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Trump Issues Pardons; U.S. Could Already Have New U.K. Variant; Congo's Rainforests and Future Pandemics; Lakers Hold Ring Ceremony. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired December 23, 2020 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Is supposed to be about running the country and it's supposed to be about helping the American people. It's not supposed to be about wielding power in any way that you can just to prove that you can, or in your own personal gain.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: This is a president who, for the past four years, has used the powers of the presidency to benefit himself, to benefit his business, to provide favors to his friends and his allies, and it's sort of fitting in some ways that he's using his final days of the presidency to do that with the pardon power.

I would expect, as Margaret said, more of these pardons, more of these sort of midnight attempts to show favor to people who he believes are loyal to him, to maybe even try to punish people who he thinks who were not loyal to him.

We saw the attorney general stepping down today and resigning and now an acting attorney general coming in. We can expect that acting attorney general to get a lot of pressure from President Trump to use the powers of the Justice Department to go after the president (INAUDIBLE), to promote this idea that there was wide scale voter fraud. And this is a president who is not using any sort of idea of having guardrails in these final days. Instead, he's trying to use the powers that he has as president to, you know, keep himself in office and subvert the democracy that he's supposed to be defending.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Twenty-eight more days -- 28 more days of this. This is like an advent calendar, right, but behind each window is one more piece of lunacy.

HILL: Yes.

BERMAN: And who knows what we're going to see until January 20th at this point.

Toluse, Margaret, thank you both very much.

HILL: Researchers now say hundreds of Americans may already be infected with this new variant of coronavirus that was first identified in the U.K., so how much does that complicate efforts to contain the virus? And what does it mean for vaccines? That's next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:35:16]

BERMAN: Researchers studying the new variant of coronavirus in the United Kingdom think it likely arrived in the United States in mid- November and that hundreds of people in the U.S. could already be infected.

Joining us now, William Haseltine. He is the chair and president of ACCESS Health International and a former professor at Harvard Medical School.

Professor, thanks so much for being with us.

WILLIAM HASELTINE, CHAIR AND PRESIDENT, ACCESS HEALTH INTERNATIONAL: A pleasure.

BERMAN: What concerns you most about what we now know, or maybe don't know, about this variant in the United Kingdom and the variant -- similar variant in South Africa?

HASELTINE: I think the most concerning thing is it shows that this virus is capable of rapid adaptation to whatever medical measures we may take to try to control it.

HILL: So, but in terms of adaptation, you know, as we've learned, or I've certainly learned over the last several days, it's not uncommon. Viruses mutate all the time. And in terms of measures that we have in place, we don't really have much in place. We've got masks, we've got distance, and we've got washing our hands. So in terms of that evolution --

HASELTINE: Well, we -- yes, we have vaccines. That's one of the big concerns. Can this get around vaccines? It looks like it's learned to get around many of the natural immune responses. That's concerning because the vaccines mimic part of the natural immune response, not all of the immune response. This virus seems to get around some of those effects. Particularly, we know, some of the monoclonal antibody therapies. These viruses, both in South Africa and in the U.K. get around it.

I would be very surprised if we haven't got our own homegrown variants with similar properties.

BERMAN: So you think it's already here or some type of it is already here?

HASELTINE: Well, I'd be very surprised if the U.K. variant weren't here. We get about 300,000 visitors from the U.K. every month. I'd be very surprised if it weren't here.

But it would be even more surprising if we didn't make our own homegrown variant that have these characteristics. They have popped up now in South Africa. Very -- it's a different virus, but has many of the same characteristics. In both cases, there's another feature which is quite worrying. One of

the things these do is attach more vigorously to cells. They both make more virus, and that virus attaches to the body more easily, both in adults and in children. There are many more infections now, it appears, in both Britain and South Africa of these new variants in children than there were of the previous strains. And that is very worrying for schools and for, of course, our most precious gift, which is our children.

HILL: As we look at this, the latest reporting we have is that despite it being perhaps more transmissible in children and showing up more in children, that it's not actually more dangerous. That the virus itself --

HASELTINE: We don't know that yet.

HILL: You don't think we actually know that?

