breakthrough hospitalizations. f. if you get a third dose, you get a big boost of antibodies and at that point it is about 75% protection against omicron and everyn higher against sever illness. durability of protection after that booster is not as great as we would like. so it is going down in terms of breakthrough symptomatic illness. and that is what is happening to our health care providers and why they are being knocked out of the workforce. so how to manage this will be precarious and we again have too many unvaccinated individuals. you could say, great, 61% of the population is vaccinated. i look at it the other way around, 39% of the population is not. that is way too many unvaccinated individuals. we are going to have a really difficult time with them over the next few weeks in terms of taking care of them. so does this mean that the virus will continue to mutate
society. the new recommendations balance what we know about the spread of the virus and the protection provided by vaccination and booster doses. these updates ensure people can safely continue their daily lives. dr. hotez, your reaction. well, you know, it s a little bit born out of desperation, because this omicron variant is so highly transmissible, particularly for the healthcare workforce. and so here s the problem right now we re getting into. so, hospitalizations are climbing, so i think we have to kind of down discount some of the happy talk we re hearing. we are seeing a lot of hospitalizations happening now in new york and washington, d.c., 50%, 60% increase in hospitalizations. predominantly among the unvaccinated, although some breakthrough hospitalizations, even those who are vaccinated, and the worry is there s going to be nobody to take care of these people because so many of the healthcare providers, even if they re fully vaccinated, are getting breakthrough infecti