hello, everyone, i'm kate bolduan. thank you for joining us this hour. this is the second briefing from this team this week. moments from now dr. anthony fauci, the head of the cdc and other top officials will be taking questions from reporters and there are a lot of big questions with regard to the coronavirus, the pandemic and the vaccines today. we now have south carolina confirming two cases of a variant of the virus first identified in south africa. a more containous strain. what does the government do about this today. an this morning new concern about how well the current vaccines protect against this variant and others.

and also johnson & johnson, just releasing the results from its phase three trials. saying in its announcement it is 66% efficacy rate overall. 85% against severe disease. still notably lessective than the vaccines from pfizer and moderna. what does the biden team say about that? the white house press secretary just said this morning that president biden is encouraged by the data coming out from j&j but also said that the politicians will leave it to the scientists who we should hear from any moment. while we're standing by. let's bring in elizabeth cohen following the latest developments. so on this announcement from johnson & johnson, what are they saying? >> basically the bottom line here, kate, is that this vaccine does work well against covid 19,

this j&j vaccine. >> i'm going to jump in. andy slavic, one of the members of the covid response team is beginning the briefing now. >> -- on both the successes and the hurdles we face. i hope on these calls, that the public will get a regular and consistent dose of what the cdc believes are the right public health actions on an array of challenging topics and how our leading infectious disease expert dr. fauci is advising the president and the country. i will have a remarks but firstly turn it over to director of the cdc, dr. wallenski. >> thank you. i'm glad to be back with you all today. and to give you the latest update on the state of the pandemic. let's begin with the numbers and the data. despite encouraging trends in covid-19 case and hospital admissions, the occurrence of covid-19 remains extraordinarily high in the united states.

we continue to have over four times the daily number of cases as we have over the summer. january 27th, 25.4 million covid-19 cases have been reported to cdc. during a week of january 21st to january 27th, the seven-day average of cases decreased 16.6% to 116,832 per day. the seven day average of new hospital admissions of patients with covid-19 during the week of january 20th to january 26th decreased by 14% to 12,720 per day. however over 99,000 people were hospitalized with covid-19 on january 26th. 427,626 deaths have been reported since january 22nd, through january 22nd, 2020. during a week of january 21st to

january 27 , the seven day average increases to 3277 per day. and yesterday we saw our sixth day of over 4,000 deaths. we continue to remain concerned about the emergence of variants in the united states and are rapidly ramping up surveillance as we work to closely monitor and identify variants as they emerge. any information that we have we will then share with you as rapidly as possible. the b-117 variant has been corn firmed in 379 cases if 29 states as of january 27th. yesterday south carolina public health officials notified the public about the first two domed cases of the b-351 variant first detected in south africa and now the united states.

these cases will identify different parts of the state and not believed to be linked. they april did not have any travel history. we are still learning more about the exposures. and earlier this week, minnesota identified the first u.s. case of the p-1 variant. this is a variant that emerged in brazil. cdc will continue communicating with international, state and local partners to monitor the presence and impact of variants in the united states and around the world. and we are actively working with national reference laboratories and state health departments and researchers across the county to improve our understanding of the variants and how it may impact the pandemic. we also know viruses mutate and they tend to mutate in ways that are advantageous to the virus. we expected this. and this is why i feel compelled to under store for you the need for each of us to remain

steadfast in our commitment to taking all of the appropriate steps to protected ourselves and our communities. you're going to hear me say this a lot. here it is. wear a mask. avoid clouds and poorly ventilated spaces. also now is not the time to travel. if you choose to travel, please follow the cdc guidelines and be aware that you must wear a mask as you travel. and whether it is your turn, please roll up your sleeve and get vaccinated. if we do all of these things, there is less virus spreading and the conditions could -- that produce variants are lessened. and before i turn it over to dr. fauci, i would like to just address school reopenings which i know has also been in the news a lot this week. cdc continues to recommend that k through 12 schools be the last setting to close after all other g

mitigation measures have been deployed an the first to open when they could do so safely. accumulating data suggests school settings doo not result in rapid spread of covid-19 when mitigation measures are followed. including masking, decreasing density and proper ventilation. implementing community-based strategies that reduce transmission when there is a lot of virus in a particular area is also important for the safe reopening of schools. but we recognize many communities lack sufficient capacity to do all that is needed. that is why it is essential that the guidance, tools and resources called for in the national strategy for the covid-19 response and the american rescue plan are provided to communities. thank you. i look forward to taking your questions in a few minutes and i will now turn it over to dr. fauci. dr. fauci. >> thank you very much, dr. wallenski. well as alluded to by andy slavic, this past week and

