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good morning to our viewers in the united states and around the world. it is friday, december 31st. i m kaitlan collins in with john avlon. happy new year s eve. happy new year s eve to you. let s make it a great one. it is going to be a great one. new zealand already ringings in the new year, leading the world in welcoming 2022 with a light show. you notice there are no fireworks this year. we are approaching a new year b but still dealing with the same pandemic. a spike in coronavirus cases fueled bit omicron variant. doctors describing pabgtd emergency rooms, john. dr. fauci is predicting it could peak by the end of january. the u.s. is hitting a seven-day average of 355,000 new cases with record cases in new york, arkansas, chicago. pediatric hospital admissions are soaring to a record high with on average 378 children being admitted daily with covid-19. when it comes to ralph, the cdc is warning vaccinated and unvaccinated travelers alike to stay away from cr ....
we should note the number of hospitalizations are not rising at the same rate to date. the cdc lowering its estimate of the variant from 70 to 59%. that drop suggests while the new variant is on the rise, it was not infecting people at the same rate the agency had initially projected. pediatric hospitalizations are near their september peak. nationwide, hospitalizations of children with the virus have jumped on average nearly 50% in just one week. parents are understandable concerned as vaccination rates, particularly among the pediatric population, continue to lag, leaving many children vulnerable to infection. president biden now says the vaccine requirements for domestic travel could be imposed if his medical team recommend it. but dr. fauci said don t expect one for now. health officials are advising we should be bracing for case numbers to skyrocket in the new year. now to laeyla santiago in miami. we know sometimes the waits have been hours long. leyla. report ....
watching dateline that need to talk to their kids. welcome to dateline. parents always worry there are so many dangers out in the world a teenager can face, that at a slumber party in your own basement? how could something deadly have found its way there, taken a bright, talented girl. and could it happen in your town, to your child? here s keith snow with one small dose. they re killing our kids and we need to do something about it. reporter: it s a new threat. she was saying, erin, your best friend died, and she kept yelling that over and over. reporter: and these teens found out about it the hard way. it s made out to seem like one of those, you re not really going to see it in your life kind of drugs. reporter: they re called synthetic drugs, and they are cheap, dangerous, easy to get and often marketed specifically to young people. something this deadly, in this small of a dose, had entered our high school. not just our community, but our kid ....
erin, you re the woman on the panel so i m curious what you watch every holiday season. first of all, merry christmas to you, tiffany, and shoutout to you for looking like a whole christmas centerpiece up here. i am loving the holiday look, honey. so look, this is an important time to remind people that diehard is 100% a christmas movie. if there is a young person who does not know that, you are failing them as a parent, grand parent, aunt. home alone and a christmas story did pair christmas with guns and violence. only in america, i guess. that s a good point. i noticed this this year and was like, hmm, maybe explains why we ve seen some folks on the twittersphere making that connection. brilliant point. but you brought up something very controversial that is diehard being a christmas movie. some people say no, some people say yes. i have to agree with you, it is a christmas movie. but i have to tell you i was talking to one of our producers who was wor ....
immunocompromised americans who aren t well protected by vaccines. an effective drug from astrazeneca. the u.s. government only ordered enough for a 10th of the people eligible for it. cnn medical correspondent elizabeth cohen joining us now. elizabeth, good morning. reporter: good morning. ye is, the situation is as the numbers are rising, we are seeing cases rise but not seeing hospitalizations go up as much. one group of americans that i don t think we talk about as much as we should and that s the immune compromised. folks who are immune compromised, millions of them, did not get a response to the vaccine in the same way healthy people did. they are now vulnerable to covid-19 because they didn t get the antibody response they should have. so i want to introduce you to four of them. one is diane barren. she s in florida. she has cancer. diane ellis is in arkansas. eris bowden in hawaii. candace in hawaii. cancer patients, they re immune compromised. a drug can help ....