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but new york city is moving ahead for now with the new year s eve celebration in times square. there ill with be fewer people, all must be vaccinated and masked, it is important to note so far we have not seen a dramatic spike, though, thank goodness, in hospitalizations from the variant. and the data show omicron cases seem for the most part to be lesshospitals are preparing for staffing shortages. they say healthcare workers who test positive but are asymptomatic can shorten their isolation period. the white house is lifting the travel restrictions on eight countries in southern africa. we re covering all of the travel headlines with our aviation correspondent pete muntean at reagan national. joe jonhns joins us at the whit house. this just came, what is the news from the biden administration? you got it there. eight african countries, you know, this travel ban went into effect on november 29th. we re told the president is expected to lift that travel ban as of 12:0 ....
just a short time ago president biden spoke at length about criticism of his administration s fight against covid, and specifically about what vice president harris said in a recent interview that the administration didn t see the omicron variant coming. here is the exchange with abc s david muir. reporter: the vice president said in recent days that that you didn t see delta coming. you didn t see omicron coming. how did you get it wrong? how d we get it wrong? nobody saw it coming. nobody in the whole world. who saw it coming? did the administration not expect that there could be moments like this one where you d have a highly transmissible variant? sure. it was possible. it was possible there could be other variants that come along. that s possible. but what do you plan for? you plan for what you think is available. that is, the most likely threat that s exists at the time and you respond to it. and i think that that s exactly what we ve done and that s ....
the fda authorized the covid pill patients can take at home before they re sick enough to be hospitalized. here s where i think it can be very helpful. first is there are a lot of people who are remaining unvaccinated. i wish they were going to get vaccinated, but we know that there are some people who are just not going to do it. somehow these people are ready to take treatments if they get infected even if they won t get the vaccine which is not understandable. but still these people are the ones who are most likely to get ill, to overwhelm our hospitals. and if they can get a pill that removes them from the hospital, that will help to save their life, but also will help to remove the strain on our health care system. omicron is wildly contagious compared to earlier strains. just three weeks after it was first identified in the u.s., it now accounts for 90% of the country s cases. there have been outbreaks on land and sea. the miami herald reports royal caribbea ....
likely to send you to the hospital and it may cause less severe illness than previous strains of the virus. right now omicron has been detected in all 50 u.s. states, as expected. it accounts now and very quickly for at least 90% of new covid infections in the u.s. still, americans are keeping their holiday plans and the president and public health officials say that is safe for we should note the vaccinated. today is expected to be one of the busiest travel days of the holiday season. we just learned the tsa screened more air travelers yesterday than at the same time in 2019. of course before the pandemic. we re also seeing, though, big lines for covid tests across the country. last night president biden responded to criticism that the u.s. did not get those tests out quickly enough, that it wasn t prepared. we hear this over and over again, empty shelves, no test kits. is that a failure? no, i don t think it s a failure. i think it s a you could argue that we sh ....
stuck in long lines in the cold to get tested ahead of christmas or finding that tests are sold out at stores everywhere. and though he wishs he had ordered the tests earlier the president defending his handling of the crisis in a sit-down interview with abc news. if you go to the pharmacy we hear this over and over again empty shelves, no test kits. is that a failure? president biden: i don t think it s a failure, i think you could argue we should have known a year ago, six months ago, two months ago, a month ago, i ve ordered a half billion of the pills. 500 million test kits that will be available sent to every home in america if anybody wants them. peter doocy has more from the north lawn. hi, peter. and there are some new signs in the press area that say either n-95 or kn95 masks are required. a new measure to try to keep this new variant in order. but it hasn t always been like that. let me ask you about what you said on july 4th. i know you remember it ....