particularly the past 24 hours have been really interesting and i think value added to the issue of vaccine protection in the government attempt to contain this outbreak. in previous briefings, i had mentioned that the federal government had been involved in the development and/or facilitation of three separate platforms of vaccines. one was the mrna, the other were vector, either an add no vector or the other was the sol you'llable recumbent proteins. we know of the recent data that came with regard to moderna and pfizer with their mrna showing a 94% to 95% efficacy and a very, very good efficacy against advanced or severe disease. over the last 24 hours there have been the announcements of two other trials that represent

two additional platforms. one is the soluble protein platform in a study that came out of the u.k. using from the company novavax and the other one that we discussed this morning at a press conference at the nih was johnson & johnson adeno trial that took place in the united states, in south africa, and in brazil. and the results really are very encouraging. let me just very briefly outline for them -- for you and then maybe make a couple of comments regarding nuances of the study. in the study that was just reported by johnson & johnson, it was a trial using their add 26 and the overall vaccine efficacy in this study was 66% but for the united states it was

72%. now the important issue, because the first thing people do is compare a 72% efficacy with the previously reported and other trials of 94% to 95%. that is true. but when one looks at the potential impact on a very important aspect of what we look at carefully, is namely severe disease, that overall in the united states, in south africa and in brazil, the overall efficacy for severe disease was 85%. and in fact, in the study, including in the south african situation, there essentially to hospitalizations or death in the vaccine group whereas in the placebo group there were. so this really tells us that we have now a value added additional vaccine candidate that will, of course, as happens with every candidate, will

present the details of their data to the fda. but i want to point out that this has important potential and real implications both domestically and globally. because as many of you are aware of, this is a single shot vaccine in which you start to see efficacy anywhere from 7 to 10 days following the first and only shot. it is very, very good with regard to cole chain requirements, namely requiring only a refrigerator. it is inexpensive and the company is capable of making doses in the numbers of billions. of note, and this is something that relates to what dr. wallenski just said, we're being faced with variants. we're all aware of the variants that we knew dominated in u.k., the 117 and the 351 in south

africa and other variants such as the p-1 in brazil. when these variants were first recognized, it became clear that we had to look att invitro and that the vaccines that we had available would neutralize the new mute ants and it ras reported in several pre-print journals over the past couple of weeks that although it diminished particularly the trouble some south african, diminished the efficacy of the antibodies, it is still not below the cut-off where you could expect some degree of efficacy. but what we know now, from from this study, the j&j and the nova vax study, that the mutations that lead to different lineage, do have clinical consequences.

because as you could see, even though the long range effect in the sense of severe disease is still handled reasonably well by the vaccines, this is a wake-up call to all of us that we will be dealing as the virus uses its devices to evade, pressure, particularly immunology pressure, that we'll continue to see the evolution of mutants. so that means that we, as a government, the companies, all of us that are in this together, will have to be nimble to be able to just adjust readily to make versions of the vaccine that are actually specifically directed towards whatever mutation is actually prevalent at any given time. and finally, this all tells us that it is an incentive to do what we've been saying all along. to vaccinate as many people as

we can, quick lily as we possib can because mutations occur because the virus has a playing field as it were to mutate. if you stop that, and stop the replication, viruses cannot mutate if they don't replicate. and that is the reason to continue to do what we're doing, namely intensifying our ability and our implementation of to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible. so now i'll hand it back to andy slavic. andy. >> thank you, dr. fauci. before i turn it over to all of you for some questions, i want to offer a few updates and a sense of the action and activities and our progress against executing our plan to defeat covid 19. one of the core elements of our plan is accelerating the process of vaccinating the country to protect people from covid-19 as

quickly and as safely as possible. for the past week our seven-day average number of shots administered was 1.2 million per day. we view this number of 1 million doses per day as a base to build from in the coming days, weeks and months. in total, we've now delivered 48 million doses and 26 million of those doses have been administered. as i've said before, we're facing two challenges. the first is increasing the supply of vaccines safely and more rapidly and speeding up the time it takes to administer those efficiently and importantly equitably. i want to call out seven states that have already provided first vaccinations to more than 10% of their adult populations. alaska, west virginia, new

