hello, everyone, i'm kate bolduan. thank you so much for joining us this hour. we begin the hour with several major developments in the quest for a coronavirus vaccine. the united kingdom becomes the first country in the world to approve the -- approve the vaccine made by pfizer with the first doses set to be rolled out next week. so does the big news out of the uk raise the pressure on the united states? here in the united states, the fist shipments of pfizer's vaccine are set to be delivered on december 15th. that's according to an internal government document obtained by cnn. the fda will be meeting next week to consider authorization of the vaccine, and the cdc panel is recommending that health care workers, nursing home residents and those -- and employees working in those nursing homes, that they should get the vaccine first. they should be first in line. while all of these developments are very encouraging, and thank

goodness for them, the coronavirus reality still at this moment and for quite a period of time continues to be its unrelenting spread across the country. driving hospitalizations to record highs. more than 98,000 americans are currently hospitalized. that's approximately double the number from just one month ago. that shows that the trend is clearly in the wrong direction. and then there's also this as you see on your screen, almost 2,600 deaths were reported yesterday, the second highest daily total since the pandemic began. we're going to get to all of this. let's start with the major vaccine news out of the uk first. cnn's max foster is standing by in london with the latest on this. max, tell us exactly what the government there decided, what you're hearing there and why. >> well, the latest we've heard is the vaccine is being packed up at a factory in belgium ready to come here to the uk.

that's huge excitement. it means the rollout has actually begun. uk the first country in the world to have a clear and proven vaccine heading off to the fda. and it comes after the regulator here in the united kingdom approved this vaccine saying it's not only 95% effective but it's also safe. and they managed to get this approval through in record time by cutting out concurrent tests on the vaccine, rather than doing the tests one by one. normally a vaccine would take ten years to get to market. in this case, it's going to take ten months, which is extraordinary. so this is how the process will play out as we understand it. once the vaccine gets here to the uk, which should be next week, public health agency will be instructing people to offer the vaccine seven days a week from 8:00 a.m. until 8:00 p.m., including holidays. that's for each of these centers

that initially get the vaccine. and gp practices, doctors' practices will later on pick up the vaccine. they will be told to deliver minimum amounts of 975 shots per week. they're really going to get this out as quickly as possible. they assume the patient will need to return for a second dose. so when we say 800,000 doses are on their way to the uk, that will only be enough to treat 400,000 people initially, health workers and those in care homes and their careers will be the first to receive it. then it will be given to people depending upon their age and eventually by the spring, wield told, kate, everybody in the uk should be vaccinated, which is extraordinary considering what we've all been through over the last few months. >> the last several months at this point, exactly, max. thank you very much, i really appreciate it. so we're also learning more today about the timeline for when the vaccine could be available here in the united states. let's get over to cnn's sara

murray. she's been following all of these details and joining us now. sara, what are you hearing about this? >> look, we know states have to by the end of this week, friday, tell the federal government where they want the vaccine shipped and roughly how many doses they want the initial pfizer vaccine. operation warp speed is saying tentatively they think the pfizer vaccine will be shipping out on the 15th and moderna vaccine will be shipping out december 22. i say tentatively because, of course, these vaccines still need to be authorized by the fda. so operation warped speed is putting out these dates not knowing exactly what day we can get this fda authorization. once that happens, operation warped speed said within 24 hours of that authorization, these will be shipped out to states and from there it's up to the states to figure out how to get these vaccines into people's arms. we know off the bat, there will not be enough doses. even though there's a recommending how to prioritize people and health care workers are at the front of the line, most states will not get enough

doses to vaccinate all of their health care workers. they will have to prioritize within that. health care workers working day in and day out with arep patients will be at the front of this line. the government is taking an overarching management role, talking to states saying when it comes to the pfizer vaccine, which has to be kept really cold, do you have the cold storage you need? if you need dry ice, we can help provide that for you, but there's a lot of this burden that's going to fall to states and that's part of the reason they continued to hammer home the point they need more money from the federal government. they're especially worried, kate, these are two-dose vaccines. health care workers are very responsible and probably get both but they need to convince everyone else to come back and get the second dose to work. >> especially when they say many people will likely feel a side effect from the first one. convincing them it's working and they need to come back for the second one becomes an addition alg part of the challenge. great work, sara, thank you very much. joining me is dr. craig spencer, director of global

