with the president. she had been away over the last several days and would have been tested before she would have been around the president for any visits they would have had today. it remains the case that the white house is testing individuals who spend any extended period of time around the president himself. this comes at an interesting time, because they were having a briefing for the first time with the new coordinator in the white house with jen psaki at the briefing, later this afternoon. they were also going to be talking about the availability of this pfizer pill, which is the advantages of the pill is to reduce hospitalization? reporter: that s exactly right. i have taken this pill. i m just back to this position after a couple weeks away where i myself had covid, had the
with some caveats. cnn s elizabeth cohen explains. christine, paula, on wednesday the food and drug administration gave emergency use authorization to paxlovid, an antiviral pill made by pfizer. here s why it s important. in the early stages of covid there hasn t been much that people can do. there are monoclonal antibodies, but you have to get an infusion or shots which means you have to find a place to get those and that s been tough. this is a pill. theoretically once we have this drug in abundance, you should be able to call your doctor and be able to get a prescription. there are two important points here. one, the u.s. government is going to be distrinitying this d distributing this drug. that s what they ve done with all the drugs. it hasn t gone smoothly. we ll have to see how quickly they can get the drug distributed across the country so doctors can call in prescriptions for patients. the other thing, this is important to remember, people in the clinical trial where they
unvaccinated people who made i think a very bad choice will get their immunity the hard way, will get it through an infection. if you combine those things and the fact that omicron is, in general, somewhat milder an illness than delta, you have the vast, vast majority of the people having some measure of immunity. you have a virus that still will be hanging around that is more mild. you will have enough testing. you will have more supply of some of the medicines that are available, particularly paxlovid, the pfizer pill, which will lower the probability of severe outcome. and we may find ourselves and i think are likelier than not to find ourselves in a pretty good place. how long it lasts is anybody s guess. a lot of that depends on bl we have a new variant. so, and obviously, i know there is talk about that now one in france, there will be one in other places. there are questions about that. but, you know, you said something i think that s important. you said don t give up tryi
have the tools to stay open safely. there s also the news that peter laid out, too, ordering of another 10 million treatments for the anti-viral pfizer pill. how important is that? the thing about a covid pill it has ingredients taken from china and india and has to go along the supply chain and takes months to manufacture. this order placed now, we won t receive it for a month. unfortunately, we need the medications right now. there s going to be a delay. i would say while that is a great gesture, it s not enough for the moment that we re in. i would have liked to have heard from president biden, we are in a very difficult moment and will be in this moment the next four to six weeks. here are policies we need to put in place to make sure it s safe for everyone as a collective. peter, go to you on this, because what is next for the white house here? what are you hearing from