let's begin with cnn senior medical correspondent elizabeth cohen. listen, the data doesn't lie, right? it's clearly coming back principally in unvaccinated areas. tell us what the numbers tell you. >> jim, you know, we thought we were done with this, and now here we are and there are two reasons for this. one, this delta variant which has been called a variant on steroids, and also that so many, half the country is still not fully vaccinated, allowing this variant to do its thing which it does so well. so, let's take a look at the growth of the delta variant. if you look at this graph on the far left, that was where we were in late may. 3% of the covid out there was the delta variant. now look. less than two months, this delta variant went from being 3% of the covid that's out there to being 83% of the covid that's out there. it just shows you how fast it took over. and why was it so fast? well, number one, it replicates fast in the body. it does what viruses do, it makes copies and copies and copies of itself very quickly. in one study they took na

a lot to talk about with our senior medical correspondent elizabeth cohen. good morning to you. talk about this in the most clear terms. that map just showed, et cetera, this is really now become a pandemic of the unvaccinated. >> it has, because these vaccines that had been so miraculous, they work. so, if you are choosing not to get vaccinated, you are choosing to possibly get sick and die. you are choosing to infect people around you who are not vaccinated. and you're choosing to make life, frankly, a mess for the rest of us. if you're vaccinated and you get a breakthrough infection and you have to quarantine or miss work, you can blame the unvaccinated. these folks are making life a mess for the rest of us. and frankly, they're killing people. let's take a look at that same map that you just used, poppy. the ten states that have the lowest vaccination rates, not shockingly, are among the states that have the highest covid transmission rates. we can't say this any more simply. the white states there, those are states with higher vaccination rates. they tend to have lower covi

and, elizabeth, as so often with this pandemic, it's in the data. you have states with high infection rates -- high vaccination rates, rather, low vaccination rates. what we are seeing now is where the vaccination rates are lower, you're seeing a much bigger spike in new infections. >> that's right, jim, in states with low vaccination rates they have higher death rates from covid. it could not be more clear. if you are unvaccinated, basically it's 2020 all over again. this delta variant spreads quickly. there is evidence that it makes people sicker, and you are not protected against it. so, to speak to what dr. fauci said about two americas, you have part of the united states that have high vaccination rates, and where the virus is under pretty good control. and then areas where people have chosen not to be vaccinated where the virus is not in such good control. when i say have chosen not to get vaccinated, i say that for a reason. at this point the vaccine is readily available to pretty much really to everyone. it is free. if you've chosen not to g

poppy, jim. >> thanks very much, elizabeth cohen. the vaccine keeps you from being hospitalized and dying. dr. colleen kraft is associate chief medical officer at emory university hospital. if we can begin with the risk to children here, i want to put some context around this, and maybe you can help. there are a lot of parents watching. poppy and i are parents. we are still talking about a very low percentage, by our math less than .07% of all covid deaths, 400 out of 600,000 nationally are children. if you're a parent of one of those kids, it doesn't matter what the numbers are. one death is too much. in terms of risks as parents are making judgments on how and how much to protect their children, how much of a risk is this? >> so i think, you know, elizabeth's segment just now is really clear. so we think this is the most transmissible. we think this is probably the most serious virus that you can get in your lifetime. so i think we know how to protect against transmission. it's just sort of whether or not we can balance our fatigue

. >> cnn medical correspondent elizabeth cohen joins us now. it's disappointing seeing the surge we're seeing and among young people. was there a surge in vaccinations among 12 to 15 and now it's fallen off. >> that's right. that's exactly what's happened, jim. there was a surge and it's fallen off. it's one thing to not get vaccinated yourself as an adult. you're putting yourself at risk and the people around you. the choice to not vaccinate a child from 12 to 17 is hard to comprehend. why would you put your child at risk of dying? children do die of covid. yes, it's unusual, but there have been hundreds of children in the u.s. who have died of covid. there are children as we speak who are dying of covid, who are on rest raters. they could get long haul symptoms and have neurological issues for months, if not years. why on earth would you want to hurt your child? it doesn't make sense. let's take a look at the numbers. the latest numbers show that 25% of children ages 12 to 15 are fully vaccinated. you can see those numbers go up as you age. s

elizabeth, back to you. just moments ago, pfizer released data ahead of their earnings call today that showed that vaccines could be available for children ages 5 to 11. when? >> so, what pfizer said was, look, we think we will have data from our clinical trials for children ages 5 to 11. we think we'll have that data in september. if we look back at adults, we look back from the time that they had the data until the time that the vaccine was okayed by the fda, that was a matter of weeks. if they had data in september, it's possible there could be a vaccine for children that age, you know, let's say october, november-ish. that is possible. but obviously not for the start of the school year unfortunately. >> okay. but that's helpful. it gives us parents, you know, a little bit more of a condensed time line in terms of when our kids may be eligible. thank you, elizabeth, for the reporting. jeremy diamond at the white house. >>> let me bring in u.s. surgeon general vivek murthy. thank you for being with us on a

