strict new lockdown has begun in the
most populous u.s state california
as covert 19 cases continue to surge
across the country
more than half of california's 40
million residents are subject to a
stay-at-home order people are banned
from meeting anyone from
outside their household the order was
triggered by growing pressure on
intensive care capacity in hospitals
let's go straight to our correspondent
in washington gary o'donoghue and gary
as i was just saying this is likely to
last for about three weeks and affect
about 40 million people
yeah it's uh it's tens of millions of
people in california
and it's been triggered by the fact that
the numbers of hospital beds and icu
beds has fallen
below below a particular level which has
brought these new restrictions into
place
in an attempt to try and prevent those
hospitalizations
overwhelming the state's health care
system
so in places like los angeles and
further south in san diego these curfews
and these restrictions on businesses
because of the infection rates
joining a whole bunch of restrictions
that are already in place
up north in san francisco and the bay
area so
california is really one of the key hot
points
at the moment for the virus the elder
but it's not just there it's across
america six days the first six days of
december
1.2 million new cases in the united
states
extraordinary and and uh quite grim
there
uh uh gary and just picking up on that
point that you've just made it's not
just
california we're seeing a surge across
the country
and there is a question then about the
lack of leadership certainly on on a
federal
level what is president trump doing at
the moment and saying
and and what are we seeing from
president-elect biden
well president trump isn't doing
anything uh visibly or publicly on the
coronavirus at the moment he
uh attended a rally on saturday night in
georgia where he said again that
the country was turning the corner and
this of course is offer
offer a bunch of figures where we're
seeing hospitalizations doubling in the
space
of a month what we will see later this
week though
is the hearings around the fisa vaccine
that have already been
it's already been authorized in the
united kingdom we're expecting that to
be
authorized probably on thursday or
friday of this week here
and that distribution to begin a few
days after that so
the administration say they've got the
infrastructure and the plan in place to
move that vaccine around the country
of course it has to be moved at very low
temperatures so the infrastructure has
to be right for that
but it says that that is in place for
that to happen in order
they say to get maybe around 20 to 25
million people
uh vaccinated by early january and that
would be people in long term
care facilities and some health care
workers and gary
give us an update on the situation with
rudy giuliani
donald trump's personal lawyer who has
tested positive for coronavirus
yeah we don't know how he is we know
that he's a
in a hospital here in northwest
washington in georgetown
that he was admitted yesterday that came
through a tweet
from the president himself uh we don't
know
how severe he's suffering from but of
course he's been
crisscrossing the country i mean from
memory he was in
atlanta at one point last week michigan
i think probably
arizona as well he's been pictured at
events without wearing a mask with
people without wearing masks
and you know and a lot of people in that
circle
uh and in the president's circle have
had the virus more
you know you have to think about people
in that circle who haven't had it rather
than those
who have had it so he's now got it his
son had it
and we'll wait for an update on on how
he is of course but it does mean of
course
the president's personal lawyer is out
of action for the time being
gary thanks uh so much as always for
that update there