capitol physician, the doctor for the house and the senate, sent a sobering, detailed letter to the democratic and republican leaders of the senate, telling them that, you know, regardless of the snow, senators really ought to be staying home now anyway. apparently at the covid testing site they ve got set up at the u.s. capitol, the positivity rate, the rate at which tests at that site are coming back positive, it had been under 1% until recently, until this current omicron wave of the virus started to hit in dc. but the capitol physician advised senators today that as of right now the test positivity rate there has gone from under 1% to over 13%. he described that the number of covid cases on capitol hill right now is, quote, unprecedented, saying, quote, dozens of individuals with coronavirus infection are identified at the capitol daily.
please don t think it s ok to do nothing and take your chances of getting infected. what we can and is the emergency. kristen: a warning from health officials at this pandemic is far from over. we are supporting the ousd students and their strike. larry: in oakland, frustrated students staging a state staging a sick out. good afternoon and thank you for joining us. kristen: you are watching abc 7 news at 4:00 right here live on abc seven, hulu plus and wherever you stream live. larry: new covid data proving just how hard omicron has hit the state of california. a million new cases reported in just the last week, passing 7 million cases total. the test positivity rate has declined. there down to
effect on a lot of things, president shl approval being one of them but looks like a lot of smart people think it is going to get better. so these democratic governors racing to lift mask mandates, do you think there is a political calculation there? look. if you look at the infection rates and the decline is down i don t know state by state, 65, 70%. well, yes, you you are going to lift mandates if if you go from test positivity rate of 20% to test-positivity rate of 3%. that means different behavior. it is not some kind of conspiracy. all you got to do is look at the charts, and see the direction it is going in. if you were advising democrats running in the midterm, what would you tell them to do with donald trump? is that something they should focus on? how much of a deal do you think the january 6th select committee will be? look, you got to wait and see when the committee comes out.
positivity rate of 9.5%. that is the lowest rate since december 24. the new mask changes come as some states are using their restrictions. new jersey announced their mask mandate from schools will be lifted in march. live with more and what we can excite here in california. liz: as you mentioned, starting next tuesday, only vaccinated people will be required unvaccinated people will be required to wear masks in public places. as for mask mandate will be lifted for kids in school, that is also unclear. as omicron cases continue to fall in california, there is growing questions about when more mandates will be lifted. this afternoon, governor newsom announced the statewide mask and it will be lifted onto gory 15. after that, only unvaccinated people will be required to wear masks indoors. i think there is a case to be
first surges in 2020. and when the epidemic is well controlled, i would say that our test positivity rate was below 2%, closer to 1%. and in california, for instance, that number was closer to 8% this week. and that s just far too high, and we re dealing with a more transmissible variant now. and i think that a lot of people are kind of discounting the potential harms that are associated with infection alone. you know, it s been now over a year, and we re starting to get some of the results back, showing that long covid is a problem. there s an immunologic infections, as well. i m a clinician, taking care of patients and i ve also worked on the public health side and i realize this is going to be a problem. now to some other covid developments around the world. hong kong reported over 1,500 new covid cases on saturday, the highest daily case load recorded to date. a top health official says he s not ruling out the possibility