we are just hours away from the article of impeachment being delivered to the senate, beginning the process of putting donald trump on trial for an historic second time. meanwhile, president joe biden tackling the coronavirus pandemic with even more restrictions in place. plus much of the world's population has plunged deeper into poverty because of the pandemic, but the rich are seemingly unaffected. we'll take a closer look at why that is. hello and welcome to "cnn newsroom," everyone. appreciate your company. i'm michael holmes.

welcome, everyone. former president donald trump's historic second impeachment trial in the u.s. senate will start next month. but the first step in the process begins in the hours ahead when the house will deliver its article of impeachment to the senate in a ceremonious procession. but u.s. president joe biden says he's not focused on the impeachment. instead, he's about tackling the coronavirus pandemic head-on. he plans to reinstate international travel restrictions trump had wanted to lift and get bipartisan support for a nearly $2 trillion covid relief package. joe biden's critics, though, have argued he can't ignore the impeachment of his predecessor and that the president's calls for unity and bipartisanship will ring hollow when trump is put on trial.

cnn's senior washington correspondent joe johns is on capitol hill with more on how that might play out. >> reporter: it's history in the making once again as capitol hill prepares for the second donald trump impeachment trial. a bit different from the first, he is now out of office. he's out of town, and he's off twitter. very different from last time. none theless, there are still some similarities. for example, once again, the house impeachment managers will take the long walk across the united states capitol to deliver the one article of impeachment to the united states senate and read the article before the united states senate. normally after such things occur, the impeachment trial is supposed to start in earnest at 1:00 p.m. the next afternoon. but the united states senate has bought itself some time. in fact, they're going to stay

out two weeks before they begin the trial in earnest, coming back on february 9th. there's been a lot of suggestion that this trial will be quicker than the last one, but that's not clear simply because republicans are all over the place on what to do. >> i think the trial is stupid. i think it's counterproductive. we already have a flaming fire in this country and it's like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire. >> i think it's a moot point because i think right now donald trump is no longer the president. he is a former president. the constitution and i think -- and i know there are other people out there that may disagree with me. but article 1, sections -- i think it's 6 and 7 specifically point out that you can impeach the president, and it does not indicate that you can impeach someone who is not in office. >> the preponderance of the legal opinion is that an impeachment trial after someone has left office is constitutional. i believe that's the case. i'll of course hear what the lawyers have to say for each

side. but i think it's pretty clear that the effort is constitutional. >> the united states senate is divided 50-50 between democrats and republicans. a two-thirds majority is required to convict. that means if all democrats vote to convict the former president, 17 republicans will also have to vote with them. back to you. >> joe johns, our thanks to you. more now on president biden's coronavirus agenda and what he's planned for his first full week in office. cnn's alex saenz reports. >> reporter: the white house is trying to donald trump up bipartisan support for president biden's $1.9 trillion covid relief package. and over the weekend, the president dispatched his top economic adviser, brian deese, to speak with a group of 16 senators, 8 republicans and 8 democrats, as they're looking to get more bipartisan sign-on onto this bill. some republicans have expressed unease about the size of this

package, and senator susan collins, a republican of maine, who was part of that call, said that she thinks it's too premature to be talking about a $2 trillion package and that she believes that bipartisan group of senators could find a more targeted approach. now, one item that was deemed a priority on that call was money for covid vaccinations. but many of these senators wanted to see more details and find ways to ensure that americans who needed the money most would be the ones receiving it. now, biden has been clear. he wants this to be tackled in a bipartisan manner. but some democrats are pushing for him to pass the measure through reconciliation, which would only require a simple majority. now, this was just one of many meetings the white house is having on this topic as they've made it clear this is a top-ticket item for them in the earl i days of the administration. now, on monday, president biden will reinstate some covid travel restrictions on non-u.s. citizens coming from brazil, the

uk, ireland, and other european countries, and he will also extend those restrictions to those who have recently traveled from south africa. this is just the latest attempt from the biden administration to try to curb the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, which they have said is a top priority. arlette saenz, cnn, the white house. >> whatever the republicans decide, some democrats appear ready to use the power they now hold to push for even more. cnn's abby film i, the new -- spoke with elizabeth warren, who supports a more progressive agenda. >> the point is president biden is doing exactly what he needs to do. he's discussing the problem and he's laying out the solutions. we have a lot of tools for how to get those solutions done, and it's our responsibility to meet them. i will always be pushing for more.

