t 200 million to 500 million tests a month. 10,000 centers will be giving out free tests, so we re going to be going in the right direction. and i ve said that myself many times, jake, that we really need to flood the system with testing. we need to have tests available for anyone who wants them particularly when we re in a situation right now, people are going to be gathering even though they are vaccinated and boosted, they may want to go that extra step, that extra mile to know that when we have people coming into the home, or going someplace that you could know in 15 minutes whether or not you re positive. president biden said the unvaccinated are looking at a winter of severe illness and death. michael ostorholm said a viral blizzard is coming. do you expect record high numbers for cases and what about hospitalizations and deaths? well, unfortunately, jake, i think that is going to happen.
what they re seeing there. based on the current evidence in south africa, it s transmitting faster than the delta variant and the overlap with the beta variant some evidence of immune escape from antibodies. the clinical is just basic with covid, nothing different. the second is that what they are seeing are largely younger people, but that s to be expected, because we have much higher vaccine coverage in the older people. we have a much lower vaccine coverage in younger people, so that s just to be expected. now this morning, president biden will be briefed by his white house covid team, then he will deliver an update on the omicron variant to the country. with more on all of this, let s bring in michael ostorholm, from the university of minnesota. doctor, thank you so much for being with us. look, i know this is going to take time to figure out how