996,447 deaths in this pandemic. we ll pump up to a million not too long from now. it is a long answer, i know, and really the subject of your book, but how did we go so wrong? how were the estimates so wrong? how did we not prevent 1 million of our fellow americans from dying? i think two things. we re not using data and information in real time. we re not giving that data and information to the american people in a transparent way. i appreciate, like, the new york times that s doing the covid tracker, but it needs to be more than that. it needs to be on a government website where you can see instantaneously what is happening in my community. and what has happened in my community. what do i need to do? so it not only shows the information, it shows clearly the solutions of what you can do. and the evidence behind that. that s what we that s the mistake we often make in public health. sometimes we believe that people can t understand the hard stuff. i can tell you, they can
quarantines and a push for boosters for kids. let s bring a correspondent dan springer, he joins us from seattle with the details. good evening, dan. hi, gillian, covid-19 cases are surging across the country as infections are hitting all-time highs in the cdc doesn t even have the most up-to-date numbers because for three days over the holiday weekend, there wasn t apparently anybody in the massive agency to update the covid tracker. still the worst is expected in the next few weeks. covid-19 cases led by the omicron variant have soared to new records in the u.s. on december 29th, there were more than 450,000 new infections reported. many areas in the midwest and northeast are seeing positive test rates of 20%. in detroit last week, a record 36% of the tests came back positive when these numbers don t include all the people that use home test kits. it has health officials, who predicted even higher surge in january, worried they are running out of hospital beds
and you can access it on the cdc s covid tracker. for more on this we re joined by admiral brett giroir, secretary for health in the department of health and human services. he also led the trump administration s covid testing efforts. admiral, the cdc started to develop this wastewater surveillance system at the end of the trump administration. so explain how this works and the significance of these results from testing wastewater? well, thank you for having me on. this is really an important moment. as early as may or june of 2020, we had very early suggestive evidence that not only could you detect covid in wastewater, in sewage, but it predicted and preceded by 4 to 6 days a rise of cases in emergency rooms and hospitals in the community. so as you said, we did start in the trump administration. i convened the first federal working group in july. i started the national surveillance system at cdc in september and funded it for $50 million in november of that year. so it s great to