i want to see us as a nation make this economy work better for everyone. i think that's good for all of us. it's not good when young people are crushed by student loan debt. it's not good when millions of americans can't put a roof over their heads and food on the table with their social security checks. it's not good for the economy. it's not good for who we are as a people. so i'm always going to keep pushing. but i know right now that president biden feels the urgency of this moment, and he is determined to get through actions that need to be done, do them by executive order, do them through congress, but get them done. just barely a year after recording its first case of covid-19, the u.s. has now surpassed 25 million infections.

it's by far, of course, the highest total in the world and accounts for more than a quarter of all global cases. and to further complicate the crisis, officials say the country is still struggling with its vaccine rollout. the head of the centers for disease control and prevention says she doesn't know how many doses the u.s. has. without that information, she says states can't adequately distribute vaccines. she adds, this problem is one of many challenges the current administration has inherited. and it comes as a top health official is speaking out about the struggles he faced under previous administration. dr. anthony fauci told "the new york times" the former president often downplayed the crisis and says what the white house officials sometimes tried to discredit his work. fauci also spoke about the ongoing spread of the virus and new data suggesting a new strain could be deadlier. >> well, the data that came out

was after they had been saying all along that it did not appear to be more deadly. so that's where we got that information. but when the british investigators looked more closely at the death rate of a certain age group, they found that it was 1 per 1,000, we'll say. then it went up to 1.3 per 1,000 in a certain group. so that's a significant increase. so the most recent data is in accord with what the brits are saying. we want to look at the data ourselves, but we have every reason to believe them. they're a very competent group. so we need to assume now that what has been circulating dominantly in the uk does have a certain degree of increase in what we call virulence, namely the power of the virus to cause more damage, including death. >> cnn's natasha chen now with more on the outbreak in the u.s.

>> reporter: the u.s. has now surpassed 25 million coronavirus cases, and the death toll continues to climb. and the institute for health metrics and vaelts projects a total of 569,000 americans will have died from coronavirus by may 1st. xavier becerra, president biden's nominee to run health and human services, described it this way on sunday. >> the plane is in a nosedive and we've got to pull it up. we're not going to do it over night, but failure is not an option here. >> reporter: the same model that predicted 569,000 deaths also shows nearly 43,000 people's lives may be saved in that same time frame thanks to vaccination and the seven-day moving average of new cases in the u.s. is starting to drop after an aggressive post-holiday peak. the positivity rate stayed low enough in chicago for restaurants and bars to restart limited indoor dining. >> when the rumors started

swirling around our staff that it was going to be able to happen, there was a spark in everybody's eyes to know we're going to be able to do what we do best once again. >> reporter: that same look of excitement and gratitude is in the eyes of millions of people lining up to be vaccinated around the country, including now mobile and pop-up vaccination sites run by companies like amazon. the challenge is getting more supply distributed to what's currently a patchwork of local health providers, who are sometimes battling website crashes and scheduling mishaps. >> no one knew what the hell they're doing, so they sent everybody home. >> if this is happening to me and i'm well educated, my husband's a state senator -- if this is happening to me, what's happening to people who don't have what i have and don't have the access that i have? >> reporter: meanwhile, officials have their eye on

coronavirus variants and how well the vaccine may hold up as the virus changes. >> it means we've got to do much bette better genomic surveillance. it means we've got to double down on public health measures like masking and avoiding indoor gatherings. the virus is going to change and it's up to us to adapt and make sure we're staying ahead. >> reporter: natasha chen, cnn, atlanta. >> joining me now is los angeles in cnn medical analyst dr. jorge rodriguez. good to see you, doctor. we've seen some dipping of numbers around certainly the u.s. and parts of europe, which is good news, very encouraging, but the numbers themselves are still frighteningly high. where do things stand as vaccines start to roll out? >> as vaccines start to roll out, i think people need to realize that vaccines are not the end-all and be-all. they are definitely going to help us decrease transmission, but we're not going to see their full effect from two to three

