an important day for a lot of people. they might be gathering with loved ones in the next few hours. what s your advice to everybody to stay safe today? my advice for everyone is to do what we were doing back in march, april of last year to mitigate the spread. that means wearing these masks. i know they are frustrating to wear. n95 masks are going to be key to prevent you from infecting your loved ones. what we re going to also do as cold as it may be, improving ventilation may mean opening a window or opening a door and having people bundle up in their clothing. if you gather a large amount of people in a small room, you can almost think of it as cigarette smoke. if someone is smoking in a room, even if they re in a far corner of that room, you can still smell it. the same thing with covid-19, even if they re in a different room of the house, covid can spread throughout your home. that s the way you have to approach this and particularly when we re thinking about the little childre
if you re going to see grandma tonight within a half hour, take the test. it might show up differently than it did yesterday or the day before. they are most effective when taken a couple of days apart. lindsey. wow, a line around the block on christmas day. liz mclaughlin, thank you. it s been a dialed back christmas at the white house as the bidens celebrate their first christmas. covid is putting a dampener on the usual oval office festivities. joe biden and vice president kamala harris have once again tested negative after being in contact with people who had contracted the virus. nbc s josh lederman is at the white house. what can you tell us about how the president and first lady are spending the day. typically this would be the time when the white house would be throwing a series of holiday parties here at the white house. the bidens have a long-standing family tradition of going to the virgin islands for christmas. none of that is happening because of omicron. the parties
hospitalizations in new york city over the last 14 days. we have, i think it s about a 65% increase in hospitalization in washington, d.c., over the last 14 days, and so you know, the narrative out there is that omicron is much less severe than previous lineages. i would say, you know, maybe part of that is true, but it s still pretty it s still a bad actor, and we re still seeing a big uptick in hospitalizations, and we have the story of the fact that so many health care workers are now calling out sick because of breakthrough covid. so that s a very dangerous combination. hospitalizations, icu admissions, hospital care workers out of commission sick at home with covid, and the last part is we re starting to see a lot of kids hospitalized also. i m watching all those three trends right now. all right, dr. hilton, i want to ask you about testing. we ve all seen those really long lines at testing stations. rapid tests, which i know you ve got one handy.
course our biggest concern right now among healthcare workers so we the i to punch when our hospitalisations are starting to increase in our major urban areas in the north, such as new york city and washington dc and the new jersey i 2 punch. so much of the workforce is getting knocked out not so much is getting sick enough to be in hospital about homesick with breakthrough covid and that s really causing a lot of issues in terms of how do we navigate that and how we keep the workforce in place.- that and how we keep the workforce in place. you say there is workforce in place. you say there is not workforce in place. you say there is not a workforce in place. you say there is not a technical- there is not a technical lockdown. do you think they should be more restrictions put in place at this point in time? you know, it s been very tough, especially from the far right and he in the republican party which vigorously opposes any sort of slowing lockdown measures here in. it s
meaning they have had either two or three immunisations and yet, they re still getting breakthrough infections, so it s knocking out a lot of the workforce. so even though we don t really have a lockdown, as we would call it, effectively, it is almost acting like that because it is hard for businesses to operate. and, of course, our biggest concern right now are among healthcare workers, so we that 1 2 punch where now hospitalisations are starting to increase in our major urban areas in the north, such as new york city and washington dc and in newjersey and so much of the workforce is getting knocked out not so much that they re getting sick enough to be in the hospital, but they re at home, sick with breakthrough covid, and that s really causing a lot of issues in terms of how do we navigate that and how we keep the workforce in place. yeah, you say there is not a technical lockdown. do you think there should be more restrictions put in place at this point in time? you know, it s be