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China`s Streets And Train Stations Quite Ahead Of The Lunar New Year; NFL Wraps Up A Season In Which It Kept COVID Largely On The Sidelines. Aired 4-4:10a ET
Aired February 08, 2021 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CARL AZUZ, CNN 10 ANCHOR: A new year is about to dawn on the Chinese calendar but one thing we traditionally see in the world`s most populated
country is missing. And that`s where we start the week on CNN 10, I`m Carl Azuz. Every year we`ve reported on this.
We`ve talked about how Lunar New Year or Spring Festival causes the world`s largest human migration. For this holiday, there are more train travelers
in China than there are people living in the United States. We`re talking roughly 400 million rail passengers and that doesn`t count the tens of
millions who travel by air or use other forms of transportation.
But as the year 4719 begins on the Chinese calendar this Friday, not nearly as many of people are crossing the country to see their families. Some are
missing their only opportunity to do that for the year and while the festival that usually lasts 15 days will still be celebrated by more than 1
billion people in China and other Asian countries. The Chinese government is encouraging and in some cases requiring people there to celebrate at
home.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Strolling the aisles of a Shanghai grocery store, Vicki Wong (ph) is stocking up ahead of the most important holiday
in China, Chinese New Year or Spring Festival.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think I like this.
CULVER: Traditionally the holiday marks the largest mass migration of humans each year. In China, major cities empty out as hundreds of millions
travel back to their home provinces. But last years outbreak in Wuhan coincided with the start of the Chinese New Year and made for a perfect
storm, packed train stations like this one in Beijing combined with a rapidly spreading virus. This year the government urging and in some cases
even ordering people not to travel.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (Inaudible)
CULVER: Wong (ph) is one of the millions sacrificing precious time with family this holiday following the government guidance to stay put.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We`ll have to make a little bit of sacrifice from everyone to keep us safe.
CULVER: While China`s touted it`s strict and seemingly effective containment efforts, recent cluster outbreaks have resulted in the
government`s travel restrictions. All ready in the first three days of the annual travel rush, passenger rail trips plummeted more than 70 percent.
The normally packed train stations are now eerily empty. It seems many are following the government`s suggestion not to travel and some state-owned
companies are even paying their employees a few hundred dollars. Encouraging them not to return to their hometown and instead to use the
holiday time to explore the cities in which they live and work. But some are still determined to travel home.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the policy is too harsh.
CULVER: By video chat we spoke with Dan Di (ph). Not his real name because he doesn`t want to get in trouble for criticizing the government. He just
wrapped up 21 days of quarantine which included heavy surveillance right outside his front door. All to travel home for the Chinese New Year which
he says is deeply personal for migrant workers.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The spring festival is the only chance and the most important chance for them to go home to stay with their family. That`s why
I think they need to go home.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK. This is good. It means travel safe and comes the good luck.
CULVER: As for those who choose to stay like Wong (ph), they`re still finding ways to celebrate.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (UNTRANSLATED)
CULVER: Asking her parents and sister over video chat for their advice on cooking the Chinese New Year dinner, a meal she and millions of others will
eat separated from loved ones. As China works to halt a decades long tradition of mass migration, so as to prevent a repeat of last year`s rapid
spread of the virus. David Culver, CNN, Shanghai.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
AZUZ: 10 Second Trivia. Super Bowl XLIX holds the record for what achievement? Highest score, highest viewership, longest game or closest
score. With viewership exceeding 114 million people, the Super Bowl held in 2015 was America`s highest rated ever.
Ratings have decreased somewhat since then with 102 million people having watched last year`s game. We don`t yet have the final estimates on last
night`s Super Bowl but we can tell you it was the least attended championship in NFL history thanks to COVID. Of the almost 66,000 seats at
Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, only about 25,000 were made available to socially distanced people.
If you thought there were more, you might have seen cardboard cutouts sitting in. It was a major drop from last year`s Super Bowl attendance of
more than 62,000 people. But Super Bowl LV still capped a season in which the games went on despite the presence of a disease pandemic and Dr. Sanjay
Gupta wanted to find out how the NFL managed to keep corona virus largely on the sidelines.