months. in the interim, we really still need to do what we've always done, which is wear the mask, the social distancing. that triumvirate is not going to change, and washing our hands. so it's a great start, but, boy, we have a long way to go. >> i guess do you see the number drop? do you think it's just the end of the holiday surge and we're going back to what has become, you know, quote, unquote, normal numbers, which of course are still devastating, or do you see this as hopefully a sustainable trend? >> well, i think it is a trend. i think it is the end of the holiday surge that we're now seeing a dip. my concern is that we get too complacent with even a little bit of success. we're also yearning to get out into the fresh air or to visit folks, that even a little bit of success should not be taken as an excuse. i was reading something by justin trudeau right now that says, stay home. don't make plans for spring

break. cancel any vacations because we're still so high in the number of cases that we really need to see this out through april and may before we can start breathing comfortably. >> and when we talk about variants, too, which is a worry, more contagious, which can mean more deaths in the long term, i guess one thing that's striking is the u.s. lags the world in genomic sequencing, which shows the prevalence of variants in a community. i think the u.s. is 33rd behind places like senegal and sierra leone with far fewer resources. is it fair to say we don't know how widespread the variants are in the u.s.? >> we don't know, and those statistics are actually embarrassing for my country, and we tout ourselves as being the leader. we really need to step this up because one of the ways of controlling the virus is knowing where it is going, knowing how it has changed and how it's going to affect it. you know, they've stepped it up a little bit, but we need to be

leading the world along with other countries, you know, like the uk and germany that are really on top of all of this. >> yeah, yeah, they are leading the sequencing world. it was interesting listening to dr. fauci and reading his comments also in "the new york times" interview about the hurdles that he faced in the previous administration. i mean it does make you wonder just how different the u.s. death toll and infection rates might have been if things had been done differently? do you look back at it that way? >> i do look back at it that way. i mean from the beginning, i've been saying that, you know, the problem was leadership. the problem was obfuscation of real data. and as much as i admire, right, and i've been working in long distance with dr. fauci, you know, i think there had been a time where i would have wished he had stepped up and said, this is not true. you know, this is not so. but who knows because he could have been replaced for someone, you know, that was much of a

trump loyalist and things could have been worse. so these people are doing a great job, and it just shows that from the top down is how this starts. so just biden came out and right out of the gate, he says, we're going to beat this. you know, we're going to speak honestly about it. we're going to do tough things in the next 100 years -- i mean 100 days. and that in and of itself was leagues ahead of what we had. >> if there's one thing we learned, it's that politics has no business being in the realm of science. dr. jorge rodriguez, got to leave it there. thank you so much. >> likewise, michael. going back to where the outbreak began. when we return, cnn revisits wuhan, china, to see how the city has changed after a year of the pandemic. plus new protections coming from meatpackers and other factory workers as president biden aims to help industries hit hard by the pandemic. we'll be right back. your sleep number setting.

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well, it's now been a year since wuhan, china, saw the first of many coronavirus

lockdowns around the world. since then, nearly 100 million people have been infected with covid-19. our david culver reports now from the original epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. >> reporter: it is a city whose name evokes mystery, allegations of cover-up, and agony -- wuhan, china. cnn returning to this, the original epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. on january 23rd, 2020, this metropolis of more than 11 million residents locked down. we left hours before, beginning a two-week quarantine in beijing. for 76 days, wuhan remained sealed off. and here we are again, back one year later. the seafood market. this at one point was believed to have been, by chinese authorities, the ground zero of this outbreak. this time last year, security had ushered us away within minutes of reporting. now, january tw2021, no securit here.