mexico, connecticut, north dakota, oklahoma, and south dakota. well done. so we have taken steps to announce last week that we will increase supply week over week by 16% and vastly improve the predictability of ordering vaccines by giving everyone a three-week forward window into how many vaccines this will be getting delivered. and we announced plans to purchase 200 million additional vaccines which means that no matter what happens with other approvals, we will have sufficient supply to vaccinate the country. we're also taking steps to speed the vaccination administration process. at the president's direction, fema has increased its support to states, tribes and

territories for vaccination sites. fema is providing nearly $1 billion to support vaccination sites in states and territories. more than 200 fema staff members are on the ground today providing logistical support in eight states and the agency is providing federal equipment and supplies to support states across the country. in addition, we're getting more vaccinators into the field to continue to escalate the pace of vaccinations. yesterday the department of health and human services amended the prep act. declaration to perm mit recently retired doctors and nurses to administer covid-19 vaccines. and to perm knit anyone currently licensed to vaccinate within their home state, that is doctors, nurses, emts, to administer shots across state lines. we're looking at every possible

step to make it easier to get more vaccinations out in the field. we encourage individuals to contact their local and state health departments, they're local medical reserve core unit to sign up to volunteer if they're qualified. and today the acting health and human services secretary will continue the activation of the u.s. public health service commission corp. he's requesting public health service officers from all available categories to support national covid-19 vaccination efforts. i want to also touch on you are efforts to make the workplace safer. the department of labor announced that its occupational safety and health administration or osha issued stronger worker safety guidance to help employers an workers implement a coronavirus mitigation program and better identify risks which could lead to exposure and infection. ensuring the health and safety of all of our country's workers

is a national priority and a moral and economic imperative. health care workers and other essential workers, many of whom are people of color, immigrants, have put their lives on the line during the coronavirus pandemic. and this updated guidance provides a road map for businesses to protect the health of the workers. now, one of the purposes of these briefings is to demonstrate the transparency within our national plan. and so i want to close by mentioning some of the steps that we're taking to improve public access to the information they should have at their finger tips to stay safe. this week we released previously non-public data on the the pandemic trends across all 50 states in detail. this detailed information was previously reserved solely for

governors and it is now available to everybody to see. these will be weekly reports publicly posted online. so our team is working hard to make the process more transparent and easier for the public to understand beginning with these briefings in a very clear messages from dr. wallenski and fauci. so let me turn and spend the balance of our time taking questions for the doctors and myself. >> great. thank you, andy. right now we have time for a couple of questions. if you have not already, you can go ahead and raise your hand on the zoom feature. first up we're going to christopher roland at "the washington post." >> yes, thank you. thanks for doing the briefing. on the subject of the low dead space syringes, i was wondering what percentage of the administration kits now are being sent out with the pfizer

vaccine contain those specialized units, how many millions more you need to get to 100% and what companies are being ordered to procure more under the dpa. ar the state allotment and pfizer's credit, are state allotments based on five doses in the vile or six and is pfizer getting credit for all six doses. >> thanks for the question. and at risk of somebody coming back and correcting my answer, i believe the answer is 100%. and they're getting credit for six precisely because everybody should now have the tools to be able to get the sixth pfizer dose out. that is thanks to the work of our dpa and supply cain team. next question. >> next to kaitlan collins at cnn. >> thank you. i have two questions actually. one on these new variants that we're seeing and the expectations seems to be that they could really start to have an impact on cases by march,

maybe gain a foot hold by april and become the dominant cases that we're seeing. so what specifically is the administration doing to stop that from happening beyond recommending that people social distance and wear masks? >> well let me turn first to dr. fauci to talk about the science behind these variants and what is likely to happen or what we know and what we believe. and then to dr. wallenski after that she could discuss the actions we're taking as a country and the actions we expect americans to take to help with your question. thank you. >> well, kaitlan, there are a number of variants that we're concerned about and one that is quite well established already in the united states and that is the 117, that is in about 28 or 29 states and more than 315 cases that have all been

