state university, and there s a lot of conversations happening, you know, it s a walk-up site so people have been coming in. it s a steady stream of people throughout the day, and people have been saying, they re getting tested because they were a close contact of somebody who was tested positive. and there are a lot of positive people here in pennsylvania. as you mentioned, more than 6,000 people are testing positive for coronavirus every single day. that s more than 60% from what it was just two weeks ago. and here in center county, where we are right now, specifically, it s about got about a 52% vaccination rate. so, that, along with the concerns about this omicron variant, as we re talking about, has a lot of community members frustrated. here s what they had to say. i think people got a little bit too relaxed. masking is has fallen away a little bit. people are tired. they have compassion fatigue for the whole thing. they don t want to abide by these rules anymore, but i wan
we are now going to see another big winter wave of covid-19, and it s not going to be the omicron variant. it s going to be the delta variant and the delta variant is a bad actor. we saw it race through the unvaccinated population here in texas and in the south during the summer and now it s going to do the same in pennsylvania and michigan and elsewhere. remember, we ve only vaccinated about 59% of the u.s. population. that means 41% is not vaccinated. moreover, even among the vaccinated population, many have received two doses of pfizer-biontech or moderna and that s now waning so we have to get them boosted with that third immunization. and there s a lot of people who have been infected and recovered who have this erroneous thinking that they re protected against the delta variant. i hear that all the time. the same reinfection. yeah. so, can you dispel that? i cannot tell you the number of times that i have heard that.
describing this move as out of an abundance of caution, even as they re still learning more about the new variant of the coronavirus. but we also heard this morning from dr. fauci on early today saying that while the cdc has not yet detected the new variant in the united states, it s only a matter of time. take a look. we have not detected it yet, but when you have a virus that is showing this degree of transmissibility and you re already having travel-related cases that they ve noted in israel and belgium and in other places, when you have a virus like this, it almost invariably is ultimately going to go, essentially, all over. the issue of blocking travel from a given country is to just give us time to assess it better. that s the reason for doing that. reporter: scientists here in the u.s. will be using that extra time to do a number of things, alex. they ll be looking closely to
today. starting on monday, the u.s. will restrict travel from eight nations in southern africa. that is where the variant was first reported. joining me now, representative brendan boyle, democrat from pennsylvania. he is also a member of the house ways and means and budget committees. lots to get to here. starting with this, sir, as i welcome you on this holiday weekend. your biggest concerns are what around this variant? and do you foresee the likelihood, even a possibility, of sending the u.s. back into varying stages of shutdown as a result of omicron? well, great to be with you on this holiday weekend, and certainly any news of a new variant concerns all of us. that said, though, we know the best way to handle, whether it s traditional covid or any of the variants that come down the pike, and that is through getting the population vaccinated. pennsylvania, which you were talking about moments ago, despite the increase in recent cases, we at least are in the
we were talking about earlier. there are other parts around the world that are still struggling to get vaccinated, that are still struggling from covid, and so that affects the global supply chain. the final point that i would make on this is, we had such depressed gas prices for the last year and year and a half, now that we have had this surge in demand, we have obviously seen it at the pump, but i do believe that most projections show that is temporary, and they will come down in several months. and here s perhaps why, and to your point, gas prices are about 50% higher than this time last year and that s a lot for over one year, but the president says he s releasing some 50 million barrels from the strategic oil reserve, and that s supposed to be used in emergencies. does this qualify for an emergency in your mind? are you comfortable with the president doing this, and how much of it do you think is political? well, the president is taking decisive action. i m glad that he s not