health in er medicine at presbyterian medical center. it's good to see you, dr. spencer. thank you for coming in. what is your reaction hearing the news out of the uk given the pfizer vaccine in. >> this is really heartening news. this is great. it's especially great because we know the mhra, the fda equivalent in the uk, decided the vaccine is safe, quality high and effective. and that will help some people here in the u.s. who were initi initially perhaps politics was playing a role in this. but it will help them say look, this is safe. and it is going through the whole clinical process, the clinical trials are necessary to tell us whether it works. it's the light at the end of the tunnel and i'm happy we can see an end to the pandemic but we have many months before we get there. >> absolutely. what do you make of the fact the uk approved it first?

do you thinks this something that can be learned, that the u.s. can learn from the uk rollout, that we're learning as it is happening next week? >> the fact the uk approved it maybe a week before it's going to be heard by the fda i don't think is anything too significant. look at really the unprecedented timeline we had since the beginning of this year when he with didn't know about the virus when we have vaccines with over 90% efficacy and we're going to be rolling them out to tens of millions of people in the next few weeks. i think it's more important we have an independent body like the fda and other bodies around the world to look at this independently to make sure we all come to the same conclusion. if it's many weeks or months later is one thing but a few days later does not look like it has a significant impact, doesn't say all that much. >> the weak timeline in the grand scheme of what the world is facing is not much when you

think about it and put it in perspective. fro frontline workers like yourselves and your colleagues, you're in front of the line, first to get the vaccine approved here in the states. the cdc advisory panel put out that guidance yesterday. how do you think the rollout will work for you? should work for you and other health care workers here? >> to be honest, i still have a lot of concerns about that. if we talk about the uk, they have a national health system where all of their databases are connected. they'll be able to find out by going in and clicking to one chart what vaccine someone received previously, what they will need for a second vaccine. i think there are logistical issue there's that will be a lot easier than they will be here. they have a federally led or government-led response and as we see here, we have a response different by different states and often different political party of the governor. i have concerns we are already have health care workers that are overburdened, are really, really tired and exhausted.

we have almost 100,000 people in the hospital now. so at the same time we're going to try to roll out this vaccine to health care workers, many of them are overburdened and working extra hours just to cover the shifts and make up for our colleagues that are already out. i do have concerns around the logistics, getting it from the plane into the clinic and into the arms especially of health care workers. i don't know enough of that has been figured out yet. >> i think you raised an excellent point there. you mentioned the record number, really astonishing number of americans who are in hospital right now with covid. i want to ask you, with that i want to ask you about the video you circulated kind of documenting one day in the life in the er that you experienced at the height of the pandemic. to remind people, let me play a part of it. >> two patients in rooms right next to each other both getting a breathing tube and it's not even 10:00 a.m. yet. the rest of your shift, every hour you get paged, that notification very sick patient,

short of breath, oxygen 88%, short of breath, low oxygen, stat notification, low oxygen, can't breathe. all day. >> you put this out while back and now entering december, we are as a country heading back to that place you were describing again. your videos had more than 4 million views, and i'm just sitting here wondering do you think people just didn't get the message or did and just don't care? >> i think people are getting the message, look, we shared that video initially when we were hit so hard in new york city and people here understood the reality and still understand it, because they saw it. it impacted their friends and their family. i reshared that video this weekend because in the month of november, we had a third of all of our covid cases since the beginning of this pandemic combined, hospitalizations doubled. and we are seeing a covid death every minute.

