everything they can to slow the spread of this virus, and it feels almost unbelievable saying this a year after i was vaccinated and almost two years into saying this. but we have a communal responsibility. our individual decisions matter. and as dr. osterholm said, you know, getting together can be safe if we use rapid tests beforehand, if we limit the size of our groups. but if we are going to big indoor parties without masks, without testing, i think you are going to end up fighting a lot of family like i have seen also in the past couple days that are going to find positives among them. dr. spencer, if i can stick with you for a second, i spoke to michael who runs northwell health in new york state. your hospital system is not part of that but it is in the same area. he said they are only 10% filled right now. they have a lot more capacity. they are not seeing huge increases in terms of hospitalizations, yet. um, do you think that that maybe there will be a decoupling between t
about the same time. and so, testing needs are going to go up tremendously. the other area that is going to go up tremendously is going to be the need for healthcare workers. we got 20.2 million healthcare workers in this country. 9.2 million of them are drrs doctors, nurses and the kind of technologists that dr. spencer just talked about. imagine 10 to 30% of those individuals getting infected in the next two to eight weeks and being out of work. that s going to be a huge challenge, too, that we have to address. and right now, we re not. well, professor osterholm, dr. spencer, thank you both. dr. spencer, thank you in every way that you work with every day for everything you have done. i know it is exhausting and all we keep doing is forcing you to do even more. keep showing up. the breaking news from cvs and walgreens within the last few minutes. both have announced a limit on the number of at-home tests customers may purchase. cvs is capping the number at six. walgreens, four.
before the break, i asked cdc director dr. rochelle walensky about the plan president biden unveiled during his white house speech today and just how safe it is to gather in groups for christmas after the president said the vaccinated shouldn t change their holiday plans. she said the people should be vaccinated and boosted and now is the time to begin those best practices to prevent catching the virus but that ultimately, quote, everybody is really going to have to assess their own personal risk and what they are willing to risk. perspective now from michael osterholm, he was also adviser on covid during the biden transition. and dr. craig spencer, director of global health and emergency medicine at columbia university medical center. professor osterholm, let me gist start with you on the issue of the holidays. i know how important your family is to you. how much you cherish hugging your grandchildren. but really, how safe is it now to gather given the explosive rise of omicron?
and it s going to be hard to handle another surge. no slack. you wrote a piece on that really that i think is very moving and people should go look at that. professor osterholm, do you the test surge you know, 500 million new tests. but not for a few weeks. don t we need these tests yesterday? well, we do. and we do have some testing. but what we re going to need, i think, over the course of the next two to eight weeks is going to be remarkable. we are going to see this big surge nagtionwide. remember, as we have been discussing, the delta wave the delta surge really hit a limited number of states over the last four months. if you are one of those states, like ours here in minnesota, or parts of new york, you understand the situation that delta s done but a lot of the country hasn t had a need for this testing. if you talk to people in california, they will ask you what s going on? what are you concerned about? well, that s going to change with this particular variant because
minnesota and dr. shirley zee, hospitalist at hennepin health care in minneapolis. i appreciate both of you very much for taking your precious time to be here. professor osterholm, president biden warning a winter of severe illness and death, particularly of the unvaccinated. but you say there are very clear signs that this is we are already in an explosive mode here across the country just on the infection side of it. not even on the hospitalizations, which are also up 40%. well, as you re hearing right now from around the country these outbreaks that are starting to occur with large numbers of people suddenly infected, you heard just now as it relates to the new york data and how fast we re seeing the increase in the number of variants, omicron variants being detected. and i think we re really just about to experience a viral blizzard. if you look at what s happened in south africa and europe, i think in the next three to eight weeks we ll see millions of americans that are infec