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hotez, thank you for joining us.ging as all this news is, remember this crisis is, by no means, over. you have to keep wearing that mask, wash your hands, social distance. don't give up. don't move away. don't let up at all. i'm sure, dr. hotez, you totally agree with me on that. >> you're absolutely right, wolf. thank you for that. >> thank you. damning new video shows rioters at the january 6th insurrection on capitol hill closely coordinating among themselves as they storm the u.s. capitol. >>> later, the new york governor andrew cuomo facing accusations of a cover-up as the coronavirus ravaged the state's nursing homes. tonight, i'll be eating the al pastor burrito from boca burritos right here in aurora. (doorbell rings) excellent as a local access show, we want everyone to support local restaurants. right cardi b? yeah! eat local! (trill sound) >>> new video we're getting right now, new audio as well, of the siege at the capitol. it's revealing extreme levels of coordination among the rioters. tom foreman has b

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hotez.d i've had to wait in the office for a fax to come through. but the fax paper isn't loaded and the fax doesn't come through. the prescription element you're so right has been a barrier and unnecessary barrier. thank you very much for all of the information. >> thank you. >>> now to this, a high drama inside a courtroom in moscow. russian opposition leader alexei navalny is facing years in jail while police take hundreds of protesters into custody. we give you a live report of what's happening there next. 200 protesters detained outside the courthouse in moscow where opposition leader alexei navalny faced possible jail time. frederick plighten is live with the latest. what happened, fred? >> reporter: hi there, alisyn. there was a lot of drama outside the court. you're right. around 240 people have already been taken into detention, essentially what alexei navalny did was to come out here and protest outside of the court and some people tried to get close to the court, but there's a mas

hotez, some states have begun lifting restrictions.the time to reopen things like indoor dining? >> think of it this way, wolf. in the eye of the hurricane. it's like seeing -- being in the eye of the hurricane, looking around. hey, this looks pretty good, and then going outside and going about your normal activities, oblivious to the big wave that's about to come. that's where we're at now definitely on the steep acceleration. and now we've got the south african variant in houston, texas, in south carolina, undoubtedly elsewhere in the country. this is a time to take extra measures and the priority has got to be on vaccinating the american people as rapidly as possible. >> what are your thoughts, dr. hotez, on the potential new policy, requiring a negative covid test before flying on a commercial airline? do you think that's a practical way to make air travel safer? >> well, it all depends on how quick a timeframe you do it. if you do pcr test, but you get it three days before, that's not going to be very helpful. so, finding a way to

hotez, thanks for coming on.tion to this news that i laid out with the astrazeneca covid vaccine provides a limited protection against mild diseases and cases caused by the south african variant? >> yeah, the astrazeneca vaccine does seem to protect against the uk variant, but we're seeing these reports -- and i haven't seen the actual data -- that has dramatically diminished activity against the south african variant. all of the vaccines coming out of the operation warp speed are not as effective as the south african vaccine. until now they seem to be good enough to provide partial protection, but it's a wakeup call for the american people because the south african variant is now here in the united states and the uk variant is also here, even in larger amounts. and now the uk variant, in some areas, has picked up -- the united kingdom has picked up an additional mutation to make it look more like the south african variant. with goeft to vaccinate the american people ahead of these variants and that means by the

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peter hotez. he's the co-director of the center for vaccine development at texas children's hospital. also with us, texas state representative, james telerico. great to have both of you. dr. hotez, i want to start with you. you have been in the thick of this. you're in houston. so you personally have been dealing with this. and tell us what the situation is at the hospital, as well. >> yeah, fortunately, things are getting better. we now have light and power and electricity and water. we had none of those things. it was a tough four days for all of us here in houston and across texas. and in my case, i have a special needs adult daughter living with us, four adult kids, but my daughter's still with us. and that was really tough. but power came back on yesterday, so that's a positive side. and the medical center is thriving. you know, we have a lot of experience with power outages and -- because of hurricanes, we know we have to function. we're the world's largest medical center. we're the first an

