Last month, what that tells us about the pace of economic recovery right now. And scorched earth. Massive, devastating wildfires ripping through parts of the american west. Were on the fire lines, as officials work to try to contain them. New day starts right now. Buenos dias, its saturday, august 7, thank you for waking up with us. Great to see you, christi. You as well, boris. The u. S. With 107,000 new covid cases in a day. This is a rate we havent seen for nearly six months since the country was in that dangerous Winter Surge that we went through. Yeah. Not only are infections rising, deaths are going up as well. And hospitals are overrun with unvaccinated patients as the Delta Variant spreads. The virus moving quickly through unvaccinated communities, especially in the southeast. A lot of red there. Vaccination rates lagging behind the rest of the country in the south. In states with the highest infection rates people are getting investigated at a pace not seen since april, but ho
well, cnn s natasha chen is live for us from orlando, florida. natasha, it is good to see you today. we know that the state s become the epicenter of the covid-19 pandemic in the u.s. talk to us what you re seeing there. reporter: well, christi, we re also seeing that it s now the focus of how political this fight has become. because governor desantis here has really doubled down on his strategy, defending the lack of a statewide mask mandate, defending his choice to stick up for families who may not want their children to wear masks in schools. at the same time, we re seeing local health public officials doing their best to curb the surge right now, pushing vaccinations which is what we re seeing today, orange county here, will be doing a mobile vaccination clinic at this mall. what we re seeing if you take a look at the graph of the seven-day average of new cases in florida, you can see just how
cnn s rosh campbell gives us a picture of what it looks like right now. reporter: boris and christi, we re learning new details about that devastating fire that ripped through the community of greenville. officials say at least 100 homes were destroyed. on friday, they were working to account for four residents. officials said that not everyone there had heeded the evacuation orders from authorities. now, the sheriff here is a native of greenville. he spoke about the devastation that this fire brought to his hometown. we re seeing, truly, frightening fire behavior. and i don t know how to overstate that. but, you know, we have a lot of veteran firefighters who have served, 20, 30 years and have never seen behavior like this. reporter: now, of course, as we cover these fires, we also have to talk about the cause. experts continue to tell us that a key driver here in these longer fire seasons, the more intense fires is climate change.
Evidence. any suggestion that undermines the credibility of these women or the investigation is unfortunate. the office said they will be making redacted statements available to the state assembly. boris, christi. thank you so much. grateful to have cnn legal analyst paul callan here. he s a former new york city prosecutor as well. paul, thank you so much for taking time for us here. i wanted to ask you about this criminal complaint that s been filed against him, from one of the accusers. what has to be present to prove those accusations in the criminal arena? well, the charges are the charge of sexual abuse in the third degree. and it s a b misdemeanor, which means it s punishable by 60 days in jail. it s a relatively, low-level criminal charge. and, frankly, you can proceed just on the testimony of the alleged victim in a case like that.
Vmware helps companies navigate change meeting them where they are, and getting them where they want to be. faster. vmware. welcome change. we are 17 minutes past the hour. new york governor andrew cuomo is facing growing legal and political fallout from accusations that he sexually harassed 11 women. the governor denies the allegations and is resisting calls for him to resign. instead, he s attacking the credibility of the investigation itself. and now, one of his accusers has filed a criminal complaint against him. cnn legal fairs correspondent paula reid has the latest. reporter: lawyers for embattled new york governor andrew cuomo firing back against allegations of sexual harassment. for the first time, publicly addressing some claims, line by