reported. as you alluded to, the fact is that when you have a virus that has ability to transmit more efficiently than the wild type in the community, sooner or later by pure viral dynamics itself, it will become more dominant than the -- so we have that already there. we have a situation where there have now been reported in very specific places in south carolina for example, the isolate or the mute rant that is the 351 from dominant in south africa. again, that seems to have a very good fitness for spread. so whether or not that is going to ultimately take over in the sense of being dominant is unclear by now, the projection that is made with regard to the u.k. is that probably by the end of march, the beginning of april it actually will become more

donnenom dant -- dom nantz in this country. i'll leave it to dr. wallenski to talk a bit about what we're doing from a surveillance and other standpoint. but the fundamental principle of getting people as vaccinateds as quickly and efficiently as you possibly can will always be the best way to prevent the further evolution of any mute ant because when you do that, you prevent replication and replication is essential for mutation. so over to you, dr. wallenski. >> thank you, dr. fauci. as dr. fauci noted, the p prevention measures are exactly the same regardless of what variant you have. we have scaled up surveillance dramatically just in the last ten days in fact but our plans are more than what we've done so far. so we have partnerships with

commercial -- and now asking surveillance from every single state, at least 750 surveillance strains per week. and we have seven collaborates across universities to scale up surveillance to the thousands per week so that we could get to see whether the projections of having this take hold by the middle march or late march is actually true. what we're also doing is offering support to the states that have identified these surveillances specifically south carolina with the 351, reaching out to help with vaccination as vaccination is one of the things that we need to do. with resources for increased testing, increased surveillance, as well as increased resources for vaccination and funding. so we're working hard to make sure that we could actually do the mitigation measures, and the vaccination and do the surveillance. and then finally we have the cross agency collaborations with cdc and nih, arda, and dod, when

we get the strains we could do the science and understand the impact of these variants on our vaccines as well as on our therapeutics. >> let me add one more comment. look, if we as a country want to turbo charge our efforts at sequencing, which i believe should be a shared bipartisan perspective, we could do that. and what we need is the congress to quickly pass the american rescue plan which contains the resources necessary to get all of our very, very talented people around the country who are world experts at sequencing to get on this as quickly as possible. so i couldn't urge people to -- people and the congress to be more and more focused on american rescue plan that i can given the state of the variants. >> if i could make one more point and that is that by the time someone has symptoms and

gets a test and has a positive result and we get the sequence, our opportunity for doing more case control and contact tracing is largely gone. and so i think -- and i believe, that we should be treating every case as if it is a variant during this pandemic right now. >> thank you for the question. next. >> great. now we go to cbs. and i think you could speak. all right, we'll try to come back to you. in the meantime, let's go to carolyn chen.

>> hi. thanks for taking my question. this is a question for both dr. wallski and dr. fauci. when epidemiologists talk about herd immunity, they say 80% or 80% of the population is the goal. given that about 20% of the u.s. population is children, do you think it is important to have eligible expanded to children for vaccination as soon as possible and if so what are -- what is being done to get to that goal? >> yes, that is a very good question. and in the candidates that we're talking about now, certainly the moderna and the pfizer, the two that have been given the eua, we've already started on what is called an aged deescalation testing. what that means is that you start off for example, we know with one of the vaccines, it is 16 and then one is 18 years old. we go down from 16 to 12, from 12 to 9. and what you do, because you don't want to have to and i'll

explain why in a moment, to go through an efficacy trial where you're involving tens of thousands of children to showshow efficacy. what you could do, in a much smaller trial, measured in hundreds to a couple of thousands, to do what we call safety in a phase 2-a for immunology and if you could show that it is safe and induces the kind of response that is reflective of the protection namely the immunity, what you could do is then bridge that to the efficacy data that you got from the 30,000 trial with moderna and the 44,000 trial that we did with pfizer. so in direct answer to your question, over the next couple of months, we will be doing trials in an age deescalation manner so hopefully by the time we get to the late spring and early summer we will have

children being able to be vaccinated according to the fda guidance. >> thank you. >> dr. wallenski, do you want to add anything. >> i was just going to add, our current data from schools from summer camps also suggest that the children not only have decreased rates of symptoms but decreased rates of transmissibility. the estimates for herd immunity are based on rates of transmissibility and so what pertains to herd immunity among adults may be different among children. >> thank you. next question. >> we have time for two more. we have going to sharon at "new york times". >> thank you. could you hear me? >> yes. >> so dr. fauci said that we're going to have to make new versions of the existing vaccines to combat the variants and the vaccine makers have shown that they could design vaccines but where is the extra