peter hotez and other public health officials are also growing fearful that, despite a major declinew covid cases... >> these declines may be stalling, potentially leveling off at still a very high number. >> reporter: there are now signs that covid variants are becoming dominant. the more infectious variant first identified in the u.k. now makes up one in five new cases in florida, as that state braces for an onslaught of spring breakers. >> now is not the time to relax restrictions. >> reporter: this maskless celebration in utah could be another sign of growing complacency. for those thinking positively, dr. hotez says, brace yourselves. >> beware the ides of march, this is going to be a very difficult period. beginning of april, this is going to be a game-changer. >> reporter: as cities across the country race to vaccinate, in jefferson parish, louisiana, the state has moved teachers to the head of the class. >> thank you so much. it's my golden ticket. >> i know! >> reporter: pre-school teacher lyndsey jackson with a lesson on the importance of getting vaccinated now. >> i feel l

hotez, you're in texas.just got our power back a couple of hours ago, and so we've been out of power and water for three days, and it's been tough. i have four adult kids but the one who still lives with us, rachel, is our adult special needs daughter and that's been especially tough for her and us. so, it's -- we've seen better days, but hopefully things will start to turn around. >> well, dr. hotez, i don't miss your appearances, even if they're not on this network, and it's sort of encapsulates the mission that beating the coronavirus is for folks like yourself, for scientists and for doctors and i think that rang through, knowing what you're going through this week, so thank you for spending some time with us and continuing to educate our viewers and your host here about what's happening. i wonder, your thoughts on this data. it's actually something we've been covering all year. i remember talking to chicago mayor lori lightfoot almost a year ago about the disproportionate impact of covid on her black re

peter hotez.center for vaccine development at texas children's hospital. and the dean of the national school of tropical medicine at baylor college of medicine. dr. hotez, great to see you. good news, that more vaccines are making their way to local pharmacies, but of course, at the same time, there's frightening news that the uk variant is getting more prevalent here in the u.s. so, have you heard what the biden administration's plan is for next month when we expect that variant to be even, you know, more rampaging through the country. >> you know, alisyn, this is the only part that i'm not clear about. the president announced yesterday, i think at the nih, that we're going to have several hundred million doses by july of the moderna and pfizer vaccine. we're going to have 100 million doses each of the novavax and j&j vaccine. so by the summer, we're going to be in excellent shape to vaccinate fully the american people. that's also really good news. and also good news we're getting up to 1.6 mill

hotez, let's talk about the new cdc data out. shows in the first month of vaccinations, roughly 13 million americans were vaccinated. the majority, just over 60% of that 13 million, were white. does this latest evidence that black and brown americans are getting vaccinated as a lower rate than white americans, how much does that concern you? and how do we turn that around and how do we change those numbers? >> yeah. it's really disturbing, craig. at the kaiser family foundation just reported mississippi, for instance, even those the african-american population makes up 30% of the population of the state of mississippi, only 15% are getting vaccinated. we're failing our people of color. we're failing african-american and hispanic communities getting them vaccinated. we have to figure out why and in a hurry. i think a lot has to do with the fact that we're not creating enough vaccination hubs in low-income neighborhoods. that undoubtedly is a big piece of this. i think the other is we did a study led by a colleague at texas a&m and

peter hotez. dr. hotez, thank you so much for starting off your morning oh so early with us.ome time out of your day. and i want to start with that south africa strain and the astrazeneca/oxford vaccine. does it concern you that they have stopped using this because they found it to be not effective? what data are they working off of and what should we take away from this decision. >> kasie, good morning. the clinical trials were done mostly in younger people, but it showed that the vaccine, although it had been working well even against the uk strain and many other strains, against the south african variant, unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be stopping moderate disease. we do not know about severe disease yet, but it's concerning enough that it looks as though this vaccine is not going to be helpful for the south african variant as it's spreading not only through africa but now it's global. and for low and middle-income countries, we were depending heavily on the astrazeneca vaccine to be one of the workhorse vaccines. we have one as well, as well as j&j for global health, b