this reality is starting to become more real for people all over this country every single day. i know people sometimes need to see to believe. i know it's just an animation and we don't have videos inside hospitals for privacy concerns but i am hoping this gives people an idea what this looks like inside and what my colleagues are dealing with on a day-to-day basis all over this country, not just new york city, but every single hospital throughout the u.s., this is our reality and we need people to be vigilant. yes, there's light at the end of the tunnel but the next few months will be the hardest part of this pandemic and the decisions we make today, next week and over the holidays will significantly impact our ability to do our job in the emergency department and make sure many people stay alive. >> absolutely. the solution is coming but the solution is not here until it is here. there's no gray area in between now and then. thank you, dr. spencer. it's good to see you. coming up -- sources are telling us president trump is discussing preemptively

pardoning his children and rudy giuliani. why would the president pardon anyone who's not even under investigation? plus, out of icu beds, that is the reality for the largest health care provider in the state of new mexico. we'll talk to one doctor who's sounding the alarm. t's workflow. workflow it...? with the now platform, we can catch problems, before customers even know they're problems. wait... a hose? what kid wants a hose?! fireman? says "hose". -it says "horse"! not a hose! cedric! get over here! now our people can collaborate across silos, from across the globe. so how's the new place? it's a 4 bed, 2.5 bath igloo... it's great! yeah, but you have to live in the south pole. sir... -wait, are you sure? yes, we're that productive now. you hear that?! the kids get twice the presents!

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in his final days in office, president trump is reportedly discussing with advisers preemptive pardons for some of his cloefts allies, and by close, i mean his three oldest children and rudy giuliani. sources are saying he's making appeals -- giuliani, at least, is making appeals to the president to do just that. this comes just as we're learning about an investigation into a potential presidential pardon bribery scheme.

new court documents reveal the justice department is looking into whether money was being funneled into the white house in exchange for a pardon. joining me now, cnn white house correspondent john harwood and cnn former analyst and federal prosecutor alley honig. so first on this reporting the president is discussing, considering, however you want to say it, potential pardons for his kids and giuliani. why would he think his kids need to be considered for pardons? they haven't been charged with anything. >> they haven't. we don't know exactly why, but we do know just like the president himself, donald trump jr. was investigated by robert mueller in conjunction with the interactions with russian representatives in 2016. remember donald trump jr. set up that meeting. and jared kushner also attended that meeting. jared kushner also had issues related to information he gave

to the government when he was seeking a security clearance. don't know if any of that rises to the level of piem prosecution or whether the biden administration would have any intention of pursuing that even if it did. but job one for president trump was protecting himself and closest to him. rudy giuliani was involved in the effort to smear joe biden with ukraine. shady sources in ukraine linked to russian intelligence, that, of course, is the same effort that is what got donald trump impeached. all of this is part of the close circle of associates around president trump. protecting them means he's protecting himself. >> is this a good thing, preemptively pardoning people? >> usually not but it has happened a couple of times in our history. normally when a president issues a pardon, it is to spask person charged and convicted of a specific federal crime. that was the case of michael

flynn with roger stone. there have been a couple instances where the president preemptively pardoned somebody, the most famously being richard nixon, who was not ever charged with anything but he was pardoned. if this happens though, it begs the question, kate, you started off with, what's going on here? why does there need to be a pardon? if i'm a state prosecutor and i'm not bound by this pardon, i would be exactly that question, why is there a need to pardon these people? they must have done something. let me see if i can figure that out. >> john, what does this do, if anything at all, about the talk of president trump possibly trying to pardon himself? >> well, this is something again that hasn't been tried and i would defer to ellie's legal expertise on this. the consensus i've absorbed from legal scholars who talked about it are it would be contested but he might be able to do it. again, the president, he's got seven weeks left in office. at the end of that seven weeks,

he loses this awesome power that he possesses right now to shield himself or people around him potentially from criminal prosecution. i think there's every expectation that he would push the envelope and do whatever he can as he did with michael flynn and commuting roger stone's sentence. we're all watching to see what happens with paul manafort as well. i think the expectation is he pushed the envelope to maximize the amount of protection from potentially getting prosecuted that he could. >> ellie, now to the justice department investigation into potential pardon bribery schemes, the court documents that cnn has seen, they're partially redacted and filings do not reveal a timeline of any scheme or names of people involved. the justice department did tell cnn there was no government official as a target of this. so what is your take on this, what's coming out? what does this mean for the president? >> first of all, absolutely not

