new year kick off with millions more americans. now eligible for a booster. the fda hours ago giving a green light for children ages 12 to 15 who have already gotten both doses to get a third dose of pfizer. the agency also shortening the window there. you remember with adults you had to wait six months past your second shot. well, it s now five months. that i a nounsment cops as the highly contagious omicron variant has upended the start of 2022 for millions of americans. travel, you ve heard a lot about, but it s not just travel being disrupted. for some kids the return to school after the holidays, kids and staff, i should say, also being impacted. cases just exploding as you can see on that graphic there. child hospitalizations are also up, and as we know hospitalization numbers are key here, and now dr. anthony fauci noting that soon the cdc may change some of its isolation guidelines and recommend an infected person test negative before they return to places like work.
the public health issues in our community for at least 30 days. we re grateful for that. tell me about your hospitalizations. there s been this debate about are the covid hospitalization numbers about people in the hospital for covid, or is it people a combined about half of them are there for covid, half of them test positive for covid because they re in for something else? is that a distinction that matters in the current situation you re facing? it matters, but not in some of the ways that people might think. about 60% of our patients now are actually here with covid instead of for covid. in other words, they don t have the classic covid respiratory symptoms. however, some people in the category are here because of complications from a recent covid infection. they re dehydrated. they have kidney failure because of a recent infection. it s a murky category that also includes traumas and things
not necessarily as threatening. seeing the hospitalization numbers go up so steeply when the hospitals were so taxed, i m worried about that. so let s go through what we know. first, cases are everywhere. and, yes, there s an increase in hospitalizations and my friends in the icu units, they are crushed. no question, increase in hospitalization. but i think we are seeing something fundamentally different. that could change. it could be due to the variant. i mean, it could be to the extent of the immunity, but if you look at the rate of hospitalization, all these people now infected, the number of hospitalizations is reduced. and most importantly, and this is key, this and this should comfort you, rachel, when you get into the hospital there s
estimated 81% less likely to be hospitalized than if you are unvaccinated. if you get the virus and have had two doses of the vaccine, no booster, you are estimated to be 65% less likely to be hospitalized. in the united states at least hospitalization numbers themselves or fleeting. the new york times reported this week two major new york hospitals, 55% to 65% of covid hospitalizations were people coming to the hospitals for other reasons than covid and once there testing positive for covid. u.s. health officials have also noted the growing evidence that supports omicron is less severe than delta. in south africa, where omicron was first identified, even the relatively few who had been vaccinated, people were less likely, 80% lower according to one preprint study posted in december 2021, to be
new york health commissioner is admitting pediatric hospitalization numbers were supposed to motivate child vaccinations. listen to what doctor bassett had to say. the numbers on phx admissions weren t intending to make it seem that children were having an epidemic of infections. it was to motivate pediatricians and families to seek the protection of vaccination. kevin: like a lot of new yorkers i hear that and it makes you doubt what they are telling you from public policy of a doing this to shame people in one direction or another rather than following the signs and that s the message a lot of people are receiving. are they out of line? what is your reaction? this is not a public health. is about political science and trying to push people to get