hotez.. >> thanks so much. >>> president biden declares era of trump's america-first diplomacy as over. how he is trying to expunge the last four years, and restore relationships with leaders around the world. >>> and coming up tomorrow. as more coronavirus mutations are being detected around the world, what's being done to save lives? >> it's a transformative way of making vaccines. >> absolutely. and could really become faster, yeah, by -- by increasing our production capacities. and we will be prepared, the next time, when -- when an outbreak happens. >> richard engel reports on the effect new strains are having on the battle against covid-19. watch "on assignment, covid mutants" sunday at 10:00 p.m. eastern on msnbc. then make a name for yourself. even if your office, and bank balance are... far from glamorous. that means expensing nothing but pizza. your expenses look good, and your books are set for the month! ...going up against this guy... and pitching your idea 100 times. no, no, no

peter hotez, appreciate it.and join jake tapper this evening for a special presentation. we remember 500,000, a national memorial service for covid-19. that's tonight at 11:00 eastern, right here on cnn. >>> congress holding its first hearings on the insurrection at the u.s. capitol this week. who will testify. those details, next. there it is... “the extra mile.” on the border of expected and extraordinary. for those willing to go further. like vans customized for work or play. with safety and tech to keep you connected. supported by a five-star sales, service and finance team. and backed by the one star you know. so, go the extra mile. it's never crowded because so few have what it takes to go there. mercedes-benz vans. this phone paired with 5g ultra wideband-- wow! (vo) the new samsung galaxy s21 is on verizon 5g ultra wideband. available in parts of many cities. it's ridiculously fast. buy samsung galaxy s21+ 5g. get one on us. only on verizon. it's an important time to save. with priceline, you can get up

peter hotez.o evidence that suggests it may do more than just keep people from getting sick. it may actually prevent people from getting infected. what kind of impact might this vaccine have? >> yeah, and ana, also, this week in the new england journal of medicine, it was reported from israel that the pfizer biontech vaccine when given in two doses also seems to halt asymptomatic transmission. 92%. this is really game-changing news because what it means, you know, we've known that these vaccines are doing a great job of symptomatic transmission. with these vaccines, the point could be reached where if enough americans get vaccinated, we actually halt virus transmission. what that means is that people are no longer shedding virus from their nose, mouth and throat because the vaccines are protecting at that level of efficacy. so by later in the summer or fall, we're going to be looking at a very different united states of america in terms of quality of life, possibly even no longer necessitating tha

peter hotez. doctor, always a pleasure to have you on.t guest, but you're very knowledgeable -- well, that's why we have you. i love having you on because you bring the facts. this breaking news tonight, this new covid variant in the nation's largest city here in new york city, researchers at columbia university are alarmed at how fast it is surging and they're worried about current vaccines may not be effective against it. what concerns do you have about this? >> yeah, don, the numbers in new york are not going down as fast as some other parts of the country, and the same is true in florida. in the case of florida, we know the b.1.1.7. variant is increasing in frequency, maybe 10% of the isolates. and now we have this other spike variant in new york city, which is different from the u.k. one and different from others that we've seen, although it has one of the amino acids, similar to the south african variant. the question is, is it true, true and unrelated? meaning yes, the numbers aren't going down as fast, but we can't say for certain

peter hotez is here, codirector of the center for vaccine development at texas children's hospital.nk you. it's become clear, you don't have to physically have had covid to get serious adverse effects from the lock downs and the societal changes how big of a concern is this in the medical community? >> yeah, you know, shepard i'm really glad you took the time to talk about some of these big issues because they are really substantial. first of all, the long haul story is one that has not really been fully told, and one that needs to be because we focus so much on the death, practically every american can quote the number of americans who have lost their lives from covid-19, but that's the tip of the iceberg in many ways because we have literally millions of people now, we're hearing up to a third, could have some lingering symptoms, and ranging in severity to a lot of pulmonary issues, even fibrosis on the lungs and chronic shortness of breath, heart arrhythmias, due to inflammation in the heart, but the ones that worry me especially are the cognitive deficits, we call it brain fog,

