increased by 11% last week while those in the americas rose 39%. i want to take a look at the numbers compared to last here in the u.s. cases in general up 79%. they are at 316,000 and counting. hospitalizations up 9.1%. deaths down 9.5% and it's that down number i want to emphasize here. it seems as if the side effects to omicron are not as deadly as its predecessors, predecessor variants. >> that's exactly right. when you lack at the omicron variant, it doesn't tend to infect the lung cells, deep in your lungs as much as upper aerowave cells. that's a good thing in a severity standpoint. there's a lot of people getting infected so the potential to cause havoc and to wreak damage