Parts of the country are starting to tick up too the cdc now urging residents in 56 high-risk counties to mask up. two-thirds of those areas are in the state of new york. i m not here to stand here and say we re looking at shutdowns. i ve said i m going to protect the health of new yorkers. reporter: nationally caseloads are only a fraction of what we saw in the winter though new york city s recent numbers rival last year s delta surge. still the upward trend isn t stopping the season s most watched formal events, from fashion s biggest night at the met to the weekend s white house correspondents dinner notably absent was america s top doc, who backpedaled earlier comments when he said we re out of the pandemic phase that does not mean that the pandemic is over by no means is it over. reporter: a possible sign of the future, south africa, where omicron first popped up. research there, which has not yet been peer reviewed, shows new subvariants are dodging antibodies gained fro
i m not going to stand here and say we re looking at shutdowns. i said we re going to protect the health of new yorkers. national case loads are only a fraction of what we saw in the winter. the new york city s recent numbers rival last year s surge. still, the upward trend isn t stopping from the most-watched formal event, from fashion s biggest night at the met, to the week s white house correspondents dinner. notably absent was america s top doc, who back pedalled over comments when he said we re out of the pandemic phase. that does not mean that the pandemic is over. by no means is it over. a possible sign of the future, south africa, where omicron first popped up. research there which has not yet been peer-reviewed, shows new sub variants are dodging antibodies from previous infections. it s not going to disappear. we re going to have to learn to live with this virus. and as we do, with influenza. so what is important to know