do they wait now for the omicron variant vaccine that they are working on, to get their first or second? or should they just get it now? real quick. that s a great question. no, don t wait. it could be two or three months before the new updated vaccines are available, and we are approaching christmas, new year s, the holidays. get the vaccine now and protect yourself. sandra: always appreciated, dr. nesheiwat. thank you so much. john? john: just across the hudson from new york, new jersey governor s speaking. sandra: what we heard from president biden, everyone still needs to socially distance and wear masks indoors when they cannot. he said the big fear isn t just omicron but also the delta variant which governor murphy says is still an emergent situation. john: we will talk to the man who once held his job, chris christie come alive to react to the news coming out of his state. and on the national level from the white house. that s coming up. sandra: also, if you re one o
and medical care because of this. sandra: we have fox team coverage as we kick off a brand-new hour of america reports. thanks for joining us. i am sandra smith in new york. john: and i m john roberts in washington. good to spend another hour with you post-thanksgiving, sandra. it all starts with a fox news alert. public health officials say it ll be several weeks before we know if the vaccines hold up against the omicron variant. just one of many things that are not clear just yet, but the virus first reported in southern african nations, scientists are concerned it could be more contagious than the variant player unless they have seen so far. the key word there being could. the fact is we just don t know. sandra: pfizer and moderna are not wasting time. both of those drugmakers are already at work, they say, developing a new vaccine just in case this variant lives up to the fears. scientists were hard at work in their labs at the same time the rest of us were eating our tha
you re going to get a spillover against the omicron variant. i think that was a major message. the second component is vaccinating the kids. the third component, which he didn t say but was implied. if you ve been infected and recovered, you re still susceptible to reinfection, so you need to get immunized. you need to get vaccinated on top of that, and that will actually there are studies to show will build in greater resilience against variants, not only delta but like lie omicron as well. get vaccinated. we re not doing well. you ve only got 59% of the country fully vaccinated, meaning two doses. i think only a fraction of that has three doses. we still have widespread vaccine defiance. 41% of the country has gotten no vaccines. so we are still i mean, right now the biggest worry in the united states is this next delta wave that s coming over the winter, and remember what
many of us who have had our booster shots now, three shots, where three months from now if they have it ready we will have to go out and get a fourth shot to protect from that? because think of it, you know how with our flu shots every year it is a different shot? it is slightly modified to make sure that we are covering the latest strains and variants that are circulating. so it may be where we need to get that one time specific booster variant shot, for example, for omicron. but we are still early in this entire process. it may be that it s three shots, booster, and we are done for life, or a dearly every ten years. but it s better to get that vaccine than to suffer the consequences of covid. sandra: really quick question, because i m out of time, her 5-12, parents with kids and those age gaps right now are taking their kids, many of them come out to get vaccinated. some not, but some are. they have to make a decision.
to restrict travel from countries in southern africa. while we had that travel restrictions can slow the speed of omicron, it cannot prevent it, but here s what it does. it gives us time. it gives us time to take more actions, to move quicker, to make sure people understand you have to get your vaccine. you have to get the shot. you have to get the booster. sooner or later, we re going it see cases of this new variant here in the united states. we ll have to face this new threat just as we faced those that come before it. today there are three messages about the new variant that i want the american people to hear. first, this variant is a cause for concern, not a cause for panic. we have the best vaccine in the world, the best medicines, the best scientists, and we re learning more every single day. and we ll fight this variant with scientific and