HASELTINE: We don't know that yet. We don't know it yet. That is what people are looking at. It's something that -- there are two things that we really need to know. How does this affect vaccines? Does it weaken its protection or eliminate its protection? We don't know that yet. And we don't know in adults and children how much more serious the disease will be.

There is some evidence from the South African strain that it is more serious. The infection is not only more prevalent, but it's more serious in children. So those are things we still have to learn. This is very early days when we're looking at this.

But you may know that the number of children infected in the United States is going up pretty sharply now.

BERMAN: So, Professor, layer this new concern over the variants over where we are on the calendar, a couple of days before Christmas, a period where Dr. Fauci tells us he's concerned about a surge upon a surge with people gathering here.

So what might happen?

HASELTINE: Well, this is really bad news for what's happening over the holidays. It doesn't appear to me that people are taking the danger as seriously as they should. We are already seeing record numbers of deaths in hospitals from this disease, which appears to be coincident with what we have expected for the Thanksgiving bump. That was just about a month ago.

If you remember, a month ago, people were saying, you're going to see more deaths from the Thanksgiving bump in about a month to six weeks. Well, guess what, that's what we're seeing.

The travel that's occurred during Thanksgiving is small compared to the travel and gatherings that are now occurring, right now, today, occurring over the Christmas and New Year's holidays. That could be a very big bump in deaths and disease in January.

[06:40:03]

It's a very serious situation, compounded with what appears to be a strain or strains that are developing that are more transmissible and possibly more dangerous.

HILL: One of the things that I have found illuminating, I guess, over the last couple of days, as we're learning more about this, is just the extent of what we don't know here in the United States because of the lack of sequencing that we're doing. So Elizabeth Cohen had these amazing numbers for us this morning that in the last month or so, 7 million new cases have been added in the United States. 292 of them have been genetically sequenced. You know, more than 9,200 have been genetically sequenced during the same time in the U.K.

How much is that lack of information setting us back in this country?

HASELTINE: It's blinded us to what's going on. You know, there's a couple of big gaps in what we do. One is making universal testing available, which could have been done quite some time ago, free universal testing that you can do at home yourself. That technology has existed for a long time. And not really looking at the sequences of these viruses. It's absolutely astounding to me that Britain, a much smaller country, with smaller resources, has gone way ahead of us, found these. And even in South Africa they found it through sequencing. What is wrong with what we're doing?

BERMAN: Professor Haseltine, as always, thank you for being with us this morning, giving us a little bit of a dose of reality. We hope you have a happy and safe holiday.

HASELTINE: You too. Thank you very much.

BERMAN: All right, coming up very shortly, we will speak with incoming CDC Director Rochelle Walensky. This is her first interview since she was selected by President-elect Joe Biden to lead that critical government agency.

So this virus, obviously, caught the world off guard, but it's just one of many diseases likely to emerge in the years to come. CNN's exclusive investigation into where these viruses are coming from and the one that might be next.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:45:45]

HILL: Now a CNN exclusive. As the world struggles to contain the coronavirus pandemic, humanity is also facing an unknown number of new viruses emerging from Africa's rain forest. And the more these forests are destroyed, the closer humans come to these diseases.

CNN's senior international correspondent, Sam Kiley, traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo to investigate and joins us now.

Sam, good morning.

SAM KILEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, and sorry to bring yet more bad news as we approach Christmas, particularly when it comes to the spread of zoonotic viruses. Viruses like COVID-19 suspected to have made that leap between animals and humans. And as you said there, Erica, in the introduction, the more the environment is destroyed, the more it is combined, for example, with climate change, but also human population expansion the greater the danger humanity is in.

And this is a danger that is very, very real, as our report shows.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KILEY (voice over): This pristine wilderness is under threat. The environmental disaster here could lead to a human apocalypse. Because locked up in the forest are reservoirs of potentially deadly contagions, some perhaps more dangerous than we've ever seen before.

Ingende, 400 miles upriver from the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital, has been struck by a recent outbreak of the killer Ebola virus. It's killed three out of 11 patients here, but doctors fear that they've stumbled on a new virus for which there may be neither treatment nor cure.