manufacturing capacity going to come from? aren't the vaccine makers already tapped out making the existing vaccines so what is the plan for making revised vaccines and booster shots on top of that. >> thanks for the question. i think this speaks to a larger issue because i think you could have asked that question with a number of different permytations and that is the contingency planning and making sure we have sufficient vaccines and enough in our contracts to be able to make adjustments on the fly. and i would tell you that the department of health and human services, the fda, the team led by dr. kessler, are currently hard at work answering all of those questions. so i will not use the briefings to talk about non-public information about specific companies. all ci could tell you is those are exactly the right factors that we are thinking about and i think that to make a broader

point, the team work between everybody here, between the nih, the cdc, the fda, and then our ability to understand what those factors are and turn it into actual actionable plans with the manufacturers is really important and i've been incredibly impressed so far with that. >> great. and we'll send our last question to yamiche. >> you cut off. >> hi. it isam evenal sindor from pbs. thank you for taking my question. i have two questions. the first is it sounded like you were saying that we're vaccinating about a million people daily. could you talk about what the goal would be, the average goal would be and how quickly we ramp up to that average. what would be a better average? and i have a second question

after that. >> well, so our seven day average is 1.2 million per day. as i said, we view where we are today as a floor not a ceiling. what we have tasked our team with is as many vaccines as possible into as many arms as possible. there are two constraints right now. the first is just continuing week after week to press the increased productions and find opportunities as they exist. that is a slow process. that doesn't happen overnight. the second, where i think there is opportunity, is to turn those vaccines produced into actual vaccinations more rapidly. and we've announced a number of steps to do that. so i'm not going to put out a different number today on what i'd like to see other than to tell us that every day when the number comes out, all of russ breathlessly awaiting the number and looking for as high of a number as possible of course. i know you have another question. >> and then i wanted to ask

about the -- two-thirds of cases in los angeles county, it is been reported came out in the last two months have been reported in the last two months. one study said that the factor was this recent coronavirus surge of a new variant cal .20 c. what do we know about the l.a. variant and what does this tell us about other big cities in new york, a new orleans variant, is l.a. teaching us about what our big cities might be experiencing? >> thank you, dr. fauci, do you want to take that one. >> yeah. sure. well, what it tells us to is what ai alluded to in one of my prior comments. when you have a significant amount and' weshl have that now and have had that very much so over the past couple of months with the steep slope of acceleration of cases that we've seen is that the virus will continue to mutate and will mutate for its own selective

advantage. so if you have a lot of cases in los angeles and you have this mutant that you referred to, you could be almost certain that as long as there is a lot of virus circulating in the community, they will be the evolution of mute ants because that is what viruses do. particularly rna viruses. and that is what i was referring to just a moment ago. you're giving the virus an opportunity to adapt. so when people make an immune response against it, particularly in someone like that might be immunosuppressed where the virus stays in that person for a longer period of time, it gives the virus the chance to adapt to the forces in this case, the immune response, that is trying to get rid of it, and that is where you get mutations. so if the question you were asking, which is very relevant. is that what do we think is happening in other cities. i think what the underlying issues that are going on in

california, and los angeles very likely are taking place throughout the country which is one of the reasons why, as dr. wallenski has said. that we are really ratcheting up our genomic surveillance capability and our ability to get that information in realtime. >> dr. wallenski, anything would you like to add. >> i think we got it. >> okay. so i think we're saying collectively, let's not be such polite hosts to this virus. let's turn the tide and do like other countries who would do everything possible to shut out the growth of this virus and make sure that it is not welcome. well, thank you all for attending the briefing. i hope that this is useful to you. we continue to do these every monday, wednesday and friday. with the same group and we will bring others on as well. so if you have any feedback, now we could continue to share this information with the public. please let us know. thank you and have a great weekend. >> all right. you're listening there to the

latest briefing from the biden administration covid response team and we're also just learning they're going to be coming more often, monday, wednesday and friday. a lot to get to as we heard from dr. fauci and the head of the cdc dr. rochelle walensky. let me bring in dr. leana wen and dana bash. doctor, what is your big takeaway from what we heard from this briefing? >> well first of all, i'm glad that the briefings are occurring to learn about the science, to get the state of the pandemic and also to know what is going on with vaccine distribution. i thought my two big takeaways, one is about variants. i think there is a lot of concern. but as dr. fauci and wallenski really emphasized, the best thing to do to stop the vafrian is to stop the spread. as long as we're going to have replication, we're going to get more of these variants that we don't even know about. and the more that these concerning variants of the uk and south africa and brazil may

