accessible at other places. they re not in an emergency health situation, but they have symptoms and want to be tested. they can t get a regular drive-through test or home test, so they end up clogging what are overloaded emergency departments. emergency doctors are telling people not to come to the e.d. for routine covid testing. it s the same thing. of course, the e.d. is available for anyone who thinks they need it for my emeany emergency. we want people to access care, but it is not the highest priority to do a routine test. in the same way, i think we should be looking at, across our testing infrastructure, how we could better target, you know, higher risk people. dr. ben mazer, thank you for being with us this morning. appreciated reading your piece. sure. thank you for having me. we re going to speak with the surgeon general as omicron sets record highs. we ll ask him about testing and about possible new cdc guidelines for people in
screenings. for patients being told they have to wait for those, oftentimes the surgeries feel pretty essential to them. let s talk about the path forward. we are seeing some paths in europe. people in countries saying we ll move on. what is the path forward for this country? thank you so much for having me. i want to emphasize that the situation in europe is very different from the u.s. they re using a vaccination plus strategy where they re encouraging vaccinations and boosters but they also are, for the most part, enforcing public health measures. they still have mask policies. people have to wear masks indoors. they still have a significant and robust testing infrastructure. they re paying attention to ventilation and air filtration and also provide financial support for quarantine or isolation or sick leave. that s different than the approach that the biden administration is taking which is a vaccine-centric approach.
critical in all this. but we don t have the testing infrastructure in place at this point. testing as far as screening testing is concerned can be a little bit difficult to manage. test to stay, jim, however, can be a very effective way to manage the pandemic and schools. and the cdc and we and others have shown that in recent research. all right. dr. danny benjamin, we know your research has been critical in all this. thanks very much for your time. we appreciate it. coming up next, new york s mayor elect on the celebration that s still going to happen and what it will take to keep the city running in the face of this latest covid surge. also tonight hundreds 100-mile-an-hour winds and wildfires in colorado, what the combination is doing right now to that state as tens of thousands of people there get the word to get out now. we will have a live report on that next.
think when you see how much time and effort, i mean, days there? it still requires in many cases just to get one. how surprised are you? we re still in this boat when it comes to testing? joe, what i ll say is i am incredibly disappointed and also appalled we re at this point. we ve had two years to amp up testing. and the testing infrastructure in this country, and the fact that people are still waiting in line at this point is unconscionable. i looked out my window this morning at urgent care, at least 50 people in line to get tested. it s encouraging people want to do the right thing. the public health messaging is out there that people need to get test first down they ve been exposed or they need it for work. they re trying to be responsible. we need the system to support people in making the right decision. doctor, as if we don t have enough headaches, here s another
who had covid-19. the cdc didn t add that criteria, and i think, frankly, they didn t add that criteria because there simply weren t enough tests to allow people to do that. hopefully that s starting to change. we need to use the tests in the proper way. do you think that we re relying too much on the pcr tests and we should focus more on the rapid at-home antigen tests? they each have their use. the antigen tests are great to tell you when you re sort of done, when you can leave isolation. that s identity deal use for them. the pcr tests are great to detect early, before the antigen tests turn positive. there s a problem there too. testing is backlogged, for many people, they re getting the pcr tests, they re not getting results for four to five days later. it can tell that you were infected early in the course of the disease. if you find out four to five days from them, the public health impact is quite minimal. we need to work on the testing infrastructure, so you can get