for fully vaccinated programs. the cdc says it is safe to they say vaccinated grandparents can safely visit unvaccinated grandchildren. the cdc is still cautioning against travel, although that may change as more people get shots. >> that's all such welcome news, but experts warn coronavirus variants could still trigger another deadly surge especially as states relax guidelines. texas is set to end its statewide mask mandate tomorrow. a final vote in the house on president biden's $1.9 trillion relief bill is expected tomorrow morning. it will bring critical dollars to millions of struggling americans. the president will out the the measure when he delivers his first primetime address to the nation on thursday. so we begin with cnn's dan simon live in houston with the latest on the pandemic. good morning, dan. >> reporter: well, good morning, alisyn. that's right. beginning tomorrow that mask mandate will end here in texas. and businesses can open at full capacity, that as we finally get that guidance from the cdc on what the fully vaccinated can do. >> we are starting to turn a corner. >> reporter: for the more than 31 million americans fully vaccinated some new guidance from the cdc. now the fully vaccinated can visit with other fully vaccinated people indoors, no masks or social distancing required. they can also have indoor visits with low risk unvaccinated individuals from a single household without masks or social distancing. >> if grandparents have been vaccinated, they can visit their daughter and her family even if they have not been vaccinated. >> reporter: and if exposed to someone who is covid-19 positive, fully vaccinated individuals no longer need to kwaurn tee if they're asymptomatic but travel is so discouraged so is hanging out in large crowds and wearing masks and physically distancing in public is strongly encouraged even if you're fully vaccinated. >> waiting to get a haircut or see the dentist, you can do that, but it's not an all clear. we're not done yet. covid isn't done with us. the variants are still a risk. >> reporter: while coronavirus-related deaths and hospitalizations are on the decline, new infections in the united states are plateauing at high levels. this, as some states are rolling back restrictions. here in texas, the statewide mask mandate ends tomorrow and businesses can operate again at full capacity. >> people are celebrating and their hands on when the virus is still saying i'm here. and i got you. let's not lose sight of the fact people are going to get the virus and people are going to die. >> reporter: even with around 2.2 million coronavirus vaccines now administered daily in the u.s., dr. anthony fauci sending this message to local and state leaders. >> get your citizens to get vaccinated when the vaccine becomes available and encourage them not to pull back on public health measures prematurely. >> reporter: and remember, fully vaccinated means two weeks after the pfizer moderna dose or two weeks after the one johnson & johnson dose. remember the texas government telling people not to wear masks tomorrow, they don't need to wear masks, that said, most businesses here in houston and elsewhere will still require patrons to wear them. john, back to you. >> dan simon, thanks very much. joining us now dr. peter hotez with texas children's hospital. thank you for being with us. look, what a year it's been since sanjay came on the show and said this is a pandemic. and this morning we are dealing with these new cdc guidelines telling vaccinated people it's safe to go hang out indoors with other vaccinated people. telling vaccinated grandparents it's safe enough to go visit your unvaccinated grandchildren. what's your take on the cdc guidelines, the good, the bad and the ugly. >> i think, john, they're cautious and cautious for a good reason because we still don't have all of the information we need to go any further at this point. so, i think it's really important to stress this is why the cdc is calling them interim guidelines. they're interim because we don't know where we're heading with the b.1.1.7 variant in the uk. there's still quite a lot of transmission going on in the united states number one. number two, we don't know the full performance features of these vaccines in terms of interrupting asymptomatic transmission. the numbers and data coming out of israel, for instance, look really promising for the pfizer biontech vaccine. i think the idea behind this, this is version 1.0, 1.0 is saying, yes, now if you're fully vaccinated, grandparents and parents can visit their kids and both little kids and adult kids and meet with them in a home. if everybody also everybody is vaccinated you can meet with friends in a single indoor area. so these are really welcome, but they're still holding off on restrictions in terms of travel, in terms of restaurants. and you know, i can't fault them for that. but this will change. i think in a month or two months you may see even more liberalization coming up soon. >> dr. hotez, help me with the math. so, we are currently vaccinated about 2.2 million americans a day. is that right? it's not just the vaccines. >> shots in arms. >> okay. and there's about, as of yesterday, 50,000 cases of coronavirus a day. so, i mean, aren't the vaccines outrunning the new variants, you know? isn't this just all going in the right direction? >> sort of. remember, we've only vaccinated only 18% of the u.s. population has gotten a single dose of the vaccines. some places like texas it's even less than that, around 15%. other states like new mexico are at 25% and that's only a single dose which has a modest performance in terms of protective ability. so we still have a long ways to go. remember the real number. the real number is we have to give about half a billion immu si nations to fully vaccinate the american people. we're far from that. point two, 50,000 new cases a day, that's an underestimate of number of three to four. we were talking about those numbers back in the summer. so we have just gotten so astonishing high levels of transmission and now it's down to a