we've been walking around for several minutes. they don't seem to care. that was until we started looking inside. we noticed people working behind the gate. a seemingly random passer by on a bike shouted at us, saying don't be sneaky. he told us to walk around and try the entrance. >> can we go in? we can go in? he said apparently we can go in. so we'll see if we can actually get inside the market. i'm going to ask this guy. can you go in? you can't go inside? tell him we have a covid test, a negative covid test. okay. no pictures. so clearly a bit sensitive. perhaps it's because we're foreigners or because we're journalists. the virus' origin has become highly politicized. u.s. officials accusing china of covering up and allowing the virus to spread. china defensive, saying the trump administration was deflecting blame for its own mishandling.

a team from the w.h.o. is now in wuhan tasked with trying to find out the truth. and yet geopolitics aside, the human suffering, it is universal. this woman spoke with us knowing she could face pressure from officials. but a mother who has lost her only daughter has nothing more to lose. when i sat down, you thanked me for getting the truth out. what is the truth as you know it? >> translator: the local officials did not tell us about the pandemic, she said. if measures were taken, i would not have sent my child to the hospital, which was the source of the infection. last january, her 24-year-old daughter had been cereceiving treatment for cancer. she contracted covid-19 and died in early february. >> translator: when i speak about this, some parts of my heart still ache. >> reporter: amidst the deep pain, we also encountered moments of hope in our return. on the eve of the lockdown last year, we visited this fruit market. this woman told me at the time

that she was terrified. she stayed, fearing the financial burden. 12 months later, we met again. at that time, i was crying all the time, she told me. we were suffering and scared. above her face mask, the pain still visible in her eyes. she said the people of wuhan are resilient, likening them to heroes. i'm so glad to see you in person and to know that you made it through the lockdown and you're healthy. the market mood, remarkably different from last year. business bustling. people much more at ease. would you say wuhan is back open and on the path to recovery? it's not just starting from now, he says. it started very early to be honest. in my opinion, wuhan had already begun to cover since mid-to late march. this delivery driver has become well known on chinese social media as he chronicled life during the lockdown. the then and now are striking.

and a new year's celebration that brought wuhan residents shoulder to shoulder. with new cluster outbreaks in the north of china, many wearing face masks, carb out of the lingering unknowns and still haunted by the memories of a lockdown that kept millions of residents along with their grief sealed inside. for some, only now, 12 months later, it is just beginning to surface. david culver, cnn, wuhan. still to come here on the program, so many new covid cases and so few beds. hospitals in japan now facing an overwhelming surge of new patients waiting to get in. also after months of ignoring safety guidelines, mexico's president has now tested positive for covid-19. we'll have the latest on his condition and what he plans to do, next.

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welcome back to "cnn newsroom," everyone. i'm michael holmes. as coronavirus cases rise around the world, countries are ramping up measures to keep new mutations of the virus at bay. australia has given approval for its first covid vaccine. it will begin vaccinations with the pfizer vaccine late next month. the uk health minister says england's case rates are incredibly high, and the country a long way from easing restrictions. but he adds there is early evidence the lockdown is making a difference. over the weekend, the

neltherlands imposed a new curfew aimed at reducing social contact. the prime minister says even essential businesses like food markets are subject to the curfew. and israel temporarily banning flights from all non-israeli airlines into ben gurian airport. that ban will last until the end of the month. meanwhile, mexico's president has announced that he has tested positive for covid-19 after months of pretty much ignoring safety guidelines. he said on sunday his symptoms are mild, and he is receiving medical treatment. cnn's rafael romo with the details. >> reporter: president andres manuel lopez obrador confirmed the news on his twitter account. he posted a couple of messages, the first one to confirm the diagnose and the second one to say that he will keep an eye on the government's affairs from the national palace, the presidential mansion in mexico. the president wrote the following. i regret to inform you that yi

have contracted covid-19. the symptoms are mild, but i am already receiving medical treatment. as always, i am optimistic. the president has a daily morning news conference that is broadcast live. he said the interior secretary will take over while he recovers. the president participated in a public event about government welfare programs saturday where he was seen without a mask. he spoke on the phone with president joe biden friday surrounded by his foreign minister, a former business adviser, and a president's office translator. no one was wearing a mask. president lopez obrador has been dismissive of measures to prevent transmission of covid-19 in the past, saying last summer that it has not been scientifically proven that masks protect people against the coronavirus. he has been seen in public many times without wearing a mask, and he travels around the country meeting with officials and people, not keeping physical

