lots of words being said of the man. it is the latest event of the week filled with remembrances. the man known as the moral conscience of the country. also south africans from all walks of life are paying their respects to tutu in cape town right now. mourners are visiting his casket in st. george s cathedral where he is lying in state. let s go to cnn s larry madowo. they are much more limited because of covid than the authorities would have wished. they look quite isolated, many of the guests. reporter: they are because currently south africa has a restriction on how many people can attend a funeral. it s only 100, and so archbishop desmond tutu actual funeral will have 100 people, family, friends, clergy, people he went to the church with. that is why they have two days of lying in state in st. george s cathedral in cape town today and tomorrow, to allow as many south africans as
welcome back to cnn newsroom. i m max foster. our top story this hour is the surge in omicron variant. more u.s. states are deploying the national guard to support health care workers amidst the covid surge. georgia and ohio are getting help for hospitals and testing and police and paramedics are calling out sick in new york and ohio. top health officials in the u.s. are trying to clear up their latest guidance for people who are recovering from covid, but somehow things seem to be more confusing than ever as cnn s alexander field reports. this was the moment we needed to make that decision. reporter: facing the biggest covid surge we ve ever seen, the cdc director defending the decision to cut isolation time in half for people whose symptoms are getting better. it had a lot to do with what we thought people would be able to tolerate. if we can get them to isolate, we want to make sure they are isolating in the first five days
president biden is demanding legislative action from congress on voting rights, challenging senate lawmakers to act right now to protect access to the ballot, no matter what it takes. cnn s jeremy diamond is at the white house, lauren fox joins us as well from capitol hill. jeremy, first to you. is the president willing to expend all his political capital to get this done? and crucially does he see a real path here? i m not clear watching this whether and if he can get the votes to do it. reporter: yeah, it is really hard to see how the president gets these two pieces of voting rights legislation that he was talking about yesterday through the senate, given the fact that you have two senate democrats, senator joe manchin, senator kyrsten sinema refusing so far to change the filibuster rules and then almost unanimous republican opposition to passing these two pieces of legislation. so despite that, though, the
faa hasn t issued a statement other than this is a precautionary measure which we take somewhat often. but this is really not something you see very often, ground stops, even if only regional, are pretty serious steps. the faa is reviewing the decision-making process that went into that. north korea claims tuesday s launch was a hypersonic missile. what are u.s. officials saying about that? the only official u.s. statement about it so far has been that they are assessing what this was and what it wasn t. we haven t gotten more information from that openly but we have spoken with u.s. officials who have told cnn, as well as analysts, that this sddoes appeared to be a maneuverable re-entry vehicle. it doesn t have the gliding ability, range, maneuverability of other hypersonic weapons but has some of that, and that shows significant advances in north korea s weapons technology and where they are going with this. now just after this, the u.s. issued sanctions against north koreans and
pass. we have to pass universal health care, universal kindergarten for all of our kids, elderly care. so we re hoping that joe manchin will come to the table, and maybe a senator as well. lisa murkowski, i m looking at you. who understand that they have to govern and they have to meet the needs of the american people and they are in need right now and democrats are going to continue to fight for them. there is a perception problem, and i want to stay with you because a recent cnn poll found that three-quarters of americans are worried about the state of the economy. only three in ten voters said that president biden s policies have improved economic conditions in the country. the white house had been holding out for biden s social spending bill, you mentioned joe manchin effectively sinking it a few weeks ago. how do democrats turn that perception around? you mentioned a list of accomplishments from the white house. it doesn t seem like it s sinking in. you re right, we have to do