kids safe. unvaccinated kids are at risk, yet the vaccinated are going to have a way to protect them. get vaccinated. if you re vaccinated, get boosted. folks, i know we re all tired and frustrated about the pandemic. these coming weeks are going to be challenging. please wear your mask in public to protect yourself and others. we re going to get through this. we re going to get through it together. we have the tools to protect people from severe illness due to omicron if people choose to use the tools. we have the medicines coming along that can save so many lives and dramatically reduce the impact that covid has had on our country. there s a lot of reason to be hopeful in 2020. for god sake, please take advantage of what s available. please. you re going to save lives, maybe yours, maybe your child s.
you re worried that somehow there s side effects. remember, covid s out there. it s highly contagious at the moment. they will get covid if they don t have a vaccination. kids are not eligible for the vaccination right now, how quickly might they be able to get the shot? i think there was at some point we were talking about maybe the spring of this year? yes, well, the first test of the vaccine for kids under 5 did not work from pfizer. moderna is out in the field. i know that because my grandson is in the my two grandchildren are in the study, and yes, we re hoping that it will be towards the middle or end of spring, but you know, this is research. it s not guaranteed and we have to see if they, in fact, produce the antibodies and immune protection that we expect in younger children. it should give you hope that if the doctors say it s not ready it means they re being vigorous about the testing. yeah. let s talk about how this
country. doctors warned we would get here, and we did. 1 million new cases reported in the last 24 hours, a single day record. omicron now accounts for 95% of all new cases of covid in the united states. that s according to the cdc. all of them. from schools and workplaces, hotels and restaurants, to flights and even the new york city subway system, so many people are testing positive there aren t enough workers to keep things running. hospitalizations are climbing as fast as cases, and that is the good news, but omicron is still hitting hospitals hard not only because of an influx of patients but also a shortage of staff. thousands of health care workers staying home to isolate. we now have well over 100 staff out due to covid in my hospital and the issue is if you re in a hospital bed, you need nurses.
and 9 percentile points in math among 3rd graders. clearly there s been a real decline because of covid when you compare 2021 to 2019 which was obviously a much more normal school year. i assume there s an income element behind the numbers. absolutely an income element. if you look at the low poverty areas versus high poverty areas, median student, math third grade, in the low poverty areas it s down but just 6 percentile points, and the high, 17 percentile when you compare the 2021 to 2019. obviously 2019 was before covid, and here s the reason why it s down so much in lower income areas or at least one of the reasons why. if you ask basically the parents of those students who had to stay home because the schools were closed, did your children have trouble completing your school work because of tech problems, in the lower income areas, look at that, income adults said that their children had problems, tech problems
transmissible variant, but much different than anything we ve seen before, and but you can protect yourself. and you should protect yourself, quite frankly. get vaccinated. get boosted. there s plenty of booster shots. wear masks while you re in public because what we know is this. the impact from the rising cases depends on the effect of the person based on what their vaccination status is. you can control how big of an impact omicron is going to have on your health if you get omicron. you know, those are fully vaccinated, especially those with the booster shots, and by the way, we have booster shots for the whole nation, okay? you can still get covid, but it s highly unlikely, very unlikely that you become seriously ill, and we re seeing covid-19 cases among vaccinated in workplaces across america including here at the white