distance. he's one of several heads of state in the region who have contracted the virus, including ja he'd bolsonaro, and juan hernandez, and of course former president donald trump also had covid-19. rafael romo, cnn, atlanta. a spike in covid cases putting a serious strain on japan's health care system. a recent survey found at least 15,000 people are waiting to get treated for coronavirus in hospitals or isolation centers. but right now, there aren't enough beds to keep up with demand. cnn's salena wang joining me now from tokyo. these numbers are just stunning. tell us about the survey and the strain on the medical system. >> reporter: right, michael. it's clear from these numbers that the medical system is under strain and some health experts are saying it's already in a state of collapse. so this is according to a kyoto news survey that found at least 15,000 people are now waiting

for a hospital bed or waiting for space at an isolation center. and this is just for those 11 prefectures in japan that are under a state of emergency. and these numbers have soared in the past month. in tokyo, the numbers have nearly quintupled to now more than 7,500 people on a wait is list. michael, this means that more and more people are now dying at home. an infectious disease expert in japan told me that high-risk people, which would include the elderly, those with severe symptoms, are supposed to go to the hospital while those with mild symptoms are supposed to go to an isolation center to avoid infecting others in the community and their family members. but now because of this massive strain we're seeing on the medical system, even a sizeable number of those with severe cases are now on this waiting list. and cases in japan have skyrocketed just in recent months now to more than 360,000 cases. and here in tokyo, the government is urging people to stay inside, restaurants and bars to close by 8:00 p.m.

but experts i speak to say this is really too little, too late. >> we've been talking over the last couple of days about the olympics. i mean this would seem to further hamper plans for the tokyo olympics. what does this tough situation mean for the games perhaps? >> reporter: michael, you would think so. but the international olympic committee, japanese officials are maintaining that the games will go on. they have strongly batted away any rumors that the games could be canceled or further postponed. but of course the situation on the ground does not bode well for the success of the olympics. as i mentioned, the host city is in a state of emergency. it could be extended for even longer than a month in the situation doesn't improve. foreigners are currently banned from entering japan. and if you think vaccinations are going to be a magic bullet, it's not because japan is currently behind when it comes to vaccinations. they are not set to start until late february, and that's just for medical workers. they don't have a planned

timeline they've announced for when they're going to vaccinate the rest of the population. of course if you take a look at what's happened at the australian open now, the problems there are certainly a warning sign. you have 72 players in a 14-day quarantine because there were people who tested positive on their flights to the australian open. imagine the challenges that you wrote see for the olympic games, which includes multiples more of athletes, staff, and other people. and of course public opposition here is increasing. recent polls from the nhk show that nearly 80% of the people think the games should not go on this year. i spoke to a member of an anti-olympics group who said that the idea of the government being so obsessed withholding these games shows that quote the olympics games would be sacrificing people's lives. michael. >> it's a very good point about the complications that could happen. you get one infection in the village, and off you go. celine wang in tokyo. great reporting. thanks so fn. we will take a quick break.

when we come back, there are growing concerns with coronavirus in meatpacking plants. president biden taking measures to protect workers. will it be enough, and what happened over the last year? we'll have an advocate for workplace safety. we'll interview her next. non-steroidal anti-inflammatory gel... available over the counter. voltaren is powerful arthritis pain relief in a gel. voltaren. the joy of movement.