become dominant here in the u.s. and the johnson & johnson trial is very promising even though it looks like results may be less efficacious, there is one single dose vaccine and transported easily and 85% protection against severe disease is really good and so i think this underscores the importance of getting the vaccine out as quickly as possible and to double down intensefy our public health efforts of masking and social distancing and avoiding indoor gatherings. >> that is right. dana, there was a real sense of urgency during this briefing as well about a push for the need for the covid relief package. to move in congress. and they had examples of we need -- we need the covid relief package to move because we need to be able to test for these variants throughout the country more effectively. is that similar -- is the

urgency similar on the hill? i don't sense it as much. >> well, there is a partisan divide about that even among the republicans who are willing to work across the aisle who are part of this bipartisan group that have helped get the relief bill into law at the end of the trump administration. mitt romney told me on sunday that he doesn't believe, say for a couple of -- or a few really importance exceptions like vaccines, like other issues, that the big giant $1.9 trillion even close to that price tag is really necessary. and so there is a reason why you heard the scientists and the man who is coordinating the scientists make that push. make a political push even though it was so beyond that, so largely devoid of politics and refreshingly about the science

and what we need to know and we're not used to that. as dr. wen was just alosing to. because we didn't get to have these briefings in earnest without political players, you y know, changing the interpretation very often as opposed to letting the scientists talk science. >> and that is exactly what we are looking at right now. dr. wen, dr. fauci said when it comes to the variants, that this is a wake-up call for all of us. that there we're going to continue to see this. just the concept of that the as we know it would, but the fact that it is that there are these variants and they are more contagious and in some cases probably likely more deadly. if that is so concerning, and almost feels then dissatisfying that the real response on the the ground in realtime still is the mitigation efforts that have been suggested all along in order to avoid getting it.

do you hear any -- is there any more clear guidance of how short of everyone getting the vaccine which we know is going to take time, how you better protect or what the government is doing any differently in face of these new variants. >> i think one additional thing that dr. fauci mentioned is about the science being nimble. as in the manufactures are looking into developing a booster shot that may cover the new variants better than the existing vaccine. but the important thing to emphasize here, because i don't want people who are listening to be saying well in that case i'm going to wait foountil we get t booster or this better vaccine. that is not the right takeaway. the takeaway should be we need to do everything we can to suppress the spread of the virus right now. so whatever vaccine you have access to, get that into your arm right now. because that is what is going to help us stop the spread of the viruses. we don't want for these more contagious variants to take hold. we also do not want more

variants that we don't even know about to develop. and the best thing we could do in the meantime is to get the vaccine, continue to keep up mitigation efforts and then if we end up getting a better booster shot or a better vaccine, we could still take that. but don't let perfect be the enemy of the good right now. >> and it sounds like that. and you volunteered with the johnson & johnson trial. one thing that dr. fauci wants to make sure is that while the overall efficacy of the j&j result that they're seeing come from this trial is lower than what we saw when we see in pfizer and moderna but what fauci clearly wanted to express is that the most important thing right now is to keep people from getting severe illness and keep people out of the hospital and the numbers there with j&j are promising. why is that so important today when we are -- as we're learning more about this new vaccine?

>> well, ultimately the most important thing people care about is whether you are going to bet severely ill if you get coronavirus. if you only get a mild cold, you don't care. you care about whether you're going to get severely ill and many people have succumbed and died from covid-19. so if the johnson & johnson vaccine results prove to be true. that they appear to be 85% effective at preventing severe disease, that is really important. now it does appear that moderna and pfizer are even more effective, nearly 100%. but the fact is that we don't have enough of those vaccines. and if we could get the johnson & johnson vaccine online a lot faster and many millions of people are able to get this one dose vaccine, that makes a big difference. >> there is value added is exactly what dr. fauci said. dr. wen, hold with me. we have some new tape coming in that i want to get to which is president biden, vice president harris as well as the new

treasury secretary janet yellen together in the oval office. let's listen in. >> -- rescue plan. there is an overwhelming consensus among economists, left right and center, that this is a unique moment in this crisis. and the cost of inaction is high, the cost of inaction is high and it is growing every day. crisis itself has accelerating 900,000 more americans filed unemployment insurance and this week alone. many don't have enough food to eat this week. interest rates are starting to go up and the return on some investments in the economy have never been higher. and it is not just mee saying this. it is the consensus among the vast majority in the economy. left right and center. and the advisers to former president trump and george bush.

