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
but there is some good news breaking word on a new drug. today the fda gave emergency authorization to the first antiviral pill to treat coronavirus. we re going to hear from the cdc director and dr. anthony fauci on that and more at any minute. joining me now is monica alba at the white house, nbc steve paterson in los angeles, nbc courtney kube at the pentagon and also with us nbc senior medical correspondent dr. john torres. a lot of good news in terms of this pill. i m sure we ll hear about that at the covid briefing and concerns about us who cannot get vaccinated and by us i mean kids under 5 and also those immuno compromised. what are we expecting from the briefing on those two groups? exactly, katy. i think you ll hear at the top about the encouraging news that the covid team is going to highlight and at the same time they re going to remind everybody that the reason it s so important to get vaccinated and to get boosted is not to protect yourself. it s really, of co
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
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.
Covid, and 12 died of covid, and half of them took paxlovid, eight were hospitalized and none of them died. that s a pretty dramatic difference, and there s one thing, in the clinical trials, people took it within five days of feeling symptoms of covid. you need to know you have symptoms, act on it, get tested, you need to call the doctor, the doctor needs to call it in. that is a lot to have happen within five days, especially given the testing situation in the united states, so that is one concern about this pill. we ll see how it works when it comes out in real life rather than just clinical trials. that s exactly right. elizabeth, you also have two studies making some early conclusions on omicron, and on hospitalizations. what do they tell us? right, so these are studies out of south africa, and scotland because they sort of got omicron before we did, and have been doing it a good job of measuring it. so let s take a look at what they found.