DR. CHRISTIAN BOMPALANGA, MEDICAL CHIEF, INGENDE ZONE (through translator): We have to do more examination to figure out what's going on.

KILEY (on camera): So the doctors just told me that one of their immediate concerns is that they are getting cases now that present symptoms that are similar to Ebola, but when they test them in the laboratory here, they're coming up negative.

KILEY (voice over): This patient has Ebola symptoms, but she's tested negative. She's one of two victims here who may be fighting a disease never encountered before.

I asked the doctor if he was worried about new diseases emerging.

DR. DADIN BONKOLE, PHYSICIAN TREATING EBOLA (through translator): Yes, indeed. We should be afraid. That was how Ebola came. It was a known, in a known disease, and then after tests, it turned out to be a virus.

KILEY: Treatments and a vaccine for Ebola now mean that while it's often deadly, more patients do survive. But medicine will never keep up with new diseases emerging from the wilderness. The patients here did survive, but tests for known illnesses were all negative. So her disease remains a mystery. Doctors worry that more zoonotic diseases, like Ebola, HIV/AIDS, SARS, MERS and COVID-19 will emerge and make that jump from animals to humans.

Ingende, on the river Ruki (ph), is deep in the Congo basin. It's accessible only by boat, but that's how a virus can travel to big cities, like Mbandaka, to the country's capital Kinshasa, and into the global bloodstream. Mbandaka has been at the epicenter of this latest fight against Ebola,

which killed 55 people in the province.

KILEY (on camera): Here in Mbandaka they are battling with the fifth local outbreak of the Ebola virus, which is on its 11th here in the Congo. They're getting a grip on it, they believe. But they're also concerned about finding unknown viruses that have emerged from the forest, just like Ebola.

KILEY (voice over): The scientists here have limited funds, but they know their work is essential to protect their own country, and the rest of humanity.

PETER FONJUNGO, CDC COUNTRY DIRECTOR, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: If we don't have all this in place, you can imagine the nightmare scenario where you just have a vast epidemic with many pieces leading to a huge mortality and morbidity.

KILEY: More than a hundred new viruses have been discovered in the DRC over a decade, including many coronaviruses in bats.

[06:50:04]

So, it's bats that get tracked. Bats are linked to many zoonotic diseases, notably COVID-19 and Ebola.

GUY MIDINGI, ECOLOGIST, NATIONAL BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INRB (through translator: Now we are going to put it in a culture bag. You have to be really careful or they bite.

KILEY (on camera): The virologists have told us that whilst they haven't found the Ebola virus itself inside them, they have found the antibody. So these are in a sense a sentinel species, an early warning system for humanity.

KILEY (voice over): A net (ph) could prove fatal, start an epidemic, or worse. So could a cross-infection from an unknown host, to bats, to chickens, to children.

About 80 bats are swabbed, tested for COVID and Ebola, and then the samples are sent to Kinshasa for more investigation. Most of them survive capture and are returned to the wild.

The Congo's population has almost doubled in two decades to around 90 million. This puts the forest under strain and closes the gap between people and the new diseases that could kill them.

KILEY (on camera): The scale of the destruction of the rain forest here in the Congo is not yet on the scale that we've seen in the Amazon. A great deal of it is the result of local farmer who clear the land and then farm it for a few years. The problem is that that causes fragmentation of the rain forest, increasing the surface area between the forest and humanity.

PROF. JEAN-JACQUES MUYEMBE TAMFUM, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE, INRB: So this is the forest. KILEY (voice over): Professor J.J. Muyembe is an expert in emerging diseases. He's been tracking them since he discovered Ebola in 1976. And now he has a warning for us all.

MUYEMBE: So it's become an outbreak.

KILEY (on camera): Are you afraid that there is going to be more emerging diseases coming out of the forest? Something that is perhaps spreads like COVID, but kills like Ebola?

MUYEMBE: We are now in a world where new pathogens will come out that will constitute a threat for humanity. And, as you know, most of these disease emerge from Africa.

KILEY (voice over): And this in the Congo is how viruses mostly travel.

KILEY (on camera): The river Congo is the great artery that gives life to the whole nation, but it's also the route by which the results of deforestation are exported.

