syncytial virus. we ve got to get team to get vaccinated to protect them, their family and society. right now 14% of the united states is in a high transmission area for coronavirus. a higher rate than this time last week. all of this is prompted the white house to bring back its free testing program. president biden tweeted that every household in the country is eligible for four free at-home covid tests. let s discuss now with an expert. dr. william shaffner a professor of preventative medicine at vanderbilt university school of medicine. doctor, great to see you. appreciate the time. many of us are about to gather for big family holiday dinners. how far do you think folks should go in protecting themselves? well, boris, i think we can get together for those christmas and new year s celebrations and i think we can do them rather safely. now, we have to have some ground rules, of course, and one of
development at texas hospital. how is the administration able to send out the tests again after failing to get the funding from congress? reporter: as we know, congress is trying to race to get a new funding bill, whether there will be funding for covid. as one administration official put it, they had to make hard choices over the last few months. one of the hard choices was to pause this free testing program for the fall months because precisely ahead of what they expected as we head into the winter months, there s going to be a likely surge. and they wanted to be sufficient supply in the stockpile for this very moment. they were able to move some funding around, as well, taking money away from additional manufacturing domestically for testing supplies because they wanted to make sure they had sufficient vaccine supplies, especially the new omicron specific booster that s available to americans now. part of what we see in this new winter fall plan from the white
dose. reporter: with 90% of the country now seeing a covid surge, the administration is reinstaithe its free testing program. starting today, americans can order four covid tests per household at covid-19test.gov. according to the latest c.d.c. numbers, covid cases are up nearly 50% in just one week. covid deaths are up nearly 52%. why are covid deaths strike more dramatically than covid cases. death numbers are just beginning to rise. we obviously want to make sure that doesn t go any further. we know we can prevent nearly every death from covid if people get the updated vaccines and people get treated. reporter: but so far, fewer than 16% u.s. adults have gotten the bivariant vaccine. miguel. even before the uptick,
At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, many dental clinics faced temporary closure or capacity restrictions due to what was believed to be an increased .