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hotez, thank you so much for joining me this morning.e it there. >>> coming up next, we are headed to wall street where all eyes are still on gamestop and robinhood, the trading platform. the stick it to the man crusade could end up hurting their fellow man. at the same time corporate america is still very worried, who could be the target next? ♪♪ this is what community looks like. ♪♪ caring for each other, ♪♪ protecting each other. ♪♪ and as the covid vaccine rolls out, we'll be ready to administer it. ♪♪ dad! no shoes in the house. our son says, we'll be ready to administer it. since tide antibacterial fabric spray kills 99.9% of bacteria. just to be sure. he wants us to spray everything every time we walk into the door. it's just to be sure. just to be sure! i thought you just sprayed those. ma, it's just to be sure. see, he takes after my side of the family. for every just to be sure, it's got to be tide antibacterial fabric spray. >>> this morning, the market is opening after one of the wildest weeks in recent history. all eyes on g

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we had a doctor on last hour, peter hotez, who is in texas as well, he says it's about a week that we've been set back. that amounts to tens of millions of doses of vaccine. how long before you can get back to getting people vaccinated? >> well, actually, in our system, we've managed to already start that. on monday, we've helped out the county when they had a freezer failure and scrambled and gave a thousand doses of their vaccine that needed to be used within hours. but as of yesterday, we started vaccines within our hospitals. they were doing 1,500 vaccines yesterday and were able to do that in a la large space that we have. and we're using hand gel any one for all of your hygiene issues. we're safely able to do that. we're back on track. for us, we lost about two days. but we'll catch up in the next two, three days. we've done 210,000 vaccines already across our system throughout this pandemic and we'll do probably 25,000 plus this week. it will be a little slower than usual, but we'll catch up. >> more power to you. that's good to hear you're able to turn that around. dr. mark bloom

hotez, i want to follow up for everybody the new cases. okay.'s so comforting. when you say we're in the eye of the hurricane and can't let our eye off the ball here, what does that mean? you think the numbers are about to start going straight up again and when do you think that's going to happen? >> yeah, alisyn, it all has to do with the spike protein target mutants. these new variants coming out of the uk and also south africa and possibly brazil. the uk ones seem to be the ones first that are popping up. we have almost 200 cases each in california and florida. and remember, we're undercounting because we're not doing a lot in the way of active surveillance for these spike protein mutants from the uk and south africa, so there's probably a lot more there. and we know there are far more transmissible and higher mortality that's why i used the metaphor eye of the hurricane. everything is going in the right direction. the numbers are doing down. we're starting to rev up in terms of vaccinations. everything is looking really promising. unfortunat

peter hotez. doctor, thank you for joining us on this. you and i have actually spoke together on a couple various grim milestones that we have reached throughout this pandemic because there have been a few of them. and this is the worst. half a million lives now lost, unnecessarily so, from this pandemic. what does that say to you about what is behind us and the trajectory we have ahead? >> you know, each time we visited this, yasmin, we were together, when 300,000 americans lost their lives, and then 400,000, and now this. i mean, there are really no words to express the profound sorrow that our nation is experiencing, and just this unprecedented level of grief. this is one of the greatest tragedies to affect the united states in its modern history. and so finding words is difficult. but what i will say is we didn't ever have to get here. yes, we had the virus come into the united states, the sars coronavirus type 2. and yes, it was going to cause a lot of destruction, but we never had to get to 5-000 deaths. that was a consequence of fa