fake news as the president claimed in a tweet. this comes with documents filed with the court. there absolutely was at least an investigation of this pardon scheme. the most important thing i see here is the doj believes and understands the pardon power, while very broad, still doesn't mean you can do it for any purpose, even if the purpose is criminal. here they're looking for the possibility of a pardon for cash bribery scheme which can and should be a federal crime. they're right about that. some of the more important investigations, whether the pred issued pardons or dangled pardons to pemt like michael flynn and michael cohen to keep them silent. if so, i believe in using the juice department's logic here, that could be obstruction of justice as well. >> this is long from over is what you guys are telling me. thank you very much. a quick programming note,p president-elect joe biden and vice president-elect kamala harris will be joining jake tapper for their first interview

since joining the white house. you can watch that full interview tomorrow at 9:00 p.m. eastern only on cnn. still ahead -- at least nine hospitals in in new mexico completely filled their intensive care units. what will happen if another surge comes? a doctor there is joining us. but we didn't stop there. we made a cloud flexible enough to adapt to any size business. no matter what it does, or how it changes. and we kept going. so you only pay for what you use. because at dell technologies, we stop...at nothing. ♪ hello is friendly... hello is open... it's welcoming... everything we want to be when helping people find a medicare plan. so, if you're looking for yours, say hello to hellomedicare... a one-stop shop for medicare plans, including a range of "all-in-one"

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one doctor on the frontlines in new mexico is putting it bluntly saying we are out of icu beds, we are really totally full. take a look at the numbers from there. this is the average of new cases in the state week to week. as you can see, it essentially skyrocketed since october. 909 people currently hospitalized in the state, second highest since the pandemic began. the second highest only since sunday as well. now at least nine new mexico hospitals say they're out of icu beds. dr. jason mitchell is the chief medical office at presbyterian health care services, the state's largest health care provider. he's joining me right now. doctor, thank you very much for being here. you are the doctor i was just quoting off the top. you are sounding the alarm

you're out of icu beds. what do things look like in your hospital system right now? >> you know, we really truly are out of beds and it's not just the intensive care unit, it's all of the medical beds as well. we've pulled out every stop so we can take care ofp new mexicoens but as a community, we really are at the extent of that. >> how is it getting so bad there? what do you think is behind it? >> you know, we had done really well early on in the pandemic and really locked things down quickly and did a great job as a community. but over time over the summer, i think we all, everybody across america, became more relaxed and we did not practice covid safe practices consistently. as businesses opened up and we socialized and were together, that's how the virus spreads. when you have a pandemic and you have people beginning to get together, you're going to see the spike and that's what we saw. >> what is your biggest fear? you're not only out of icu beds,

you're full, packed full. you're out of medical beds as well. when people hear that, what do you want to make sure they understand that actually means, what is your fear? >> i think every doctor's worse fear is that patients come to us and we can't give them the best care, we can't give them everything we need to take care of them. when you run out of resources and whether that's doctors or nurses or beds or ventilators, you cannot give that care and that's the crisis standard of care someone who enter into. >> is that what's happening right now, is that where we are right now? >> we're not there yet. we're very, very close as a state but not there yet. we have been able to bring in physicians and nurses that do not normally practice in the hospital who are competent to help us, nurse agencies around the nation, opening areas to make room for more beds, double occupancy beds, more people in there. we've done everything to expand capacity but we're out of levers to pull. >> i just want to ask you, this just came in, the cdc -- this

had been discussed, doctor, but the cdc just officially announced it's shortening its guidelines now, shortening the 14-day guidelines for someone who is exposed, now shortening it from seven to ten days. seven-day quarantine with a negative test on the end, ten days of quarantine with no symptoms but no test. what does that mean for you in new mexico? >> i think there's a couple important things here. one, it's important to follow the science and evidence. if the cdc makes changes based on science, that's great. we should follow it. from a workforce standpoint, as you shorten that, it helps return people to work and we need all hands on deck so that does help people come back sooner as well. >> can you talk briefly about what it's been like being on the frontlines so long and dealing with the surge now in what you're looking at and you have not even seen the thanksgiving fallout yet? >> it is hard and i'm speaking for all of our clinicians. they have been working