roar but it's still quite a bit. we still have a long ways to go before we can really breathe a sigh of relief. the good news is we are going to get there. we're going to fully vaccinate the american people by the summer. and we'll likely interrupt virus transmission by the summer. so life will look a lot different. but with these new variants on the rise, we have to be really cautious. >> you're at ground zero. you're our man on the scene where there's the greatest tension. you have the governor lifting the mask mandates, businesses can open at 100% and new information overnight i understand about the b.1.1.7 variant, this is the extremely transmissible version that was seen in the uk. so, what are you seeing and what are your concerns there? >> so, john, both were transmissible and higher lethality according to the uk government although it's not been peer reviewed. it looks pretty compelling. they put it up on their website. i've been talking on and off with real public health heroes our physician who heads the houston health department and he's been seeing a lot more b.1.1.7 variant in the waste water and yesterday mayor turner announced 31 out of the 39 waste water samples have b.1.1.7 variant. that coupled with the fact that the positivity rate in houston is creeping up from 11 to 13 or so percent may not sound like a big difference but that in the context of the b.1.1.7 variant really gives me pause for concern. this is not a time to relax the restrictions. you know, people -- it's really interesting what you see going around here in houston. people don't want to go into stores where people -- where not everyone is masked. we finally got used to the fact that if we know we can walk into a grocery store or supermarket or a place of business and know that everybody is masked, people think of it as a safe space and now that's out the window. i think this is actually going to hurt business in addition to being a very unsound public health measure. >> yeah. self preservation appears to be a strong impulse regardless of when we see people throwing masks into a dumpster. dr. hotez, thank you very much. always great to talk to you. >> thank you. always good to talk to you. >> president joe biden set to make his first primetime address to the nation on thursday night. the speech will mark a year since the pandemic shut down much of the country. and cnn's jeremy diamond is live at the white house with more. what do we expect, jeremy? >> reporter: good morning, alisyn. that's right, president biden expected to deliver this first primetime address of his presidency on thursday and of course he will be discussing the coronavirus pandemic. this address will mark one year since the world health organization officially declared covid-19 a global pandemic. it also comes a year after we saw another president deliver a primetime address from the oval office. that was president trump who then announced those travel restrictions to europe and really started to take a much more serious concerned approach to the coronavirus after weeks of down playing it. and really it is remarkable to see what has happened in that year. 29 plus million americans who have been diagnosed with the coronavirus, more than 525,000 americans have died from this virus. so you can expect president biden to talk not only about the toll of this pandemic over the last year, the sacrifices that the american people have endured, but also to look forward at a time when 92 plus million coronavirus vaccine doses have already been administered and more shots expected on the way. you can also expect the president to look forward towards approaching the end of this pandemic but always, always, as he does with the reminder that we are not yet there and that those coronavirus mitigation measures need to remain in place. you can also expect the president to out the what we expect to be the passage of this $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief legislation. that is expected to pass the house today in time to reach the president's desk for signature before he addresses the nation tomorrow night. alisyn? >> so jeremy, i'm not sure that you're aware of kate bennett's reporting overnight, but we understand that the first dog, the first and second dog, there can't be two first dogs, have been sent back to delaware because major, the younger of the two dogs. >> yes, the rescue dog. >> some kind of aggressive incident. so the german shepherds are gone there. the president loved these dogs. >> reporter: yeah. this is going to be difficult for the president to adjust to because he is so used to having these dogs around. it was just a few weeks ago where we saw the president and the first lady on the lawn just behind me and they were strolling around with both of the dogs off leash here on the white house grounds. clearly there were some issues, though, with some aggression issues apparently with major, including one incident involving a member of white house security. i believe it was a biting incident, if i'm recalling kate bennett's reporting accurately. but clearly that was a problem and he is back to delaware. we don't really know how long that's going to be for, if that's a temporary solution or perhaps something more permanent. >> the first lady said she was trying to get the dogs settled and it was hard to get them settled to their new environment, so maybe this is temporary, but we will stay on it. >> for now it's a major problem. >> jeremy, thank you. >> she made me do it over there. over there. >> john, come on. >> i see. there's nobody sitting over there. thank you, jeremy, very much. so from subsidized child care to support for the elderly, the coronavirus relief bill will have a major impact. >> you're a champ. >> oh my gosh, for millions of americans. more of this next. >> she did. she sent me a text and said it was a major problem. so i only pay for what i need. 