but vaccine scientist peter hotez worries that's not soon enough to fight the new strains of the virus fast. >> this is going to be a scary time, so the question is how can we get through march, april, and may, until the big tranche of vaccines comes in. >> reporter: so far, nearly 50 million doses have been administered, roughly 1.6 million a day. in order to reach herd immunity by the end of the summer, cbs news found that number would have to increase to at least two million shots a day. >> i can't give a prediction of when everybody will be vaccinated. it really depends on how effective the effort is. >> reporter: here at the white house, you can see the first lady has decorated for valentine's day. president biden has said he wanted to restore decency and vowed to fire anyone on the spot who is disrespectful. but tonight, a deputy press secretary has only been suspended for one week after using sexist and threatening language with a female reporter. norah. >> o'donnell: weijia jiang, thank you. tonight, there are bipartisan calls for an investigation into new york governor andrew

hotez, i'm so glad to see you.strain may not be the most helpful piece of information. can you just speak to the broader answers on whether the vaccines that we have, as of today, protect against death and severe illness from everything that's out there, everything we've seen. >> so, a few things. one, the good news is the number of new cases is going down pretty -- fairly precipitously from 250,000 new cases a day, confirmed cases, to 50,000, so we are seeing dramatic declines, but we are concerned now with these new variants. we have the one from the united kingdom, the b.1.1.7, the b.1.351 from south africa and now we're hearing about the one in new york and from california. and we don't know how that kind of acceleration -- what it will mean in terms of the number of new cases going back up or whether the seasonality of these viruses, now that it's gone into this -- potentially this new pattern, we may see annual bumps in january, whether that will be dominant. so we don't even know if the variants will take ov

peter hotez from baylor college of medicine in houston. good to have you. i watch closely the figures on side of the screen, not just deaths but number of vaccinations and we're up above 41 million in the country in terms of vaccinations, that is at least one dose, not everybody has gotten a second dose. are we seeing a pick up in the vaccination rate in this country after a slow start and should people take some confidence from that? >> yeah, absolutely. that is good news that we're now getting geared up to vaccinate the american people. the concern is whether or not we're going to have adequate supply over the next few months. we know there is a big tranche of vaccine coming over the summer from johnson & johnson and novavax and from the two mrna vaccines, but the issue is adequate supply to get us through the next few months. and that is issue number one. problem number two is the fact that now the variants are accelerating, the u.k. variant has a doubling time according to recent study out of scripts in san diego, they'll double every ten days. so that

hotez, thank you so much. >>> millions of americans are waiting for financial relief out of this crisiss are outlining who will get it and how many they will get, and investigators have found no evidence that kobe bryant pressured his pilot to fly in bad weather what they did find is next. >>> and dangerously low temperatur htiesitng parts of our country they are sticking around and are "on the move." with access to tax-smart investing strategies that help you keep more of what you earn. and with brokerage accounts, you see what you'll pay before you trade. personalized advice. unmatched value. at fidelity, you can have both. ♪ more than this ♪ t-mobile is upgrading its network at fidat a record pace.ve both. 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 with ultra capacity 5g. to bring speeds as fast as wifi to cities and towns across america. and we're adding more every week. coverage and speed. who says you can't have it all? this is carl. carl shopped for the lowest mortgage ra

hotez early this morning, if we have people having a hard enough time to wear them now?o you think in the winter months it's easier or not? >> yeah. i think everybody has really suffered over the last year. all of us, from the social isolation, from the economic fallout. and i think if it's really clear, look, this is what works in other countries. they did not suffer the way we did. you know, i think people will not want to go back to 2020 in terms of how horrible that was. so i think really trying to get everybody to see the difference and learn from our mistakes moving forward. >> always good to see you, thank you. >>> black americans are risk -- are getting vaccinated at dramatically lower rates than white americans. in southwest georgia, there was a grass roots effort led by black doctors and community organizers. they are knocking on hundreds of doors in an effort to build trust in the vaccine. cnn's emma walker has more. >> hey, handsome, how are you doing? >> reporter: it's hard to find someone that doesn't know linda harris. she was raised in albany, georgia, th

