Page 5 - Testing Lines News Today

Variant is more dangerous for children, but its highly transmissible. and holiday gatherings could fuel the surge in cases including among children, the age groups with the lowest vaccination rates in the country. >> we have not seen the worst of it yet. >> reporter: with cases climbing, staffing shortages are crippling industries. airlines canceling thousands of flights this holiday season. marylands federal court scaling back operations. team usa hockey forced to forfeit the world juniors tour...

Continue to mask for five days to minimize the risk of infecting others. now, that new guidance is sparking relief for some, confusion for others as americans attempt to navigate how to manage the virus at this point and, of course, the new variant. these changes come as new cases are surging across the country right now. the us .s. is averaging more th 237,000 daily cases. for many americans, this holiday season may be remembered for hours spent in long testing lines or desperately searching ph...

Smaller percentage of cases being omicron than the previous week. so what they told us last week was that 73% of the new cases rr omicron, and now theyre saying its 58%. now,ly say that the cdc has been clear that theres a large margin of error here. this is not an exact science. but interesting to see that its not sort of taking off the way that people thought it might, at least according to these numbers. >> elizabeth cohen, i appreciate you. thank you so much. as you know, the covid surge i...

Omicron variant as it spreads across the country. lauren blanchard is live with for. >> today president biden will meet with the nations governors and the covid response team to talk about what comes next. some states are reinstating mask mandates. others are considering shortened quarantine periods to help get people back to work faster. more than anything, the president is likely to be asked where are the tests is last week the president promised 500 million free of charge rapid test kits but ...

Earlier today. and so while they do have that plan to send those 500 million tests to americans who request them beginning next month theres a clear acknowledgment of what is an obvious failure to meet that testing demand right now around the holiday season and with omicron cases surging around the country. but also today, president biden authorizing the use of stafford act to use emergency funds so that hhs can stand up more testing sites in partnership with state and local governments across t...

Christmas and those testing lines are pretty long. >> reporter: they are really long here. take a look at this. all the way back to the end of this parking lot in deptford, new jersey. and then around the corner. weve seen hundreds of cars in and out of this parking lot throughout the day. were going to see hundreds more before this site closes this evening. and what were really seeing here is a lot of frustration from people. people are getting tested for a variety of reasons. theyre getting te...

Family members as you showed in the introduction and i think it was really hard to ask people to wait any longer, particularly people who are vaccinated and boostered and really had prepared to be safe when they traveled and saw family. so all these compounding issues coming together really meant that we were -- it is not surprising that we are where we are with cases just, um, just kind of exploding across the united states. >> yeah. and then, as you just referred to, those breakthrough infecti...

Guarding public health, right. when youre watching whats happening now with these extremely long testing lines, and of course president biden admitting he wishes he would have sent these tests several months before, were in year three, coming into year three of the pandemic, did the biden administration drop the ball on this at least when it comes to testing? >> well, you know, they were focusing on vaccines. we clearly put billions of dollars into testing supplies and capacity, and yes, we need...

Communities, making their own decisions here. >> so gary, we see the testing lines are long. we know the cases are up. how about hospitalizations? are those up, too? >> yes. hospitalizations are up a little bit. about 25 00 people are in the hospital in new jersey right now. but thats not nearly what we saw last december. clearly whats happening here is people in the hospital are unvaccinated. the people that are vaccinated are getting to stay out of the hospital. >> all right. gary, thank you. ...

Packed. so are testing lines. the demand of over drive for those seeing loved ones. >> we have got to do better. i think things will improve greatly as we get into january. that does not help us today and tomorrow. >> reporter: from family gatherings to football field, there is massive spread. the latest college football games to go dark after boston college had 40 players available due to covid injuries and the seven day average fuels by omicron of 200,000 a day. could not come to a worst time ...