tirelessly for nine months and there's a lot of moral trauma that happens. when we had surges before and couldn't allow visitors, a lot of times they were the only person with the patient when they died and they may have had family on the phone. or may have seen people die who shouldn't have had to die. we have already been having these traumas and experiences nobody wants to have. now we're at a point that's getting faster and quicker and although we're prepared with our masks and gloves and ppe, we can protect ourselves, the volumes are there and we can't give the best care we want to give. >> that is a nightmare scenario. dr. mitchell, thank you very much for coming in coming up -- president trump is threatening a veto and it has the u.s. military caught right in the middle. i felt like... ...i was just fighting an uphill battle in my career. so when i heard about the applied digital skills courses, i'm thinking i can become more marketable. you don't need to be a computer expert to be great at this.

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president trump is threatening to veto a massive defense spending bill. it is a critical piece of annual legislation that covers things like pay raise and and other spending needs for the u.s. military. the commander in chief is threatening this veto over social media. his continued war against what he and other conservatives view as tech companies like facebook and twitter working to silence their voices. twitter has labeled trump's

tweets as disinformation on multiple occasions but twitter's done so when it's accurate he's clearly promoting disinformation. the president is targeting something called section 230, it protects tech companies from being sued over third party content on their platforms. but the way the president is going about this, he's holding up critical funding for the military to get his way. joining me right now, former republican governor of ohio, cnn senior commentator, if i can speak, john kasich, we can get to it. thank you for coming on. you know how important this legislation is. an overnight the president made it into a political war with the military caught right in the middle. what is your take on this? >> well, i mean, i think he's just, again, another reaction here that he's not going to get his way on this in my opinion. look, kate, you know the popularity of this new show

called "the social dilemma," which is talking about all of the things consumers need to know about these tech companies. i have never seen anything rise interest more than this documentary, again, the social dilemma. but what's clear to me is the tech companies are going to have to figure out how they want to be regulated because congress is not just going to ignore this problem out there, and there are lawsuits being filed. the fact of the matter is, what you have to do is take a comprehensive view about what the rules of the road are and what the proper regulations are for these big tech companies. trump trying to do it in this way is just kind of typical of a ham-handed way he wants to get something done, but there's bipartisan concern about this. >> i was going to say, there's a legitimate debate over tech companies section 230 in and much itself. >> yes. >> but the ham-handed way the president is going about it, it's downright dangerous and

it's downright disrespectful. of all things to choose, the defense authorization bill is what you're going to take on to hold up in order to get your way because you don't like the way they're monitoring your twitter? it's really ridiculous. >> kate, you know what, there's nothing that ceases to amaze us about what he's doing. this is clearly ham-handed. i don't even know how he found this. somebody must have gone in to tell him about this. but it's obviously vital for the department of defense to be funded and this sort of like charlie brown, here's the football, try to kick it or not, is not the way in which you want to run the military, particularly at a time we see the rise, military rise of china and time at which we need to have a resetting of all of our foreign policy initiatives. i'll bet on capitol hill they're just like -- their heads are falling on the desk saying when will this stop? but it isn't going to go on for much longer because he's got about a month left or something like that. >> let's get to that in a

second. you and i often thougalk about future direction of the republican party. i want to ask you about the future direction of the democratic party. president obama really had an interesting take on the future of the party in a new interview with peter hamby on snapchat. let me play just a little bit of it. >> we stick so long with the same old folks and don't make room for new voices. the fact an aoc only got, what, three minutes or five minutes. p. >> good evening, and thank you. >> when she speaks to a broad section of young people who are interested in what she has to say, even if they don't agree with everything she says. new blood is always good. >> new blood is always good. what do you think about that? >> i think he was asked a direct question and he didn't want to take a swipe at her, but he also said something very interesting in that interview and that is using slogans like defund the police or green new deal, he says they're snappy slogans that only appeal to people that agree with him.

