Yes, I am familiar with those data, especially the ones coming out of South Africa where you do see, especially for children below age five, but also for people aged 60 and over fairly high hospital admission rates compared to what we have seen with delta.

It's not entirely clear yet what this means. We know for sure that children below the age of five are not vaccinated, and so to some degree, maybe the virus is sort of getting to those that are most vulnerable at the moment because they haven't had a chance to get vaccinated at least in Europe. And so, that certainly is of concern.

And another thing that needs to be watched and, you know, just trying to make sure that we are prepared for what might come along the way.

KINKADE: And Professor, I want to ask you about immunity after vaccination because the latest data shows that with the omicron variant, two doses are 35 percent effective, but with a booster, it jumps to 75 percent.

[15:10:01]

Again, obviously, it is still early days, but the latest data -- the latest study out of Israel seems to point to some concern that immunity will wear off after about four months after that final dose. Why doesn't immunity last as long from these vaccines as it does from vaccines we've had around for a long time, like measles, and mumps, and rubella?

SCHERNHAMMER: Yes, you know. So also here, we don't know the final word yet. It is correct that from Israel, the data suggests some waning of immunity, but this also may differ from vaccine to vaccine.

For instance, for Moderna, it has been shown that probably immunity lasts at least for nine months, and then further out, we don't have much data yet. So I think we still have to wait on that, too. But ultimately, it looks as if some adjustment to vaccines might be necessary. Anyways, considering how much activity they are losing against omicron. And as far as I know, some of the companies are already working on improving their vaccines to also capture perhaps more of the future variants that might come.

But I think we have to probably do some more work with the vaccines and then also make sure we understand fully how long this immunity will last after the third shot, the booster shot.

KINKADE: All right, Professor Eva Schernhammer in Vienna. Good to have you with us today. Thanks so much for sharing your time with us.

SCHERNHAMMER: Yes, absolutely.

KINKADE: Well, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control is relaxing its guidelines in self-isolation and quarantine, and now recommends that people who test positive for COVID, but show no symptoms can self- isolate for five days instead of 10, and they are then advised to wear a mask around others for at least five more days.

Now that could give airlines some breathing room, although the flight attendants union is worried that the new guidance will force some of its members to come back to work prematurely.

More than 5,000 flights have been canceled in the last few days, many due to crew shortages. Well, Captain Darrell Myers is President of the association that represents airline pilots in Luxembourg. Good to have you with us.

CAPT. DARRELL MYERS, PRESIDENT, ASSOCIATION LUXEMBOURGEOISE DES PILOTES LIGNE: Thanks for having me, Lynda.

KINKADE: So thousands of flights are being canceled and many airlines assigning staffing issues as a result of the virus. From what you're seeing, are pilots calling out sick more than that public facing crew members?

MYERS: Well, I don't think that the pilot sicknesses are calling out, out of what is normally seasonal variations. But I think that also it's one thing very clear that in this challenging time with the COVID, we are being asked to go the extra mile to endure some of the conditions that we're having to face whenever we're operating globally on the airline industry.

KINKADE: And Captain Meyers, here in the U.S., the Dallas News reported that pilots are calling out sick caused American Airlines to cancel some 180 flights Monday. Talk to us about the rules and the testing for pilots during the pandemic.

MYERS: Well, the specific rules in the United States, I'm not completely familiar with although we do follow the international standards, those that have been laid out at the ICAO level, in which case we are very clearly as pilots told that if we are unfit for duty, if we were not able to perform our duties safely and effectively, that we are actually required by the regulations to pull ourselves out of the equation and not to operate the aircraft.

So it's still an element of safety of the operation being paramount over just the commercial consideration purely.

KINKADE: We've seen so much pushback from passengers refusing to wear masks onboard planes. I want to understand if there is any international mandate for crews in the cockpit. Do they have to wear masks?

MYERS: Well, the guidelines and the over shadowing recommendations are actually already held by ICAO. And in fact, ICAO has a group that has been put together called CART, it's the Council of Aviation Recovery Task Force. And already, they're in their fourth edition of recommendations that they make to the international bodies and the individual governments on how to put into place rules and guidelines for their crew, and they have not put in force any mandates for the masks when the cockpit doors are closed.

What we are asked to do is to, once the cockpit doors are closed to do a risk assessment. Very simply, we take all of the other precautions that are made as recommendations. Sanitation of the cockpit thoroughly after operating, social distancing whenever we are not in the cockpit certainly when we're going through the airport terminal and on our way to our workplace, we are following the same rules and guidelines that are placed on passengers.

[15:15:13]

KINKADE: As so given there is no international mandate for crew members in the cockpit to wear a mask, as we are seeing this surge in COVID cases, do you think that rule should change?