welcome back. among the many executive orders already signed by u.s. president joe biden, one of them calls for clearer guidance on covid-19 safety measures for workers including those in meatpacking and other processing plants. now, covid devastated that industry, forcing some plants to shut down when their workers got the virus. joining me now from washington is debbie berkowitz. debbie is the program director

for the national employment law project. it's great to have you on. it's an important issue. right from the beginning there were great concerns about the welfare of workers in places like meatpacking plants, other industries too. what were the conditions like? how bad are they now in terms of protections and protocols? >> well, hi. thank you so much for having me. that's a really important issue. as we've seen in the past nine months, workplaces can be a significant source of spread of covid-19, and the meatpacking, which includes, you know, red meat and pork and poultry industry, saw a significant, you know, outbreaks in the facilities where in many of the facilities, over 1,000 workers got sick. there was a recent study published by the national academy of sciences here in the u.s. that said just in the first four or five months of the pandemic, the meat and poultry plants, because they did not

mitigate the spread of covid-19, were responsible for hundreds of thousands of illnesses in their plants and in the community as well as so many deaths, thousands of deaths. >> obviously things have changed. it is a new day in that way. osha obviously has a crucial role in worker protections. but how damaged was the organization and its ability to do its job over the last four years? how was it limited in its ability to fight for worker safety? >> well, the trump administration really tried to cripple the agency. we did a report in april that showed it had the least number of inspectors in the history of the agency. they've had the lowest total number of inspections of any four-year period in like the last -- i don't know -- i would say almost 30 years. and then with covid, the administration here really tried to completely sideline the agency so that it would have no role. so there were, for example,

13,000 complaints came in to federal osha, and i think they responded to a little over 300 with inspections. the rest of them, they essentially put on ignore. they just asked the company -- sent a letter and said, please investigate yourselves, and that was it. so workers were on their own. >> that is just incredible. i mean the meatpacking industry in particular, it's one of those industries where practices, the production line is particularly vulnerable to the spread of something like the coronavirus as you say. what permanent work practice changes need to happen going forward? >> oh, you know, since the -- really since april, the centers for disease control here was telling the meat industry everybody in a mask and six feet apart, social distancing. but they're still working shoulder to shoulder, and they're still crowded into breakrooms and crowded into locker rooms, and also you need to be able to quarantine when

you're sick and quarantine when you've been exposed. and it was the meat industry that actually asked the vice president of the united states, mike pence at the time, to have cdc relax its guidelines so that if you were an exposed workers, you had been exposed to covid, you could come back to work. i think that's what led to the enormous spread. so i think masks, physical distancing, stepped up sanitation, quarantining when sick and when exposed, and better ventilation, i think will make a big difference. >> and just quickly and finally, as you point out, it just shows how an agency, an important agency that's responsible for worker lives really, how it can be gutted by an administration. do you feel the agency will get its teeth back now? >> oh, yes. i think joe biden and kamala harris took office at 12:01 on wednesday, and on thursday they

issued an executive order that essentially did a complete 180. an agency that had been asleep, the switch has been turned on. they've been told to start enforcement. they've been told to write mandatory requirements for businesses, and it's a new day. and i think it will make a world of difference. >> that is great news. the bad news is that it happened in the first place. and as you point out, lives were lost. debbie berkowitz with the national employment law project, thank you so much. >> thank you so much for having me. we'll take another break. when we come back, the economic toll is growing. how covid-19 is creating more poverty in italy while the world's billionaires escape the pain. we were the first to bring 5g nationwide. and now that sprint is a part of t-mobile we're turning up the speed. upgrading over a thousand towers a month

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i can put on an audiobook, or a podcast, and be transported somewhere that is impossible to go, that is why i love audible. to start your free 30-day trial, just text listen 8 to 500500. welcome back. the coronavirus is dealing a heavy blow to italy's economy, both the financial cost and the human cost of course have been very high. melissa bell reports on the new poverty the pandemic has created.

>> reporter: almost a year since the first lockdown, much of italy is still in the grip of restrictive measures across the country as it desperately tries to contain the spread of a new wave of infections. for the government, it's been a challenging balancing act between protecting citizens' health and reviving the country's economy. the human cost of the pandemic in italy has been very high with more than 80,000 dead. but the economic cost after months of lockdowns is also high. according to the bank of italy, half of families surveyed in the country said their income went down in the spring during the first lockdowns and in many places, things only got worse from there. >> there has been a change in the people who have been going to the welfare centers. there has been an increase and also a change. right now we have way more italians than before.

