maryland right now with just the knowledge for everybody that just because cases are going down in some parts of the country, just because omicron is not as bad for the vaccinated, the sheer number of cases means hospitals will feel the brunt of this once again. yeah, katy, the numbers are tracking with what we re seeing in dozens of other states. statewide, 85% of the beds here that are staffed are in use, a combination of more patients, fewer staff, and then there s a third category that hasn t gotten enough attention, katy, those individuals rolling into emergency rooms in order to get their covid tests. in laurel what they did here is three entire floors of this hospital are devoted only to covid in order to alleviate some of the pressure on the nearby main hospitals. number two, they created a drive-through testing site staffed by the national guard here to take pressure off the emergency room. if you roll into the emergency room to get a test you ll be
drive-through testing site. and no, this is not for march or april 2020, it s from today. in the department of health warns that the nation supply of covid test could be overstretched as omicron hits, and christmas travel begins. i m sorry, but, almost two years into this, pandemic in almost a year into the biden presidency, and there s thousands of american who die from covid every week, that is just not good enough. here to discuss more on where we go from here is epidemiologist and you novelist michael mina, formally armed harvard university now chief science officer them. under a boston university school thank-yous both for coming back on the show gloomy start with. you are we ready for the kind of mass testing we re gonna need in the coming weeks? isn t it shameful that more than a year and a half after this pandemic and a year into a non trump administration, we still haven t sorted out testing. i want to get tested yesterday, there was a two-hour wait in