peter hotez said, really the business with in new variants changes everything.k at this stage of the pandemic. >> yeah, you know, we started to get some clues about this a couple of weeks ago. what they were doing at that point is taking the plasma from people who recovered from covid and exposing that to the new variant and saying, look, do the antibodies from people who have been infected work or not? there was already some clue at that point they weren't working as well. that the convalescent plasma wasn't neutralizing the south african variant as well. and now you are starting to see evidence of these reinfections in south africa. we saw some reinfections from the different variant in brazil. basically it means the variants are different enough that the antibodies that you have from previous infection don't seem to work as well. that's the bad news. the better news is that the vaccine seems to offer a lot more benefit. when you get a vaccine, you are creating all sorts of different antibodies that are greater in number and greater in variety than just the an

peter hotez. good to have you. i want to talk about the new vaccination sites.mportant and tragic, but this is a more well known member of american society. does this under score to the public, how does this under score to the public that we're not over there? >> yeah, he is a good guy, a smart committed guy. and it goes to show the american feel that anyone can lose their life from covid. it's about to get worse unfortunately. the numbers are starting to limit in terms of new cases per day going from a high of 250,000 new cases per day after the new year's holiday down to under 100,000. now the new variants are here. so that will dominate the u.s. landscape now as we go into the spring. that means the transmission is going up and the death rate may spiral as well. >> let me ask about that. you just mentioned the u.k. variant. we're seeing the numbers and the new cases come down, are you expecting that to change as the new variants take hold? are we vaccinating at a great enough rate to keep it at bay? >> we're definitely in a better place now than we were previ

peter hotez professor and dean of prop call medicine at baylor college of medicine.d teachers. the cdc is saying it is safe to reopen schools with these measures but if you are in a red zone, which is 99% of american children, don't fully reopen. oh, yeah we are also not seeing transmission in schools. what does the science say? >> the science says, ana, that the uk variant the b.1.17 variant is on the rise. what that means is the level of transmissibility in this country is about to accelerate even further maybe by 30% or 40%. even though the numbers are coming down pretty steadily down to a hundred thousand new cases a day which is great i think it is going to be short lived. as we head into march and april we'll get a big increase in transmission. >> as far as schools, if you are in one of the red zones should parents be worried about kids going to school? >> my biggest concern are teachers and staff and parents as well and this is why we need to accelerate ahead of the vaccinations. i am a proponent of vaccinating teachers and staff so they have the comfort level

peter hotez on what may be really good vaccine news, and why the race to get more shots in arms has nevern more important. >>> and why is it that democrats are just getting control of the senate from mitch mcconnell today? when "all-in" starts right now. >>> good evening from new york. i'm chris hayes. tonight it seems kevin mccarthy and the house republicans are refusing to discipline a member of their caucus who has openl

peter hotez and others have said that we should be shooting for 3 million a day, 3 million shots a dayses. it is ambitious but is that something that you think is realistic? is what you're thinking about? >> we don't really know. we do know that the country can give out 3 million flu shots a day. >> right. >> so on that scale, we want to be able to distribute as many vaccines as possible a day. the things we want to make sure we have and working on, we have been working to secure more vaccinators. we will have upwards of 10,000 troops out there and secured the sites so we have -- we are talking about retail pharmacy program which lanched today. community health centers and standing up 100 federally funded community -- i'm sorry, community vaccination sites so between all of this activity we are hoping to drive this much, much higher. when we got here we were i think the last week of the trump administration doing 900,000. now doing 1. 6 million. all day long we have opportunities big and small to increase that number week over week. >> finally and very quickly, if there's one thing you