and so i've been meeting all morning with other folks as well, the notion here is that we have to act now. there is no time for any delay. and so we could end up with 4 million fewer jobs this year according to moody's, a wall street firm and it could fake a year longer to return to full employment if we don't act and don't act now. we could see an entire cohort of kids with a lower lifetime earnings because they're deprived of another semester of school. millions of parents and maybe some of you, millions of parents are particularly moms are forced to stay home, reducing the family wages and if you're a single wageerner it is really difficult and future job prospects that they have no choice but to stay home and take care of their children. millions of people are out of work, unemployed and future

millions are held back for in good reason other than our failure to act. so the choice couldn't be clearer. we have learned from past crises the risk is not doing too much, the risk is not doing enough. and this is a time to act now. i've asked secretary yellen to come in and we're going to go into some detail among ourselves. but i think she has a statement to make as well. >> thank you, very much, mr. president. well, there is a huge amount of pain in our economy right now. and it was evident in the data released yesterday. over a million people applied for unemployment insurance last week. and that is far more than in the worst week of the greet recession and economist agree if there is thought more help morem more people will lose their small businesses, roofs over

their heads and the ability to feed their families. and we need to help those people before the virus is brought under control. the president's american rescue plan will help millions of people make it to the other side of this pandemic. and it will also make some smart investments to get our economy back on track. i want to emphasize the president is absolutely right, the price of doing nothing is much higher than the price of doing something and doing something big. we need to act now. and the benefits of acting now and acting big will far outweigh the costs in the long run. >> what do you think of the johnson & johnson results. >> thank you. >> i'm waiting to hear from the team on a detail of it. i saw a news report of it this

morning. i haven't had a chance to speak with dr. fauci. one point i want to make, that the secretary made, and let's get this straight, it is not only that people will be badly, badly hurt if we don't pass this package, in terms of increased rate of death, in terms of poverty, a whole range of things, but we will also be hurt long-term economically, economically. we need to make this investment so the economy could grow the remainder of this year and next year. the investments now will help the economy grow. it will not, in fact, put a drag on the economy of spending this money. it will do the exact opposite. so thank you all very much. >> thank you. >> did you discuss game stop -- >> thank you. >> they're looking to the oval office, the president and vice president and his top economic adviser. they are with the treasury secretary janet jell yellen. let me bring in john harwood for

more on what we're looking at there. when you take these two things in conjunction, john, the covid briefing that we just received from the health side of it, and what we just saw in the oval office on the economic side, it really does seem that today it is now become very apparent and publicly a full-court press for multiple facets of the administration on pushing for this covid relief package. >> no question about it, kate. and it is a remarkable set of circumstances that we find ourselves in that are providing political momentum to this package. we've a terrible public health crisis that we see the light at the end of the tunnel on with the vaccine development. we have a terrible economic crisis that woe could see the light at the end of the tunnel on because if we get the pandemic under control and get assistance to bridge people while we get it under control, you'll see a significant economic payoff. and as joe biden, the president just said, you've got a

consensus on that people from like kevin hassett, the economic adviser to president trump from jay powell, the chair of the federal reserve and democratic econom economists as well. that means it is easier for democrats to now say, yes, we need to do something very big. they have the ability to do that through the budget reconciliation process. and the very fact that they're able to do that encourages republicans then to negotiate. because if they can't stop it, if it going to happen any way, that fosters negotiations. but they are on two tracks but there is a lot of momentum for getting something big done pretty rapidly. >> it seems that the ball is in their court. that is for sure. it is great to see you. thank you so much. we have breaking news in hour and we have a lot more to get to. cox up, a new effort in congress to try to skbel one of its own. details on how some democrats are trying to push marjorie taylor greene from their ranks.