>> reporter: at this supermarket in rome run by a catholic charity, they help some of those hardest hit. >> this specific period, we have received so many calls from a huge variety of people, of families. we can say that the specific situation on poverty connected poverty connected to the pandemic and situational poverty, that the spreading of the virus has made the situation even worse. >> reporter: according to report by caritas, poverty rose in first months of the pandemic. charity has seen increase in number of people asking for help for the first time. these are the so-called new poor, 13% of those they help. >> translator: we went from a very normal situation like most people to finding ourselves suddenly without work. my husband is on furlough but the money didn't arrive or arrived after very long wait and

we found ourselves facing extreme difficulties. we have children and a family to take care of, still have to pay bills and life goes on. we couldn't manage financially anymore so we went to the church and asked for help. and they said come here to the emporium supermarket and they help us like this and we try and go on. >> translator: our sector was very hard hit. they shut down all the fairs so we were completely out of work and only had the welfare check to live off, since the summer. >> reporter: there is some hope, italy set to get 208 billion euros as part of recovery package from the eu. >> it's difficult to see when it will be over, speed of the vaccine campaign is to be extremely fast to be successful.

>> reporter: first wave slogans promoting resilience have given way to sense of fatigue with no clear end in sight. especially for those struggling to make ends meet. return to normality feels a long way away. melissa bell, cnn. >> italy just one example of the wealth inequality expanding around the world. for more on that, conversation with john in abu dhabi. top ten wealthiest people could pay the cost of vaccinating everyone on earth. this is a depressing report and one to be angry about. >> reporter: i think it's a fair comment, michael, the disparity between the rich and poor has never been greater. number of things stand out for me in this report. for example, 1,000 billionaires of the world took nine months to regain the wealth they loss from the shock of the stock market at

start of the pandemic and l lockdown we saw but will take ten years for poorest to recover lost earnings and stabilize incomes. in united states blacks and hispanics are suffering particularly more than everybody else because they can't afford health care and public sector has been hit hard, not surviving the pandemic. global financial crisis a dozen years ago, hit primarily the developed world. not the case here. everywhere, every corner of the world is suffering equally at the same time. hitting world's poor, women unrepresented in work force in many places in the world, 112 million will be suffering economic losses much more than male counterparts. and we had great progress in poverty reduction last ten years in particular. oxfam is quoting a report from the united nations suggesting

half a billion more people are going into poverty as result of the pandemic worldwide. >> they talk about economics funneling wealth to rich elite riding out the pandemic in luxury. speak of people not doing well in the pandemic, big pitch is in for the stimulus bill, that plays into what that report is highlighting, of course. >> it does, michael, $1.9 trillion package. it will test the collaboration in the new biden administration with congress of course. we see here that you have progressive senators, bernie sanders for example running the budget committee in the senate. elizabeth warren pushing hard, saying we have to focus on the poorest. treasury secretary and former fed chair janet yellen was suggesting we have to package this one to focus on those suffering the most, like small business to regenerate jobs. but it's worrying sign even the

moderate republicans like mitt romney are suggesting $3.2 trillion last year, can we afford more? let's listen. >> people recognize it's important we don't borrow trillions of dollars from the chinese for things that may not be absolutely necessary. it's time to act with prudence and care, that's why we have two parties, people looking at one another and making sure there's not some excess that would be not good long-term for the american people. >> mitt romney is suggesting here that our debt to gdp is above 130%, never happened before. budget deficit crotripled, and already a high number under donald trump. >> john, thank you.

>> vermont senator bernie sanders became an online meme obsession last week and he's using the moment to of course do good. green jacket, mittens and dure posture at president biden's inauguration took social media and internet by storm. a couple of created inserted sanders' images into famous movies and iconic pop culture scenes. sanders team made sweatshirts with that and proceeds go to the meals on wheels program. they say they're blown away with the support of sanders and people around the country. i will have another hour of "cnn newsroom" in just a moment.

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hello and welcome to viewers in the united states and around the world, i'm michael holmes, appreciate your company. you're watching "cnn newsroom," ahead this hour -- >> what we cannot do is wait weeks and weeks and months to go forward. we have to act now. >> pressure for coronavirus economic relief, but will president biden get bipartisan support? and dramatic shift, this white