at an oncoming 0micron surge. clearly, unvaccinated individuals are really at a high risk of serious involvement, including hospitalisation. the fully vaccinated are doing much better off. the optimum protection is fully vaccinated, plus a boost. so the bottom line of what we ve been telling you all along, it is critical to get vaccinated. if you are vaccinated, it is critical for optimum protection to get boosted. let s speak to drjeremy faust, who s an emergency physician at brigham and women s hospital. he s in boston. thank you very much for being with us. we heard this morning from anthony fauci. how worried are you about the spread of 0micron, especially with christmas just days away? omicron, especially with christmas just days away? christmas ust days away? thank ou for christmasjust days away? thank you for having christmasjust days away? thank you for having me. christmasjust days away? thank you for having me. what - christmasjust days away? thank you for having me. wha
so i think that we need to boost intelligently that means a lot of people should be boosting right now. so there is no question about that. we are many populations, especially older ones are under boosted. but as we move forward, we want to be very careful and make sure that a, we do not cause alarm fatigue and b, we actually know what we re getting in exchange for those new doses. so there is a lot to balance and a lot of nuance but i think we can do it because we ve learned so much. drjeremy faust. the british socialite ghislaine maxwell, who s facing sex trafficking charges in the united states, has told the court she won t be giving evidence. ms maxwell said there was no need to testify because the prosecution had failed to prove her guilt beyond reasonable doubt. she denies grooming girls for the late convicted paedophile, jeffrey epstein. our correspondent nada tawfik has been outside the courthouse in new york. the defence has rested its case today and it comes after ghisl
era, the delta era, and before. certainly i think we will find that out soon. i don t want people to be at home thinking that the two or even three dose series they have is no longer effective in terms of keeping them safe. i think many people will have that safety but they will be some who will need added protection and i think that is really where we are headed in the next few weeks, to figure out who those people are and how to best detect them. but i think that infections will become more common what we need to then find out is, what is the implications of those infections because i do think that in some cases we are a lot better off and in some areas we still have to catch up. and just briefly, dr faust, what is the way out of this then? are we just then in a potential holding pattern of more vaccinations, more boosters? yes, i think every time a new variant comes along, it will always find the unvaccinated, in terms of our statistics, that is where we will see hospitalisations an
do we have a lot of protection, a lot of immunity in our communities? and so i think it s time this happens, i suspect it will get better and better at looking at the data as it comes in and responding and saying, what is the threat assessment here? do we have to change what we re doing? look, we have things that we did not have before. we have more access to testing. we have a higher percentage of the population with some degree of protection, if not a great degree of protection. but it is frustrating because we all thought by now we would be better off but i think this virus continues to humble us. doctor faust from austin speaking to us earlier. == doctor faust from austin speaking to us earlier. from austin. president biden was in kentucky on wednesday, to see for himself the damage caused by a series of deadly tornadoes.
in britain but i spoke to drjeremy faust for a more global perspective. he s an emergency physician in health policy and public health at brigham and women s hospital in boston. i asked just how prepared the us is for another wave of covid infections. i think our preparation is quite variable across this nation. there are some areas with a lot of vaccine coverage in the highest risk groups and there are areas where the virus is going to find out for itself or we will find out that we don t have enough protection. i think that we have done a good job in getting nursing homes vaccinated into the early phase but now we are seeing that flagging and we have seen that in a lot of cases, staff workers in nursing homes actually are not highly vaccinated. these are areas where our mistakes are going to come back to haunt us right now, so i would say i think we are in a very unusual situation which is that there are some parts of the country that might be experiencing something like a flu season