As COVID-19 hit new records, there’s a shift in tone from health experts, many saying virtually everyone is going to be exposed to COVID.
Right now, more than 150,000 Americans with COVID are in the hospital and the US averages nearly three quarters of 1,000,000 new cases a day.
Mary Maloney explains.
“Most of us will ultimately get Omicron”
The extremely contagious Omicron variant is overwhelming hospitals.
“The sudden and steep rise in cases due to Omicron is resulting in unprecedented daily case counts, sickness, absenteeism and strains on our health care system.”
Some schools also closed as COVID forces teachers to stay home in quarantine. One Texas school district is asking parents to step in and teach.
“We just decided to be innovative. I prefer that instead of desperate. Obviously, we are just extending the offer to parents just to allow them to come in and help us out.”
The Biden administration pledges to give schools 10 million more COVID tests a month.
“These 10 million additional tests available each month will allow schools to double the volume of testing they were performing in November”
But that covers just a fraction of students in the country, crucial to turning the pandemic tide in both schools and the community.
“Masks Any mask is better than no masks and vaccines.”
One of the best things that we can do is get our children and our teenagers vaccinated.
“Virtually everybody is going to wind up getting exposed and likely get infected. But if you’re vaccinated and if you’re boosted, the chances of you are getting sick of very, very low.”
The CDC plans to update information about mask wearing on its website, while the Biden administration strongly considers making higher quality masks like N95 and N95 masks more available to Americans.
