The Prime Minister has revealed General Practitioners and Pharmacists will be paid extra for each booster shot as part of an upgrade to the national booster rollout.
that s particularly important in the health care industry. you also have the uk government today securing two contracts. that s going to bring about 4 million more than 4 million doses of antivirals that will be here in the country who are covid positive from winding up in icu, winding up seriously sick. the key thing is the booster program. it s like a wartime effort here. you have troops involved, thousands of vaccinators fanned out across the country. if you see a line outside anywhere, it s not about christmas shopping, it s people getting booster jabs. here is the big question, jim. we simply don t know. we have tens of thousands of positive cases every day. we don t know how many will wind up in hospital in a couple weeks time. i know everyone watching, how the uk health system fares because we re ahead of the curve on this one. in france the country is reporting nearly 73,000 new
and a lot of it has to do with the unvaccinated. unfortunately, with omicron, being unboosted almost is equivalent to being unvaccinated. with holiday gatherings approaching, many americans are waiting in long lines at test sites around the country. we are going to get run test even got in line. federal health officials say omicron is now responsible for three quarters of new covid cases nationwide one yards of 90% in the southeast, south central. pacific northwest, industrial midwest and new york city area. sources tell fox 5 new york the new year s eve ball drop in times square will likely have reduced capacity today mayor bill de blasio announced $100 incentive for everyone getting boosted by the end of the year. biggest booster program in the united states of america. i want to see new yorkers respond. in the new york suburb of mt. vernon, school officials
museums and put restrictions on night life to try to get the virus under control. reporter: everyone here is asking will there be a lockdown before christmas. over the weekend, british scientific advisers warning tougher measures are needed to slow a potential wave of hospitalizations due to the omicron variant. the london mayor declaring a major incident in the city over the weekend and saying further restrictions were inevitable. and the deputy prime minister saying there s no hard and fast guarantees that tougher rules won t come into force before the end of the holiday season. england s booster program is in full swing. it broke records on saturday. reporter: i m cyril vanier in paris. you won t be seeing fireworks at the eiffel tower on new year s eve. they have been canceled because of covid.
reporter: i think, rosemary, everyone is waking up this morning wondering will there or will there not be restrictions on christmas? over the weekend of course the mayor of london, mayor sadiq khan, putting this city in a state of emergency due to the rise of omicron cases. several days in a row records were broken. records that had not been broken since the start of this pandemic in terms of case numbers. 90,000 cases on a single day on friday. high concern over the rate of hospitalizations which is increasing. of course there s a lag between positive cases and hospitalizations. so health officials concerned we re going to see really this wave of positive cases, potentially a proportion of them show up in hospitals in a couple of weeks time. scientific advisers now telling the government that more restrictions might be needed. and prime minister boris johnson and his administration insistent for now that there will be no more rules, that as long as the booster program goes ahead th