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there is a new effort this morning to hold one freshman member of congress accountable, kicked off committees or even expelled from congress for actions even before her time in office. house speaker pelosi unloaded on republican leaders yesterday as you saw here on the show for putting greene on the house education committee knowing her previous positions, calling the p parkland school shooting a fake, and confronting one of the students who survived the shooting, badgering him as he was walking down the sidewalk on capitol hill back in 2019. now some democrats want her out of congress entirely. cnn's manu raju is with me. speaker pelosi called it appalling how the republican leadership have turned a blind eye on greene's behavior. what are you hearing this

morning? >> reporter: the republicans haven't said much about it. they've been out of session this week. they've had private conference calls, and on wednesday they had one, it was a political call. she did speak up, marjorie taylor greene, on that call, but she was asking to give money to the republicans in 2022. she said she would give $100,000, i'm told, from additional sources. a spoekesperson said he's deepl disturbed by some of her comments and wants to have a discussion with her. it's not clear if that discussion has happened yet, and it's not clear if she'll be kicked off the labor relations committee with concerns of posts on social media in which she was asked if she believed in this conspiracy behind the parkland shooting suggesting it might not have been a real event. kate, the big question, too, is what will happen when these

democrats are pushing to get her expelled altogether in congress. that requires a two-thirds majority in the house to get that done. it's highly unlikely to happen. also unclear if nancy pelosi supports expelling her from congress. i asked her that yesterday. she didn't answer the question. >> that's a minefield to answer right there. manu, i also want to ask you about congresswoman liz cheney. she's the number 3 house republican. she's facing so much blowback within her party for, and i would say for simply voting her conscience, because that's what she said she was doing as she said everyone should and that she supported impeaching donald trump over the riot. now even donald trump is reportedly joining in in an effort to, i don't know, kick her out, get her out of leadership? what can you tell us? >> reporter: this is going to come to a head on wednesday. there is a republican conference meeting. it's a standing meeting to discuss a variety of issues. we're expecting this to become a venting meeting of sorts,

discussions about liz cheney being one of them, probably about her role in that and stripping her of her position. it's unlikely they'll have a vote to actually get rid of her in that spot. there is a procedure that needs to take place before there is an actual vote internally. at the moment, even the conservatives who are trying to get her out of that position believe that cheney will probably have enough support to hang on, but it will be a fight, and an ugly one at that, because a vast majority of the republican conference still sides with donald trump, even though he's out of office and we saw what he did in the run-up to january 6. >> so joe biden started his administration and came into office with one clear message, his call for unity. but they seem to be so much further from that than ever, especially in you look in congress. let me bring in chief political

correspondent dana bash. dana, manu has laid out the state of affairs. i thought melanie zinona from positiv "politico" laid it out well. they said some are afraid to be in the same room, two others almost got into a fist fight on the floor and the speaker is warning that the enemy is within. members of congress couldn't be further we say this a lot. have you ever seen anything like this? >> no, it's on a totally different level, because when president biden calls for unity, obviously he was talking about the country coming together in a social way, to kind of lower the temperature, lower the rhetoric. >> exactly. >> but for the most part, his

calling card was that he has been in congress, he was in the senate for 36 years, he knows how to work across the aisle, and i can do that. the jury is obviously very much out on whether he can accomplish that. but what we're seeing now, the discord we're seeing now is personal when it comes to security and safety. kate, i know you and i covered congress together. i'm sure you still talk to members. i do as well, who tell me they are personally afraid of going in and doing their job because of colleagues that they have, elected by their districts who -- marjorie taylor greene, obviously is the most prominent who in the past have said they want to do harm, and she has said she wants to do harm to the people she now serves with. that is unbelievable. and that is what nancy pelosi was talking about when she used the term "enemy within." >> it's not just tone, it speaks to them getting anything done. >> exactly right.

getting anything done is almost -- the notion of that is almost a luxury when you're actually worried about your physical safety, and this isn't hyperbole, this is real, and that is what we're seeing. >> that's exactly right. dana, thanks for sticking with me throughout the show. i really appreciate it. thank you all for being with us this hour. i'm kate baldwin. john king picks up our coverage right now. ♪ top of the hour. hello, everybody, welcome to "inside politics." i'm john king in washington. thank you for sharing a very busy news day with us. some important coronavirus news this hour, some of it encouraging, some of it concerning. and a new push just moments ago from president biden. he says the economy is reeling from this pandemic and the congress needs to abt ct quickln his covid relief plan. >> the choice couldn't be clearer. we