Covid in the days and weeks ahead as the nation faces another surge, especially with this new variant, omicron, that has now become the dominant variant in the u.s. he talked about boosters, he talked about getting people vaccinated for the first doses. he talked about new testing plans, about keeping kids in schools. let s bring in our guest, jeff zeleny at the white house. also with us, cnn chief political analyst, dr. gloria borger, and dr. hotez, and jerome adams. dr. hotez, what s your biggest take away from this press conference today? it s his emotion, and exhaustion and frustration that we have not been able to get the country fully vaccinated, by that not only three doses but so much of the country has been infected, recovered, refusing to get vaccinated on top of that. so much of the country is not
Protect symptomatic infection, and possibly even serious illness, so we have to move to a three-dose vaccine, and be clear about that. and the reality is if the three-dose vaccine against delta was fantastic, with that big rise in virus neutralizing antibody, but against omicron, we are seeing evidence against imperial college in london of waning immunity after a couple of months, and that is really concerning that we will see a lot of breakthrough infection if people are more than a couple of months out of their booster. how do we message that to the public, and more importantly, from my standpoint. how do we protect our health care workers who are now, instead of being in the hospital are going to be at home with breakthrough symptomatic covid, and what can we do to protect them, and i ve made some suggestions about that, but we didn t hear about that today, and i think we really are going to need some innovation to keep everybody in the health care work force.
Overwhelming. we know how to keep our kids safe from covid-19 in school. k through 12 schools should be open, and that safety is increased if schools require all adults who work in the schools to get vaccinated and take the safety measure that the cdc is recommending, including masking. i got congress to pass billions of dollars in school improvements, ventilation, and social distancing. schools should be safer than ever from covid-19. and just friday, the cdc issued a test to stay guidelines, so schools can stay open and kids can stay in class even if a classmate tests positive. covid-19 is scary, but the science is clear, children are safe, as safe in school are they are any place, assuming the appropriate precautions have been taken, and they have
That. i m wondering if we can get someone to take some shifts tonight actually. but i love the idea of more testing availability as well. many people are approaching me wondering whether it s safe to be gather with their families over the upcoming holidays and i m trying to encourage them to be testing on the day of the gathering with a rapid home test and more availability of the rapid test will definitely be beneficial in helping reduce the spread of the covid virus. absolutely, as well as vaccinations. we heard the president emphasize that if you are fully vaccinated, especially if you are boosted and getting together with other people who are in that same boat, it is safe to move forward with holiday plans and to gather with those close family members. we ve been hearing more conversations around how to handle positive cases, particularly people who may be asymptomatic, but still test positive. and when it comes to health care workers in particular, because of staffing shortages,
Includes sending military service members to help overwhelmed hospitals. dr. lisa hay cess the chief medical officer which serves the kansas city metropolitan area. dr. hay ethank you for joining us. what are you seeing at your hospitals and in your state? first of all, thank you for the opportunity to join you today. i have to say that over the last month we ve seen a dramatic increase in our covid numbers. our low point in our numbers in the hospital was 12. active infections in mid-november. and since then we ve had a dramatic increase. today we have 39 active infections. we have 10 individuals in the intensive care unit and most of those are ventilated. are these people with covid specifically? these are all covid, yes. and we re also seeing is this different from what you ve experienced. forgive me. go ahead. yeah, we were also seeing a rise in our influenza admissions