peter hotez, i really hope you get your power, the medical center gets its power. we're thinking of everybody in houston and throughout texas. thanks for being with us. >>> moments ago we heard about that massive storm from bill karins ripping through the south and the northeast. kentucky is getting hit with a third wave of winter weather as state leaders try to get residents vaccinated with their current supply. joining us now lucky to have kentucky governor andy bashir. thanks for taking time out. you're right in the middle of this and have been for several days. what's the situation now? you've had more than 100,000 kentucky residents we heard about without power. where are you now? >> you're right. we have now been hit with two out of the three storms that we're going to face, the third starting tonight. at the height, we had about 156,000 kentuckians who had lost power. we've got that down to about 9,400 now. we got hit with snow, freezing rain, and an eastern kentucky, in appalachia, a very tough ice storm that has knocked out power there. it's got power line

peter hotez is joining us from tropical medicine at the baylor college of medicine. thank you for joining us. you're in houston where vaccine appointments have been canceled, shipments are delayed as a result of extreme weather crisis. these vaccines are time sensitive as you know better than i do. how problematic are these delays? >> yeah, i'm pretty worried, wolf. because originally we heard it was just on monday. we heard it is just a day or two. and then the shipments will come on wednesday and now the shipments have been delayed. so we've really lost a whole week. and the reason i'm concerned about losing a week is because weave this new race ahead of the b-117 variant coming from the united kingdom and starting to take off now in florida, it is going to be pretty much nationwide we think about late in march and into april. so we're in this horrible race because the u.k. variant or the b-117 variant seems to be much more transmissible, more highly contagious than what we've seen in the past. and the u.k. government just put up information not peer reviewed but i

peter hotez told me a few months ago -- if we can get that, we can start to think of a spring that looksferent than last year. that's not to say there have been no problem with the vaccine distributions in the country there definitely have been, no question. but things are right now trending in the right direction. and many of the places that were struggling across the country, california comes to mind, are getting their act together. i know we have gotten used to being one of the international laggards when it comes to dealing with this awful virus. trump's performance primed us all to expect the worst. but here's the thing, on vaccinations, we're actually doing pretty darn well. the u.s. has administered more doses per 100 people than all but four other countries. when it comes to getting shots in arms we're outpacing other countries, just about everyone. now, that's the product of a tremendous amount of of work by a bunch of people, some democrats and republicans and mostly folks in medical profession and public health and all levels of government. it's also a result of real concrete

peter hotez, he's a dean at baylor college of medicine. doctor, why are the overall numbers down so dramatically in the last month? this is very good news. >> it is good news. and maybe part because of the -- there's some seasonality to the virus and maybe part because people are finally getting it in terms of social distancing or recovering from that huge surge that followed thanksgiving on top of christmas on top of new year's, or some combination of all of that. the big concern, of course, stephanie, and i always hate to be the bearer of bad news. but many of us are concerned now that this is going to be short lived because now we have this new variant, the b 1.17 variant coming out of the united kingdom. when that started in september in the uk last year by november it had occupied most of the virus in the uk, it spread aggressively and the uk government has put up new numbers on their website, not peer reviewed yet saying mortality rates go up with this new variant as well. it's getting dominance across the united states and we have t

peter hotez and others have said we really should be shooting for 3 million a day, 3 million shots aay, 3 million doses. it's ambitious, but is that something that you think is realistic? is that what you're thinking about? >> we don't really know. i mean, we do know that the country can give out 3 million flu shots a day. >> right. >> so if we fail, we want to be able to distribute as many vaccines as possible a day. the things that i think we want to make sure we have and we've been working on, we've been working to secure more vaccinators. so retired doctors and nurses can give out vaccines. we'll have upwards of 10,000 troops out there delivering vaccines. we have secured more sites. we're talking about retail pharmacy program which launched today, very exciting. community health centers, and we're standing up 100 federally funded community -- i'm sorry, community vaccination sites. so between all of this activity, we are hoping to drive this much, much higher. when we got here, we were, i think the last week of the trump administration, we were doing about 900,000. now we're doi