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: This is a sport defined by close contact. An environment ripe for transmission. There`s other people
who say it absolutely ludicrous to even try this. What do you say to them?
DR. ALLEN SILLS, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER FOR THE NFL: I feel it`s the right thing to do to try to learn with this virus. I really do.
GUPTA: Dr. Allen Sills is the Chief Medical Officer for the NFL. He was brought in as a neurosurgeon who thought he`d be dealing with concussions
and then the pandemic changed everything. I initially met up with him at the beginning of the season.
SILLS: We just have to recognize we`re dealing with an unpredictable pandemic and so we`ll have to adjust along the way.
GUPTA: On September 10th, the Kansas City Chiefs kicked off against the Houston Texans in the first game of the season. At the time, there were
more than six million confirmed corona virus cases in the United States. Now right before the Super Bowl, how -- how did things go?
SILLS: I think that what we`ve had to do at every step is to make the best and the safest decisions we can and we`ve had to evolve and relearn along
the way.
GUPTA: While cases around the country exploded, now at more than 26 million confirmed. The NFL was relatively untouched with a positivity rate of .08
percent. So what worked for the NFL and what can we all learn from it?
SILLS: We had an outbreak in Tennessee and we -- and we went in and really dug into that and tried to understand how did a transmission occur despite
our protocols. That`s when we began to realize it wasn`t just six feet and 15 minutes.
GUPTA: Put simply, Dr. Sills said it wasn`t the playing or the practices that were the largest concern but these three things. Eating, greeting and
meeting.
SILLS: Meeting inside, even if you`re more than six feet apart. If you`re in a poorly ventilated room for a long period of time and someone`s
positive, there can be transmission inside those rooms. Eating together, very high-risk activity.
You know, most people don`t have a mask on when they`re eating. And then the greeting part is just the social interactions outside the facilities.
You know, when -- when you interact in the community, if someone`s positive and you go and get a haircut, or you have a massage at your house.
GUPTA: How did the NFL know? They tested daily and they contact traced and they tracked the movements of more than 11,000 players and staff. Even
alerting them if they were too close to one another.
SILLS: If we move closer together than six feet, you`ll start to see it blinking red.
GUPTA: Now keep in mind, the CDC defines close contact like this. Being within six feet of an infected person for a cumulative total of 15 minutes
or more over a 24 hour period. But the leagues data found transmission was occurring with less time and more distance.
These are considerations for anyone, anywhere, to assess their risk. Ventilation, are you indoors or outdoors? Are you in a car with the windows
up or are you in a large open stadium? The more air circulation, the better. Masks, what kind of masks are being used? And do they fit
correctly? And finally, time and distance, the longer and closer you are around someone, the increase risk for transmission.
SILLS: If you`re failing in two or more of those categories, that`s what we consider a high risk close contact. But I think the biggest thing we
learned, universal masking works. It`s the most effective strategy that we have.
GUPTA: How hard would it be to replicate what you were able to do at the NFL?
SILLS: It wasn`t the fact that we tested everyday. It wasn`t the fact that everyone wore a fancy proximity tracking device everywhere they went. What
prevented transmission was mask usage, avoiding in person meetings, staying in the open air environments, not eating together, prompt symptom
reporting, isolation of anybody that`s exposed.
(END VIDEO TAPE)
AZUZ: If it weren`t for a security camera only one person would have ever known this had happened and that person is Joe Orians. He`s a custodian at
Ohio`s Liberty-Benton Middle School. Last Thursday he casually walked out to half court, tossed a shot backwards, drained it.
Threw up his arms for a moment and went back to work. But the principal saw the video and tweeted it and now the shot seen around the world has made
Orians a living legend. More like "Orion`s", because he`s a "star". Puns aside, when he was asked why he tried half-court shot?
Orians responded he had just a good a chance to make that as a lay-up because he`s not that good. We disagree. He proves that you don`t need to
be a "pro" to be "NBAmazing" as well as a really good "sport.
Thank you for giving us a sporting chance to explain the news. Sir Robert Borden was the 8th Prime Minister of Canada. He`s also the namesake of Sir
Robert Borden High School. It is in Ottowa. Thank you for watching on YouTube. I`m Carl Azuz for CNN 10.
END