elizabeth cohen joins us now. elizabeth, as you know, the cdc director just shared how many of those cases attributed to the delta variant, 80%. it is only going in one direction. what does it mean crucially for hospitalizations and deaths from the delta variant? >> right. there variant we've seen, jim, spreads so quickly. really in just a matter of few short -- hardly even months, really weeks it went from being a big nothing to being as dr. walensky just told us, more than 80%. lets a take a listen to what she said today. >> the delta variant now represents 83% of sequenced cases. this is a dramatic increase, up from 50% from the week of july 3rd. in some parts of the country, the percentage is even higher. particularly in areas of low vaccination rates. >> reporter: all right, now to take off of what dr. walensky just said about areas of low vaccination. what we know about the delta variant is that it spreads very fast and that it does, people who are vaccinated do have really good protection. it really keeps y

elizabeth cohen here to help us walk through this. i wonder if you could describe to people what is going on here. pfizer said they're working on a booster shot if needed. fda and cdc, i imagine, trying to comfort vaccinated people to say that today you don't need such a booster, is that right? >> that is right. and to be clear what is happening here is that pfizer yesterday announced, hey, we're going to apply to the fda for emergency use authorization for a third shot. so a third shot of the same thing as the two shots that people have already gotten just a third version of it. so that you could have three shots instead of two with the third shot acting as a b

good morning, elizabeth. there's been so much it seems like back and forth on this and i'm so confused. we cover this every day. >> good morning, poppy, good morning, jim. i can basically explain it in one sentence. you do not need a booster shot now of a covid-19 vaccine, but you might in the future. so, dr. vivek murthy, the surgeon general and dr. fauci said the meeting they had with pfizer went well, and they say that, what i just said, may not need -- we may need them in the future, but we don't need them now. let's take a look at a statement from the department of health and human services which lays it out quite plainly. so, the statement says, at this time fully vaccinated americans do not need a booster. the vaccines available now offer a very high degree of protection. the administration is prepared for booster doses if and when the science demonstrates that they are needed. >>> so, pfizer can apply for emergency use authorization if they want to, but the fda is going to consider, do we really need

elizabeth cohen joins me now. and elizabeth, it is a tale of two countries at this point, is it not? hi highly vaccinated states and now we're seeing spikes there. >> it is really a tale of two countries. i'm going to show you some numbers, jim, that really describe the ramifications of the choices that these two countries are making. let's take a look. these are deaths in june from covid-19. 99.2% of the people who died of covid-19 last month were unvaccinated. .8% were vaccinated. i don't think there are any other numbers that puts out this stark choice that people have. when you don't get vaccinated, you are running this risk of dying from covid-19. it is bewildering why people would choose not to get unvaccinated or why people would choose not to get vaccinated. let's take a listen to some dr. fauci said on this yesterday. >> it is all the more sad and all the more tragic, why it isn't being completely implemented in this country and whatever the reasons as you said, some of them are ideology and some are fund

cnn senior medical correspondent elizabeth cohen joins me now. so, elizabeth, tell us where these five clusters are. >> jim, you know, we know that about half of america is not fully vaccinated. if those folks were spread out evenly around the country, you know, we might be able to protect them. those of us who are vaccinated might be able to protect them. but that is not the case. they are clustered together which means they could be very easily spreading this virus to each other because they are clustered together. so georgetown university has been following the vaccination rollout since december and they've tracked clusters. let's take a look at the five most significant clusters that they found. as you can see from this map, most of them are in the southeastern united states. actually, all of them. they go into southern missouri, but other than that it's pretty much the southeast and parts of texas. this is really a problem. if it's a lot of unvaccinated people potentially spreading to each other. and the more the virus spreads, the more like

let's begin this hour with elizabeth cohen. good morning. this latest spike has i number of republican leaders feeling the pressure and a number of them now speaking up very vocally about this, including alabama governor kay ivey, where the vaccination rate is the lowest in the country. what is she saying? >> this is apparently what it took for some republicans, not all, but for some republicans to say, look, guys, you need to get vaccinated. so let's take a listen to governor ivy. she speaks in very plain language. >> these folks are choosing a horrible lifestyle of self-inflicted pain. >> what is it going to take to get shots in people's arms. >> i don't know. you tell me. folks are supposed to have common sense. but it is time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. it is the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down. >> you could see how angry she is. it is the governors that are bearing the brunt of this. when people don't get vaccinated, and end up the hospital, it cost money. that money comes out to some exte