KILEY (voice over): Like these smoked monkeys being sold for food. I film undercover because traders here in protected species fear exposure. Adams Cassinga is my guide. Once subsistence food, now bush meat is an international luxury commodity.

KILEY (on camera): Yes, but can they -- can you arrange for shipping to Europe and America?

KILEY (voice over): I'm told, that's no problem, there's an agency for that. A protected species, the monkey's heads and arms have to be cut off to disguise them with antelope meat.

ADAMS CASSINGA, WILDLIFE CRIME INVESTIGATOR, CONSERV CONGO: We have experienced an influx of ex-patriates, mainly from southeastern Asia, and who demand to eat certain types of meats, such as turtles, snakes, primates.

KILEY: The U.N. estimates that some 5 million tons of wild meat are harvested every year from the Congo basin. But the most potent source of viruses are live animals. They carry the viruses and can infect when they're butchered or petted in private zoos. Live animals and bush meat are part of a multi-billion dollar global trade that's a cause and a symptom of ecological disaster.

Combined with logging and industrial pressure, untold numbers of potential infections could be released. And now it's as if nature has found a way to protect itself. That locked up in the armory of the forest is a weapon against the planet's most deadly threat, humankind. And, if so, this abandoned palace of a long-dead dictator isn't a relic of the past, it's a vision of what the planet looks like when mother earth fights back.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KILEY: (INAUDIBLE) finders of the Ebola virus who I interviewed during that program has made it very clear that in his view and the view of virologists working in the Congo, as the global anti-warning system for pathogens that are coming from there and there alone, they believe very firmly that we are in what they call the age of pathogens, the age in which we are going to have to get used to pandemics. And if we don't look after the planet, it may well bite us back.

[06:55:00]

HILL: Yes, it is certainly all connected, as you showed us.

Appreciate it, Sam Kiley. Great piece. Thank you.

Kevin Durant back on the court a year and a half after a devastating injury. Kind of looks like he never left. We've got the highlights in the "Bleacher Report," next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: The Lakers opened up the NBA season last night with a pretty unique championship ring ceremony.

Coy Wire with the very latest in the "Bleacher Report."

Good morning, Coy.

COY WIRE, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

Due to the pandemic, no fans or family members were allowed to be there at Staples Center in L.A. to see that ring ceremony last night, but the Lakers still finding a way to make it special.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're here to present my husband --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Da da!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Marquis Maurice --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (INAUDIBLE)!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With his championship ring.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love you and we are BFFs forever. Love you!

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you for everything you've done for our foundations and congratulations.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Keep up the hard work.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are family.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are family!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are family!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WIRE: LeBron even getting shout-outs from his students at his I Promise school as he gets his fourth ring. The Lakers are going to wait until fans are back in those stands to unveil their 17th championship banner.

But the across town rival, Clippers, making the Lakers' party end right there. Going up 22 in the first quarter. Paul George, Kawhi Leonard on fire, combining for 59. George leading the way with a second-half surge, scoring ten in a row at one point. The Lakers didn't lead once the entire game. Clippers win 116-109.

And opening night at Barclays in Brooklyn. The Nets paying respect to coronavirus essential workers, lifting a banner to the rafters in their honor. On the court, Kevin Durant, recovered from injury, playing his first regular season game in 560 days. The former league MVP dropping 22 on his former Warriors teammates. Kyrie Irving leads with 26 as Brooklyn puts a whooping on the Warriors, 125-99.

Opening week continues on TNT tonight as Giannis and the Bucs battle the Celtics in Boston at 7:30 p.m. Eastern. Four teams will have fans in the stands tonight, John, the Cavs, Magic, Rockets and Toronto Raptors, who are playing their home games in Tampa to start the season.

BERMAN: The Celtics will have me on the couch, though, most importantly.

WIRE: There you go.

BERMAN: Where I belong to cheer them on.

Coy Wire, thanks so much for being with us. Appreciate it.

NEW DAY continues right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY.

Alisyn is off. Erica Hill with me this morning for some major breaking news.

The possible $900 billion implosion thanks to one video.

[07:00:00]

So the president shocked Democrats, Republicans, blindsided his own staff, releasing a video overnight that signals he might veto the huge.