parts of the midwest, the south, and the northeast. new york setting a record for new cases for the third day in a row on sunday. new york city, an early epicenter of the pandemic, seeing a spike in cases officials say is being driven by omicron. we have to move faster. that s why we re focusing even more on vaccination, and we do know that vaccination helps address omicron. reporter: still undecided on whether crowds will fill times square for new year s eve. as new covid infections have upended the worlds of sports, entertainment, and education in recent days, forcing saturday night live to cancel its live studio audience. the nba, nhl, and nfl also postponing games due to covid issues, and schools like harvard university moving graduate and professional schools to online classes for the first three weeks of january. covid striking maryland governor larry hogan and members of congress with massachusetts senator elizabeth warren, new jersey senator cory booker, and colorado cong
let s bring in dr. eric toebl. he is a cardiologist and professor of molecular medicine at scripps research. he joins me now from la jolla in california. thank you, doctor, for all that you do and for talking with us. thank you, rosemary. great to be with you again. thank you. now, the omicron is now the dominant coronavirus variant in the united states, making up 73% of all new cases. what does that tell you about this variant, and what lies ahead considering less than 20% of americans have that third covid shot to protect them? that s right. so this shot up exceptionally quickly. you know, it was just over 12% in a week. that 73% is a couple days ago, so it is a very dominant strain. it will take over for delta very shortly. and the problem is that our vaccines don t work nearly as well for omicron as they did for
something. i mean it is good that people are getting out there and getting tested. obviously a lot of people want to do that to protect their vulnerable family members. but this should have been foreseen, right? they should have had that supply. so president biden s approval ratings, they re rock bottom right now. he just had his build back better plan effectively killed off by his buddy, senator joe manchin, and now he s trying to end the pandemic with this new, more contagious omicron variant, making his task even more difficult. how does he recover from all of this? well, i mean that s the huge question, right? so i think he needs to explain to people what we should already understand with respect to the pandemic, which is there s only so much in his control. and he understands that politically, americans are not in a place where i think they would tolerate lockdowns. look at what s happening in the netherlands. i don t think the american public would be would find that accept
europe. and in the u.s., the new variant has become the dominant strain in just three weeks. i ll speak to a doctor about this rapid rise. joe biden s domestic agenda takes a hit as democrats fight over his build back better bill. what s being done to try to salvage the deal? plus, u.s. missionaries kidnapped in haiti say they made a daring escape. we ll bring you the latest detalds. announcer: live from cnn center, this is cnn newsroom with rosemary church. well, fears of an omicron takeover are becoming a reality in the u.s. on monday the cdc announced the highly contagious variant now accounts for more than 73% of new cases. omicron has been detected in all but two u.s. states, and it s even more prevalent in parts of
there always be around a third of this country unwilling to vaccinate? do we have to live with that? yeah, this is really a sad state that we ve gone a year, and we still have, as you say it s actually 39% of americans have not been fully vaccinated. and this is what s holding us back. this is why we ve done so poorly and now are not ready in any way to deal with omicron, going through right now a second surge with delta. so whether that s going to change, it seems remote. on the other hand, every day we go where our number of people waning from their vaccination is exceeding the number of new people getting vaccinated, so we re actually losing ground from where we were, where we are. that s why we have to work to protect already the protected ones because we haven t been able to make things happen in the people who largely have been unvaccinated.