it s the top of the hour, so glad you re with us. i m poppy harlow, thank you for joining me on newsroom. we re going to hear from the white house. the white house covid task force is going to give a live update on the surge we re seeing in the united states right now. this comes hours after the approval of a potential game changing first in the pandemic, a pill to treat covid. the fda just today giving emergency authorization to pfizer s antiviral pixilvid, as the united states is seeing a 4% rise in hospitalizations from just a week ago, and now detecting omicron in 26 states 22 days after the first reported case in the country. a top researcher in south africa says the country is beyond its peak of omicron, saying south africa is seeing a serious decline in cases in the area where it was first detected. that is potentially good news for the word, the first pill to treat covid, how well does it work? it works quite well, and it s something you can take home. the doctor ca
Me is the fact that even though omicron is not as deadly, it appears to be. they also said because of its contagious factor, it can easily overwhelm our health care system. let s say that 5% of delta, 100 people went to the hospital, but if omicron infects a thousand people and 1% get infected, ten will go to the hospital. it can still very easily just overwhelm our health care system. and dr. wen, good news from the administration talking about pfizer s pill to treeat covid that got emergency authorization today, pacxlovid, the federal government will provide any resources to ramp up production. that s a pretty good indicator now. absolutely, and for the individual who is high risk, this is really good news because there are so many people who are very worried about what happens if they re already medically frail, and contract covid. this pill can reduce their
Eligible for a booster go get a booster. that is everyone above the ages of 16 boosting at greater than six months. if you receive the pfizer or moderna vaccine, and of course greater than two months if you receive the j&j vaccine. we re looking at the definition right now, and, you know, more to come there, but just to be very clear, our recommendations are to get boosted. next question, please. let s go to jeff zeleny at cnn. thank you for taking my question. i was wondering if jeff or the doctors could point to one thing in the last month that you could have done differently to avoid where the nation is right now on the cusp of christmas? dr. fauci, anything to add there? well, i don t think i can pick out one thing that we could have done. anytime that you put the effort that we re putting in, we always
To our nation s medicine cabinet. as soon as emerging science showed the promise of these antivirals we acted quickly, and aggressively to prepurchase 10 million treatment courses of pfizer and 3 million of merck. for merck, end of january, we anticipate 3 million treatment courses available to send to states if fda authorizes. the pfizer team has a very promising and now authorized treatment. a pill that dramatically reduces the risk of hospitalizations and death for those at risk. we ve purchased 10 million courses, more than anyone else in the world. according to pfizer, the complex chemistry involved in creating the active ingredient in the pill means production takes about six to eight months. so supply of this product will ramp up over the next several months.
Million treatment courses with 300,000 treatment courses available in january. and we have already begun making this drug available to every state and territory. next let me touch on a preventative treatment from astrazeneca, which is especially important for certain immunocompromised individuals at high risk. many of these immunocompromised people are not able to get the level of protection they need from a vaccine alone. we will have more than half a million doses of astrazeneca s monoclonal antibody treatments on hand in january. and we re preparing to purchase significantly more across the next three months. and finally, let me provide an update on antivirals. we got good news today with the authorization of pfizer s antiviral. merck s pill if authorized along with pfizer s newly authorized pill have oral treatment options