you're an indiana girl. imagine going over in indiana and trying to promote a platform about defund the police. even congressman clyburn from south carolina, the african-american leader that saved joe biden's bacon down in south carolina by biden winning the primary said he thinks this language around defunding the police probably cost a congressional race in south carolina. own one hand i think he's trying to say, we need new ideas, we need new voices, i happen to agree with that, but he's also at the same time saying these slogans like defund the police or new green deal, which labels socialists and all of that other stuff, i think it absolutely hurt the democratic party. i said on election day whenever we were announced the winner here on cnn, i said it was the hard left that i thought put joe biden's ability to become president in jeopardy, because people, these culture issues, kate, in rural areas, our towns where the factories are

forgotten, all across the country, down in miami-dade and south florida, these issues of culture really matter to voters. and i think it's a struggle inside the democratic party. >> you also get to an important point, which is words matter. despite what anybody would like to say on cable tv. just focus on the republican party now. you still right now have top republicans dodging in remarkable fashion doing everything they can to not acknowledge the reality joe biden is president-elect. you have state officials and election officials getting death threats over the hysteria donald trump stirred up with his baseless allegations of voter fraud and today the georgia secretary of state, a republican, came out and had to say this. listen. >> even after this office request that president trump try and quell the violent rhetoric being born out of his continuing claims of winning the states where he obviously lost, he tweeted out, "expose the massive

voter fraud in georgia." this is exactly the kind of language that's at the base for a growing threat environment for election workers who are simply doing their jobs. >> and top republicans are still silent. is that at all okay? do you see a universe where that's okay? >> no, it's eshl it. but the good news is there are more and more republicans not listening to trump and ignoring these politicians that don't want to say biden won the election. polling is beginning to reveal people are saying enough is enough, kate. i think we can all agree, wherever you are, republican, democrat, independent, enough is enough. biden won. he's going to be president. let's move on. >> there are enough problems in this country we need to come together to resolve 6789 this is not one. >> exactly. >> good to see you, governor. come back on soon. coming up -- airlines preparing to transport some of the first doses of the vaccine in the united states. what will this large-scale distribution effort look like?

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the good news is a coronavirus vaccine will soon be on the way. but how it will eventually get to you is a massive logistical challenge that this country and the world has really never seen from manufacturing to transportation to storage requirements and handling, none of this is easy. companies like united airlines are jumping in to do their part. cnn got a look at how the airline is preparing to transport the vaccines. you see the huge containers right there. sources also confirming to cnn that united in the past week began flying first batches of

the pfizer vaccine to preposition doses for distribution when the green light is given. how is this all going to work? let's find out. joining me is josh earnest, chief communications officer for united airlines. good to see you again, josh. >> hi, kate. >> how will this work on your end once the vaccines get approval? >> kate, if you think about the challenge we faced back in united back in march, we saw international travel basically grind to a halt, so as the airline with the largest wide body fleet in the world, more than 200 of them, we have been trying to figure out how to put those planes to work. what we've actually done since march we flew 8,000 only cargo-only plane, cargo-only flights, instead of filling them with passengers, we've been filling them with cargo. as we started reading over the summer about the logistical challenge we were going to face, the world was going to face in terms of distributing these vaccines, we started working with vaccine makers around the world, working with the fda to

figure out how to help with these herculean challenge. some of it has been engineering, some of it logistical and some regulatory work. so one of the things we went and did in the fall, we went and applied to the faa and said we are going to need to fly much more cargo of dry ice if we're going to be able to transport these vaccines then we ordinarily are have approval in the faa for five times as much dry ice as we are normally allowed to carry in aircraft. and one of our largest planes in our fleet can actually carry 1.1 million doses of vaccine. so, we do have an important role to play here, and we're eager to step up and assist in the effort to get this lifesaving vaccine transported not just to the united states, but around the world. >> and you are going to need all that dry ice. considering, when you are talking just about the pfizer

vaccine. the temperature that it has to be kept at is close to 100 below zero fahrenheit. how do you do that? is it just all dry ice? what went into -- what do you have to do in these cargo planes? >> well, there are what we call soft boxes that can be used to store the dry ice, and then the vaccine, inside them. it limits the rate at which the dry ice sort of essentially evaporates into the air. so it does keep the vaccine very cold even while it's in the cargo hold. i think one of your reporters was able to see one of those facilities that we have at dulles airport just outside washington, d.c. but we had this at other airports. we have key hubs places like new york, chicago, houston, just outside d.c. so, we actually are strategically located at some of the points it would be to distribute this vaccine as well. like i said, we're just eager to

