can get our patients just as an outpatient, and then we have the monoclonal antibodies. we could use them a lot more. yes, there are positives, but we are in a major surge right now that if you really look at those numbers, we re probably past where the omicron surge was, but very fortunate across the country we re not seeing a lot of hospitalizations or deaths. in a sense that we re getting a real look into how this virus has changed, the cdc is recommending everyone over the age of 50 get that fourth shot, even if you are not medically compromised and perfectly healthy. i think it s important we talk to people about the monkey pox cases showing up more and more around the world. look, when i look at this and i ve spoken to public health officials in canada, because we had at least two dozen suspected cases there, only two confirmed, though. this is not highly
care system will be ready to hold the line. but that assumption is a fiction. much of the system is still intolerably stressed, even in moments of apparent reprieve. ed joins me now. add, i just mention all those latest numbers on cases, on hospitalizations, put it in context for us. where are we at this point the pandemic? well, we re in a surge. hospitalizations are rising in almost every state. and i think for a lot of people, it doesn t feel like that. in part because those numbers are still much lower than they were during the omicron surge. but here s the thing, the omicron surge was so bad that we cannot use it as a baseline for how we think about a crisis. at that point, peoples were dying in waiting rooms because they can be seen for hours and sometimes days. it s not the benchmark against which we judge a crisis. what we re going through now, and the words of one physician i talk to, would be a clammy by any other baseline that we judge it against. except for the previous o
for kids in that age group. and a fourth shot for the immuno-compromised kids in that age group. that came two days after a similar fda panel also voted to recommend a booster dose for that age group. in terms of what to expect, the booster shot is the same dosage of the previous two shots kids got in their primary series. kids can get them at the pediatrician s office, local pharmacies, and health care clinics. based on data provided last month, the experts on both the cdc and the fda committee believe the booster dose will offer these kids better protection against the omicron variant that is currently surging across the country, causing an average of more than 100,000 new cases per day. that s the graph you see there on the left of your screen. hospitalizations are starting to rise now, too, and that is on the right. this is a little alarming for all of us, it should be, and particularly notable for this age group, during the winter, the omicron surge, there was an uptick in the num
flexibility on importing formula. requirements are different in the u.s. than they are in other countries. until now, we haven t seen a lot of importation. there are different rules. what they re saying now is you know what, we re going to use the term again, kind of create a pathway so we can more easily get imports in. it s not going to be super quick. we are in this for a while, erica. yeah, we certainly are. we ll continue to press them on both fronts. i want to get an update for folks, the fda giving emergency use authorization for pfizer s vaccine for a booster for kids ages 5 to 11. a number of studies have found the effectiveness of the two doses do wane substantially for kids. they waned during the omicron surge. is the boost going to be the same smaller dose, and if so, do we know how effective it will be? yes, we do know that it should be quite effective. so these children ages 5 to 11 started getting vaccinated at the end of october. we re getting to that four to