MYERS: Well, I'm not in the position to actually make a judgement on what the rules should be. I think that when we're talking about following the science and the recommendations of those that are really wrapping their head around the issue and trying to discuss it thoroughly, what we are doing is we are dealing with risk assessment and weighing and balancing the challenges in the cockpit of wearing a mask or not wearing a mask while operating.

Clearly there are elements when you're taking off or landing, you want to be able to communicate effectively if you're in cruise, if there is an urgent moment where you need to don an oxygen mask, you need to be able to do that effectively and efficiently.

So a lot of these risk assessment elements are discussed and it's a good crew coordination element we are calling in the cockpit to discuss how you're going to remain safe.

KINKADE: All right, Captain Darrell Myers, the President of the Luxembourg Pilots Association. Good to have you with us. Thank you.

MYERS: Thanks for having me.

KINKADE: Well, still to come, could there be a break in tensions along Russia's border with Ukraine? U.S. and Russian officials have agreed to meet for talks. We're going to go live to Moscow in a moment.

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KINKADE: Welcome back.

Russia and the U.S. have agreed to sit down next month for security talks as tensions simmer over Ukraine. Kiev has warned its Western allies that Russia has amassed tens of thousands of troops at the border ready for an invasion.

The Russian Defense Ministry now says more than 10,000 military personnel have wrapped up their drills and returned to their bases.

CNN's Nic Robertson is live for us in Moscow and joins us now.

Nic, so the U.S. and Russian officials is expected to meet January 10th. Talk to us about the expectations for this meeting. Who is likely to turn up? What can be achieved?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Well, I think at the moment the expectations are very high on Russia's side.

It was put on the table that it wants to end and stop NATO's expansion eastwards. It believes that that's damaging for Russia's security. The United States has said, we're not going to talk essentially about NATO and about Ukraine without them being present. U.S. officials are saying there are some things that we can agree on, but there will be differences.

[15:20:21]

And that clearly doesn't fit into President Putin's expectations here, or at least strong desire to get an absolute sort of black and white clarity from NATO on its position, vis-a-vis Ukraine. Who is going to be there? This is -- they're using -- the U.S. decided to use a sort of formula for the talks, so a type of talks that are generally used for nuclear arms talks.

They say that this is sort of a convenient way to do it, rather than sort of getting into broad discussions about how it should be comprised, and who should be there. This is a workable solution.

And just yesterday, President Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, who was going to be able to attend was going to be very important relating to whether or not Russia would go.

Now, we know that Russia does seem to be going. We can conclude that the experts that Peskov talked about is satisfactory to the Russian side. But again, specifically, who are they? We don't know.

But in these types of dialogues in the recent past, we could generally expect there to be sort of Deputy Minister level, perhaps a Deputy Foreign Minister on the Russian side, and perhaps a Deputy Secretary of State with responsibility for Russia, Eurasia, Europe, perhaps to be on the other side of the table. But again, none of this is public so far, and none of it is clear, but it is clearly important to Russia, who is at the table and what is discussed.

KINKADE: Exactly. And, Nic, I understand NATO is planning a meeting with Moscow two days later.

ROBERTSON: Yes, they proposed that as well, and that's something that it seems that Russia is headed towards. President Putin has very clearly decided and strategically that his way to change NATO's course, is not by going to NATO's front door, it's to come in the side door, and go to a separate room and talk to the United States first, because Moscow's clear view is that the United States really has the clout, it's the biggest contributor to NATO, it contributes the most money, largest militarily, et cetera et cetera that the U.S. therefore has the ability to shape and influence all the others, all the other NATO members, i.e. without them on board, nothing is going to happen.

But don't talk to all of NATO, you won't get an answer. It'll take forever. Talk to the United States first.

It's not clear that strategy is going to play out for President Putin. But that's what he is doing. So the NATO meeting coming after the U.S. meeting, you know, what will be left on the table? What bitterness might either U.S. or Russia have, you know, from that first round of talks going into the next round of talks with NATO?

Again, these are just unknowns at the moment, but this seems to be President Putin's strategy. U.S. first, get them to convince the rest of NATO about what you want.

KINKADE: We shall see how President Putin's strategy plays out. Nic Robertson, as always, good to have you with us live from Moscow. Thank you.

Well, the Russian Supreme Court has shut down one of the country's best known human rights groups. Memorial International works to expose Soviet era atrocities. The group and its supporters say the ruling is an attempt to rewrite Russian history.

Our Melissa Bell reports.

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MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): For Alexey Yeks, this is history. The little things that survived the gulags and that will have been treasured all the more by those who'd lost everything.

ALEXEY YEKS, SCREENWRITER: We want to live, we want to remind -- we remember the house, remember the normal life.

