that was once the national epicenter of the virus. joining me now is nbc news correspondent, emilie ikeda, live from new york city. also with us is dr. vin gupta, pulmonologist and an affiliate assistant professor at the institute for health metrics and evaluation at the university of washington. also an msnbc medical contributor. emilie, what can you tell us about what we ll be hearing from the governor? reporter: hey, there, jose. so many eyes on the empire state today. governor hochul is expected to weigh in on really two big things here. first, mask mandates within businesses, second, mask mandates within schools. and she could come down on those items differently. as you mentioned, reports suggest that she may possibly let the mask mandates within businesses expire tomorrow, but when it comes to schools, she appears likely to extend the requirement for face coverings in the classroom at least through the end of the month. of course, we will get a more definitive answer in just a
months after their initial booster. meanwhile, children under five, still vaccinated at all. this week, pfizer withdrew its request for the fda to prove a two dose vaccine series for this group, instead, waiting on more data. joining me now, msnbc medical contributor doctor vin gupta. he s a faculty member at the institute for health metrics and evaluation at the university of washington. all right, doctor gupta, tell me what you make of that back and forth from a science perspective, from a health perspective, between what you see democratic governors doing and what we heard there from the president? good evening, alicia. thank you for having me. i agree with the president. it is stewart lee. what we know is that indoor masking works to diminish case transmission rates. case transmission rates were capturing we may say that we re at 2 to 300,000 cases. what we know in the era of omicron, not testing enough. your 15 to 20% of the true caseload at a given day, given