caron variant. in a moment, we ll talk with the cdc director, dr. rochelle walensky, about the rise in cases and what s next. but first, let s turn to lucas tom lynnson at the house tomlinson at the white house. reporter: any day now we await those two decisions from the supreme court on vaccine mandates. during oral arguments friday, the justices took different takes on the value of vaccines. we know that the best way to prevent spread is for people to get vaccinated. as i mentioned in the findings, the younger workers, 20-year-olds, who are unvaccinated are actually safer than the older workers who aren t vaccinated. so there are obviously some differences. reporter: last week more than one million cases in a single day. despite a majority of americans fully vaccinated. the osha mandate requiring all companies with a hundred or more
and i know i m going to see a lot more patients than i normally would. like you said, some of it is going to be covid, and especially in patients who aren t vaccinated. but most of it isn t. a lot of it is just patients who were forced to delay care because of the pandemic and that s catching up to us. i ve got to tell you, added to the staffing shortages we re facing and mild breakthrough infections we re seeing in our staff and their families, it s going to be a tough few months for us in the hospital. i m sure it will be. our hearts go out to everybody working in health care toward the end of the year as they re facing this again. meanwhile at home, laura and i are doing risk management every day trying to keep our families safe and decide what to do and weigh the information that s changing as we learn more every morning about omicron. it s spreading faster but appears to be less severe than delta. we zero in on this chart of hospitalizations. you can see the summer surge there w
options including boosting testing. amara? i m sure that s reassuring to a lot of people. joining me is dr. marian bassett, the acting health commissioner for the state of new york. thanks for joining me. let s start with these staggering numbers that polo ran through. case numbers at an all-time high, hospitalizations surging, and of course more essential workers calling out sick because they have the virus. what are you most concerned about when you look at these numbers? you re right, the number of new cases continues to go up. our most recent number today is that we have 74,000 people who tested positive. and our hospitalizations are going up as well. i think in the midst of all the sea of numbers that we all hear swirling around us, we have to keep focused on a key message, which is that people who aren t vaccinated, now is a really good time to reconsider your decision
there. we re almost there. i think within the next three, four, five weeks, you will see a dramatic decline. we will feel better as we get into spring, summer, early fall and presumably next winter we will see a surge less than this surge. one thing you watch carefully, though, as great as it would be for children under 5 to take the vaccine, in older children eligible now, it is not like there is a giant massive uptake. it s half or less depending what age group. it is frustrating. we talk about how desperately we want a vaccine for children and then we get them and don t use them. 50% of 12 to 15-year-olds have been vaccinated, which means 50% haven t. 20% to 30% of 5 to 11-year-olds srs vaccinated. we have had a vaccine available since the middle of november. 75% of children in that age group aren t vaccinated. what s frustrating is when i m
caron variant. in a moment, we ll talk with the cdc director, dr. rochelle walensky, about the rise in cases and what s next. but first, let s turn to lucas tom lynnson at the house tomlinson at the white house. reporter: any day now we await those two decisions from the supreme court on vaccine mandates. during oral arguments friday, the justices took different takes on the value of vaccines. we know that the best way to prevent spread is for people to get vaccinated. as i mentioned in the findings, the younger workers, 20-year-olds, who are unvaccinated are actually safer than the older workers who aren t vaccinated. so there are obviously some differences. reporter: last week more than one million cases in a single day. despite a majority of americans fully vaccinated. the osha mandate requiring all companies with a hundred or more employees to either be