elizabeth, thank you. see you tomorrow. >> thanks. >>> still to come, as we see many adults choose not to get vaccinated, that is putting our children at risk. why there is not yet a vaccine approved for children under 12, but it's coming. >>> plus, just stunning allegations. the nation's top generals were, according to a new book, so worried that former president trump would attempt a coup to remain in power, they were discussing a plan to prepare for that, prepare for the worst. we'll have details next. psoriatic arthritis, made my joints stiff, swollen, painful. tremfya® is approved to help reduce joint symptoms in adults with active psoriatic arthritis. some patients even felt less fatigued. serious allergic reactions may occur. tremfya® may increase your risk of infections and lower your ability to fight them. tell your doctor if you have an infection or symptoms or if you had a vaccine or plan to. tremfya®. emerge tremfyant™. janssen can help you explore cost support options. i've got big news!

. >> let's bring in our senior medical correspondent elizabeth cohen. there's been a lot of back and forth on this between the companies and then the leading health officials. what do we actually know this morning, whether or not people are going to need a booster? >> good morning, poppy. what we know is that administration officials will be briefed this evening by pfizer on the data that led pfizer to say, oh, my goodness, immunity is waning. we want to get emergency use authorization for a third shot. immunity is waning as we speak, basically. they didn't give any data to support that claim. they pointed to israeli numbers. iron ironically, the israeli numbers show the two shots, you don't need a third, two shots, are doing an excellent job of protecting people who are getting very sick from covid-19. dr. anthony fauci of the national institutes of health saying this weekend he actually got an apology from the ceo of pfizer for surprising everybody with this and dr. fauci just hours ago said, look, it's not pfizer who decides what shots americans get

elizabeth cohen here to help us walk through this. i wonder if you could describe to people what is going on here. pfizer said they're working on a booster shot if needed. fda and cdc, i imagine, trying to comfort vaccinated people to say that today you don't need such a booster, is that right? >> that is right. and to be clear what is happening here is that pfizer yesterday announced, hey, we're going to apply to the fda for emergency use authorization for a third shot. so a third shot of the same thing as the two shots that people have already gotten just a third version of it. so that you could have three shots instead of two with the third shot acting as a booster. but there was i lot of surprise about why fiez ser going to be doing that. why are they applying for this authorization, why is it necessary? they talked about waning immunity but there aren't studies that show waning immunity and pfizer didn't offer up any evidence of waning immunity. and this is a pharmaceutical company. they're supposed to specialize in data. the onl

let's begin with medical correspondent elizabeth cohen. health experts are worried and children are the ones paying the price for adults choosing not to get vaccinated, but also, let's be clear. it's still really rare for children to get seriously ill from covid, right? >> it is. it is very unusual for a child to get a terrible complication from covid. but, you know, i say to you, poppy, as a mom, i'm a mom. why would you want to risk that with your child? i have pondered this for a very long time and i don't get it. why would you want to say, kids hardly ever get sick with covid. i'm not going to get my child vaccinated. i'll be honest, that's just bad parenting. we should be protecting our children. the vaccine is safe. however, covid is not safe. your child could end up in intensive care like the children you just mentioned in mississippi. they could end up on a ventilator. they could end up with long-haul covid, and have neurological symptoms for months, if not years. it is happening. it has happened. we can point, unfortunately, to ma

elizabeth cohen joins me now. elizabeth, it is not an accident that you're having these clusters of new infections in areas with low, lower vaccination rates. tell us about the danger posed in those areas but also beyond them. >> right. so jim, about half of the u.s. is not fully vaccinated and if those folks were spread out evenly across the united states, those of us vaccinated might be able to help them to a certain extent. but unfortunately they're not evenly spread out. they are clustered. so let's take a look at these clusters of folks who are not vaccinated. so if you take a look at these maps, feez five circles, those have very low vaccination rates and relatively high populations. so this is like kind of like drive wood for an outbreak. if you think of an outbreak as a fire, this is the kindling. this is where it is going to happen as you could see mostly in the southeast and also in to southern missouri. let's take a look at some of the demographics involved with these clusters. that is about 15 million

senior medical correspondent elizabeth joins us. walk us through the numbers. this gets to vulnerabilities. >> that's right, jim. people of color were so disproportionately hit by covid-19, and the hope was once the vaccine cave out, that those communities in particular would get vaccinated so that they could be protected. and unfortunately, that turns out is not what has happened. we would expect at the very least people would be vaccinated in proportion to the numbers in the population. so, for example, 60% of the u.s. is white, and it is true, it worked for white folks -- that number works, about 60% of white people are vaccinated. but let's take a look at what those numbers look like for other groups. so, whites and asians are vaccinated in proportion to their population. however, for blacks, they represent 12% of the population, but only 9% of the vaccinated population. latinos represent 17% of the population. but only 15% of the vaccinated population. and you might say, well, those differences aren't huge. but that represents more than 5 million people, m

