the president of the night states was so keen to declare victory with the pandemic last year, declare independence from it. now, he has covid-19 himself. white house coronavirus response coordinator, ashish jha, confirmed today that the president is sick with the newest and the highly transmissible covid variant, ba.5. still, biden s physician says the president is doing okay, and his symptoms are improving, as it completes his course of covid antivirals. lucky for the president. he has access to the best medicine and the best health care. millions of americans don t. joining me now is a doctor uché blackstock, msnbc medical contributor and founder and ceo of advancing health equity. dr. blackstock, thank you for being here tonight. a day after president biden s covid diagnosis, dr. leana wen, washington post columnist, former president of planned parenthood, wrote, and i quote, president biden s covid-19 diagnosis is an opportunity for segments washington straight the success of his
Antibodies are less effective in protecting people from the stronger, now-dominant BA.5 sub-variant of Covid-19, according to the Department of Medical Sciences.
full day of isolation after testing positive for covid-19 on thursday. according to the president s physician, dr. kevin o connor, it s likely that biden has contracted the highly contagious omicron sub variant, ba.5. his symptoms now include body aches, sore throat. says some of biden s other symptoms, like a runny nose, and a cough, have become, quote, less troublesome. according to world health organization, united states had the world highs number of new cases. considering how many cases go unreported due to at-home testing or people simply being undiagnosed. the cdc reports that the u.s. is averaging over 127,000 new cases per day, with over 165,000 new cases come in friday alone. 70% of which are the ba.5 sub
brought that that up because there is some misunderstanding about that. the vaccines to a very good job do a very good job of protecting you from advancing to severe disease leading to hospitalizations and deaths. when you have a very highly transmissable virus like the ba-5 which we re dealing with right now which is the overwhelming majority of ice atlantas that are in this country and circulate aring, you may get infected. vaccines do protect you against infections somewhat, but so transmissible that people are getting infected who have been vaccinated. but if you look at the difference, neil, between people who get seriously ill, hospitalized and and compare the unvaccinated people with the people who are vaccinated and boosted, the data just spring out at you as being so obvious for the very, very strong advantage from the standpoint of severe illness of getting