do our part. no industry has been hit harder than the airline business. and so, what we have been trying to do since the beginning is thinking about how can we contribute to a solution? so we have been flying medical workers to hot spots for free. we even took one of our hubs in hus ton and turned into a logistical hub for a food bank. and we do have the kind of safety, engineering, and expertise, that can be a real benefit to the vaccine makers as they are trying to distribute that lifesaving vaccine. >> are you doing this for free? or do you need the federal government to offer more relief to do this? >> well, you know, we certainly have been working with our customers. we actually do some of this cargo work as part of our regular course of business. we're actually doing much more of it than ordinarily because what i described before, where these planes were, otherwise, not being used. so, we do have existing, commercial relationships with vaccine makers because of the work we've done with them in the past. but, you know, kate, as it

relates to the federal s assistance we received, it's only because of the support we got from the federal government back in march, that we were able to spend a few months over the summer adjusting our business. and making sure that we could be nimble enough to make the preparations that was -- that were required over the summer and fall, so that now that we're here in the winter, we are in a position where we can play a critical role in this chain of distributing the vaccine. >> and critical cannot be -- you can't overstate it, how critical a role it's going to be in the coming weeks and months. thank you so much, josh, for coming on. it's going to be fascinating to watch. thank you. >> thank you, kate. >> for the second time in the history of the nfl, fans will be able to watch a game on a wednesday. after three separate delays, pittsburgh steelers and the baltimore ravens, they are finally going to be facing off this afternoon for a 3:40 eastern kickoff. this, as the ravens continue to struggle to manage the coronavirus outbreak within the team. let's go over to cnn's andy

schultz. he is watching all of this. andy, 3:40 in the afternoon. but maybe more importantly, did the ravens even have enough healthy players to get -- take the field? >> well, they have enough healthy players, date, but they certainly are going to be sho shorthanded. they had two more positive tests come back yesterday. one was a player. one makes it an equipment manager. that makes ten-straight days now that the ravens recorded positive tests. coming in today, they had 15 players on that covid-19 reserve list. one of them being reigning mvp, lamar jackson. he is not going to play today. they're going to do rapid tests where they get results in 30 minutes. if they were to record more positive tests, the game would certainly be in jeopardy of even havi happening this afternoon. and you might be asking yourself why are they playing a game at 3:40 eastern on a wednesday afternoon? well, nbc is airing the game and tonight in prime time, they already had scheduled the

rockefeller tree-lighting ceremony to be aired. and you know, when it came down to deciding whether to air that, kate, or move the football game into prime time. i guess, so much uncertainty surrounding the ravens, nbc decided to keep the tree ceremony in prime time because the highest-rated program on television right now is nfl football but that was their decision. >> tree lighting or football. you don't get to decide. good to see you, andy. thauchk y thank you very much. i really appreciate it. still ahead for us. we just talked to united airlines but how are states preparing to distribute the covid vaccine when they get it? that's coming up. utiful idaho po recipes are just side dishes, then i'm not a real idaho potato farmer. genuine idaho potatoes not just a side dish anymore. always look for the grown in idaho seal.

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the team's been working around the clock.wire, we've had to rethink our whole approach. we're going to give togetherness. logistically, it's been a nightmare. i'm not sure it's going to work. it'll work. i didn't know you were listening.

welcome to our viewers, in the united states, and around the world. i'm dana bash in washington. global optimism, today, on the coronavirus, after the british give a green light to a vaccine. the pandemic is marching towards new highs, though, here in the u.s. 98,000 plus americans sitting in hospital wings with the virus, this hour. 13.7 million, total, cases. 270,000 total deaths. the numbers rank worst, in the world. meanwhile, president trump, appears focused on what matters to him, legal deliberations in the white house in recent weeks concern the president's family. sources confirm to cnn that the president is a