. >> let's begin with cnn medical correspondent, elizabeth cohen. to be there when it is preventable. what's your read? >> poppy, i know we saw this map, but i'm going to ask to pull it up again, the one with all the dark red on it. it is so disheartening. the three of us sat here month after month. we were happy when the map was mostly yellow and green. look at this, guys. what have we done as a country that this map is mostly dark red, cases going up again? i'm going to show you another graph, another disheartening graphic that explains why we're seeing all this dark red. all these increase in cases, and that is that vaccines are at -- vaccinations, rather, are at a low. take a look at that. it shouldn't be on the far-right, that's where we are now. look at the low rate of vaccinations in this country. with nearly a third of eligible americans not getting vaccinated. that's tens of millions of americans who could be vaccinated who are choosing not to. instead, basically they're choosing death. it doesn't make any sense to me. i can't explain this

thank you, elizabeth cohen, very, very much. let's also bring in dr. colleen craft, the associate chief medical officer at emory university hospital in atlanta. dr. craft, good morning to you. >> good morning. >> what's your reaction to what this cdc document lays out? >> i think it's highly concerning. you know, we just got to the point where we thought we could sort of go without masks, that vaccine was potentially a reward for being able to not mask, and i think it shows us that we need to continue to just focus on stopping transmission at all. so, if we can stop transmission, then that's better for everybody. it's better for the virus to stop mutating. >> but how do we do that unless something suddenly changes and a huge swath of america decides to get vaccinated? because isn't part of the reason this delta variant became so pervasive because more than half the country is unvaccinated? >> yes. if we can figure that out, poppy, i think we would make a lot of strides in the communication for public health. i don't know what it's going to take and i f

elizabeth cohen is joining us now. break down the numbers. >> i'm about to show you two numbers and the israeli ministry of health they haven't given a study or anything. i'm going to give you two numbers and i want you to focus on the second one. first, the first one, 64% effective. this vaccine appears -- pfizer is 64% effective at preventing infection in israel right now. it's only 64% effective that's much less than the efficacy against other strains of covid, but again, the second number is the more important one. it is 93% effective at preventing severe disease and hospitalization. in other words, 93% effective at keeping you from getting very sick. vaccine researcher says the purpose is to keep you out of the hospital or the morgue and if you're a little bit sick and you miss a day or two at work, that's not a big deal. you're not at risk of losing your life. it keeps you from ending up in the hospital or dead and that's why it's so important to get vaccined. >> the concern, of course, this is the way, you know,

elizabeth cohen following all of this. and i know this is confusing for folks at home, but help clear it up somewhat here. because the current vaccine still provides an enormous amount of protections so how far down the line are we talking about booster shots? >> certainly not any time very soon, jim. i think it is clear that a booster will likely be needed at some point in the future. but when pfizer came out last week and said, hey, we see immunity waning already and so we're going to ask the fda for an emergency use authorization for a third shot. so just a third shot, the same as the other two people have already gotten. everybody said what? where is the data that shows this is necessary. they pointed so some israeli data but that data ironically and oddly actually shows that the shot is just two shots is terrific at preventing people from getting very sick with covid. so it is a mystery why they think one is necessary right now. dr. fauci talked about this and said he got an apology from the ceo of pfizer because they

. >> our senior medical correspondent elizabeth cohen is back with us this hour. what can we do. jim and i have kids under 12 and we cannot control other people's decisions. what does that mean for our kids. >> you certainly can't. what this means right now is that people need to get their children 12 to 17 vaccinated. that is so important. because they have younger siblings, they play with younger children and so it is so important that those kids get vaccinated. and right now we're still waiting for the vaccine for younger children. let's take a look at the timeline for when we think that that might happen. so, we're thinking that this is according to pfizer, pfizer said that for children ages 5 to 11, they think that they could be asking the fda for emergency use authorization in september. so that means that we'll not have a shot by the start of the school year. they'll be asking for an eua in september and then it takes several weeks to process that. for younger children, pfizer said they could have data later in the fall. they say for the youngest of that said, it might not