BELL (voice over): People like Gregory Ivanov, Alexey's great grandfather, who never made it back from the gulag he was sent to during the Stalinist purges of the 1930s. Here in the basement of Memorial in Central Moscow, he explains that it was thanks to the organization which specializes in investigating Soviet era crimes that he was able to learn the truth about his family and why that matters.

History he says is cyclical.

YEKS: Our situation today was in the past few times, and such things can come back. And this is awful, I think. So we should remember it and keep it warm in our minds, I think.

BELL (voice over): But the government wants it shut down. It accuses it of breaking the foreign agents' law which has increasingly been used to close down organizations that are not in line with the government's thinking.

VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Unfortunately, Memorial has repeatedly committed violations and as the document given to me reads, it did so defiantly.

[15:25:10]

BELL (voice over): At risk, the 100,000 boxes of archives the organization has gathered since it was created as the Soviet Union began to crumble.

ALENA KOZLOVA, HEAD OF ARCHIVES, MEMORIAL (through translator): In each of these boxes is someone's story. So many letters were destroyed. But thanks to the ones we have here, we can learn more about what life in the Gulag was like from those who were there.

BELL (voice over): But it isn't just documents. Memorial also takes people on tours from the Lubyanka Building that once housed the KGB, to this courtyard behind another secret police building, where 15,000 executions are believed to have taken place.

VASILY STAROSTIN, HISTORIAN AND MEMORIAL TOUR GUIDE: The story that's history is our huge like social trauma, and you can get past that by that trauma if you talk about it.

BELL (voice over): The author and journalist, Andrei Kolesnikov says the problem is that memorial has become an obstacle to the current government's determination to glorify Russia's past.

ANDREI KOLESNIKOV, SENIOR FELLOW, CARNEGIE MOSCOW CENTER: Individual memories which are struggling with official memory because there are a lot of families which suffered from Stalinism and they are keeping that memory. They are grateful to Memorial.

BELL (voice over): Families like Alexey's where there had been shameful silence he says, now there is truth.

YEKS: I think the history is not just the history of the state and politics. History is the history of feminists, of people, and this is the real history without final cuts.

BELL (voice over): Melissa Bell, CNN, Moscow.

(END VIDEOTAPE) KINKADE: Well, no official response yet from Elon Musk or SpaceX after Beijing flagged him and the U.S. for behaving irresponsibly in space. It has to do with SpaceX satellites that China says flew too close to its space station.

Ivan Watson explains.

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IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: China is lashing out at SpaceX founder, Elon Musk, saying that two of his satellites endangered Chinese astronauts.

In a complaint filed with the U.N. Space Agency, Beijing says two satellites from Musk's Starlink network flew too close to the country's Space Station forcing it to take evasive maneuvers.

The report says the incidents took place in July and October.

Starlink is an internet service developed by SpaceX with a constellation of around 2,000 low orbit satellites. During a briefing on Tuesday, China's Foreign Ministry spokesperson urged the U.S. to act responsibly in space.

ZHAO LIJIAN, SPOKESPERSON, CHINESE FOREIGN MINISTRY (through translator): The United States repeatedly claims to have its own so- called concept of responsible conduct in outer space, but it ignores its international treaty obligations concerning outer space, posing a serious threat to the safety of astronauts. This is a typical double standard.

WATSON: But SpaceX is a private company and the tensions point to the larger issue of how to manage traffic in space, as more countries and companies now have space capabilities where near misses between objects happen often.

An astronomer at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says the International Space Station has had to avoid debris created by China's 2007 military anti-satellite test several times in recent years, but now, it is the richest person in the world who is catching heat.

ELON MUSK, CEO, SPACEX: It's going to be a very exciting future.

WATSON: Musk spent years winning over Chinese authorities so his electric carmaker Tesla could make inroads where other foreign companies could not. But the billionaire's reputation has been tainted by a run of bad publicity, including a recall of most Tesla cars that were built in Shanghai.

SpaceX has not responded to CNN requests for comment. So we'll just have to wait and see how the outspoken entrepreneur responds to this space challenge from Beijing.

Ivan Watson, CNN, Hong Kong.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KINKADE: Well, up next.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KYLIAN MBAPPE, FRENCH FOOTBALL SUPERSTAR: Hi, I'm Kylian Mbappe. Watch my interview next with "CONNECT THE WORLD."

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KINKADE: As you heard it there, one of the world's greatest footballers sits down with our Becky Anderson in Dubai.

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KINKADE (voice-over): Welcome back.

There is a new champion in football, after the Globe Soccer Awards in Dubai last night.

(WORLD SPORT)

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(WORLD SPORT)

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KINKADE: Well, that does it for this edition of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Lynda Kinkade, I'll be back at the top of the hour to update you on the global headlines. Up next, it's "QUEST'S WORLD OF WONDER."

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(QUEST'S WORLD OF WONDER)

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