asks me hey dad i want to go to new year s eve celebration outside. and he had both vaccines and been boosted and he wants to wear a mask. his decision. do i not say to him you are in pretty good shape, buddy? go ahead. you and i have talked about this. outdoors are safer than indoors. it s safer verses less safe. outdoor space in a highly vaccinated city where everybody is also taking those extra layer is a much safer scenario. it s a more transmissible variant. as you said he would be very well protected against severe disease. even then all those layers you mentioned, one others added is
same thing as one of the people who invented the vaccines. at this point, should this many people be dying, even if there is a more transmissible variant? absolutely not. i mean, queer dealing with a delta surge. so i can t even imagine what omicron could bring. we re in a county that s only about 42 to 43% vaccinated fully. and again, these are folks i ve been taking care of for two decades of my life and have sworn to take care of them. so when they come, in that s what you do. you take care of them. but it is extremely disheartening to seeing nurses crying on their way home from work because the person they went to high school with just got put on a ventilator and they know they re probably not going to make it s. and what do they say? these people that know you, that trust you, that know you ve been treating. what is their reason for not being vaccinated? listen, people say i ve heard that it can make you circumstances right. i ve heard that so many times. and i explain to th
four, five, something, but really i would imagine because it s moving so fast, it s likely we re about to hear those numbers are higher than expect. there s a delay in case identification reporting, so more transmissible variant. what becomes important and one, by the way, which may cause more breakthroughs, it s important to not just get boosted, but improve our protection, but layering the products i, and many people i talk to have are being told, yeah, go back to school. the worst thing you could have is a breakthrough infection. we don t have a lot of longitudial data on covid. just because an infection
is the case? the majority of deaths have occurred in unvaccinated individuals and unfortunately we saw 2021 with the arrival of a much more transmissible variant. reporter: it s been one year since the first doses of vaccine rolled out. 72% of adults are fully vaccinated. a definition that does not include booster shots. though dr. anthony fauci telling abc news they re constantly reevaluating. if you want to be optimally vaccinated, get a booster. reporter: several studies suggest a booster shot offered improved protection against the new variant. still, it s the delta variant fueling a rise in cases across the country. over the past two weeks, numbers spiking more than 100% in rhode island and illinois. but health experts say that doesn t mean traveling this holiday season is out of the question. number one, make sure as many people are up to date with boosters. number two, have access to testing. reporter: the keys to a
compares to that which we don t know? yeah, alex, the uk report actually adds a lot of concern. one is that they show this is definitely a much more transmissible variant. you re seeing the numbers increase rapidly in the uk. they think it might be the predominant variant there in the next couple weeks. not only that, but when they looked at household contact, when you re in a family that has an omicron infection, you are three times more likely to get infected. much more transmissible. we re also learning about the fact it can reduce protection against infection, so the boosters become so much more important because they re able to get the immunity back to that level of protection that we saw with the wild type. the thing that people don t realize is that so few there s still a huge number of people who are unvaccinated. only 60% of americans are fully vaccinated. only a quarter of us have boosters. that s really what we need to solve if we want to build a wall against omicron.