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>> this is life changing especially for low income working americans here. by some analysis the tax policy center says people who make 30 to $40,000 a year are going to see a 20% after-tax pay increase. i did back of the envelope math for you here. you look at say a family of two, two parents, two kids, they're going to get $5,600 in stimulus checks and get $6,000 in this child tax credit. that's going to be sort of the top line return for this family of two. look at a single mom. when you add in the stimulus check and you add in money for $3,000 for the year for her kid, that's $5,800, that's not even counting in reform to the earned income tax more money to the lowest working americans. this is really a historic, life changing event for especially a low income worker here. it really is using covid legislation to try to address income inequality in a way that we have never really even seen before. and there's so much here, you guys. it is a sprawling bill. jen psaki, the president's spokesperson, said this is the most important progressive legislation in history. of course, conservatives say this is the most important progressive legislation in history and they say that not as a compliment. so this is clearly a very big deal that you'll feel in so many ways, much beyond the stimulus checks. >> i was reading "the washington post," there are things in there like support for black farmers who badly needed it for so long. >> yes, $5 billion. >> talk a little more about what this means for middle and lower income people, christine. because, you know, with all the tax cuts we've had, we're talking about a benefit to this income bracket that was in the hundreds of dollars. now you're talking about -- >> thousands. >> yeah. so talk to me about the difference there about the real feel as it were. >> so the real feel here and also this legislation tasks the treasury department with finding a mechanism, sorry for the terrible process words, find a mechanism to get the money to you all every single month. not just seeing the money in the tax code after a year, but getting money regularly for the next year into people's pockets so they can pay their bills. there's also here there are tax breaks for childcare, for elder care. there's a stimulus check for the -- if you have an elderly parent or grandparent who lives with you and they're a dependent, that person -- you're going to get $1,400 check in that person's name, too. this is really about putting money in the pockets of poor working americans so that we can try to address this income inequality that has been so revealed by covid. i haven't seen an effort like this when you look at the child tax credit beyond the stimulus checks gets a lot of attention that's going to millions and millions of americans, but the earned income tax credit and the other provisions to try to specifically target inequality, very new. >> anna, on the politics of it, there's a lot to dive into. but let's quickly dispense with one of the criticisms i hear popping up now on maga media as well as senator tom cotton that this is all a travesty because inmates, like the tsarnaev brothers will get a payment. where was he when inmates got payments during president trump's two coronavirus relief packages, which they also got? so this is a new complaint that has cropped up by republicans, but what else do we need to know about the politics here? >> i mean, this is a widely popular bill across the country with republicans and democrats. obviously in washington it's one of those issues where you're not going to see republicans support it, even though they have supported many of the provisions that are in this package. democrats either maybe plussed up some of them, increased the amount that is going to some of the different provisions and some of the stickier, thornier issues around state and local funding they put in there. but the real issue you see is republicans trying to draw a line in the sand about how this pirates tag is too large or try to find specific issues like the one that you mentioned that they're going to try to criticize about this covid relief package despite the fact that it is wildly popular and certainly something that democrats are going to count on running on in 2022 when they look at where is the economy. this is one of those issues where they think this could really help juice up the economy and help those struggling families and people that christine was just speaking about. >> if you want to get a sense of what bizarre-o world looks like go to west virginia where the republican governor is criticizing democratic senator joe manchin for getting in the way of some of the money that he wanted as a governor there. gives you a sense of how out there in the country it might be received differently than in washington, d.c. anna, i want to get one question about what this may portend for the future, though. if no republicans were on board for this covid relief, right, which is something many of them were in favor of last year, what does it mean going forward? why should democrats or the white house assume they'll ever get any republican votes for pretty much anything, including infrastructure? >> yeah. this is the top of punchbowl news a.m. newsletter is us looking at infrastructure which is expected to be the next big legislative issue that this white house, although they aren't publicly saying it yet, is going to try to take on. and to your point, where will the republicans -- are they going to be kind of real brokers in this? and are you going to see susan collins try to make some kind of a deal here. joe manchin said he doesn't want it to just start off as a democrat-only reconciliation package. but i have a hard time seeing republicans really coming to the negotiating table in the long-term. they've clearly decided that their biggest strength together and one of the only things they agree on is they want to be opposed to it. democrats are far. it will be very interesting to see the posture of what mitch mcconnell, the leader in the senate, how does he approach infrastructure? this is something that's really difficult. john boehner, a lot of republicans tried to do this in the past and infrastructure is a lot more complicated than i think p