in one weekend they did a drive through mass vaccination clinic for more than 11,000 people. they did at the new hampshire motor speedway. it's a place my brother-in-law paul is intimately familiar with. my brother-in-law loves nascar. he loves all kinds of car racing from formula one to drag racing. mostly he loves nascar. i'm convinced that's why my brother-in-law paul is vaccinated against covid-19. he heard they were doing this at the racetrack and he was like at the racetrack. the answer from him was yes please. the big news in our family is because paul decided he was going, susan's mom agreed she would go too. she would go with paul. susan's mom is in her 90s. she has a bulls eye on her terms in vulnerability to this virus if she ever got it. we've been calling and calling and seriously stressed about the fact she did not have an appointment to get vaccinated into well into april. she got the call she could come this weekend instead because of the johnson & johnson shipment to new hampshire. they went together. they're all done. that is just one little snapshot of one little corner of the country that happened to intersect with my family and some of my greatest family covid concerns. something has clearly ticked oaf for us as a country. you'll remember last week on the show we reported the u.s. had finally hit a really big benchmark. the u.s. had hit two million vaccine shots administered in sang l day. we talked about that last week. we shattered the record. we just hit 2.9 million shots in one day. absolutely fantastic. the relief bill and we get 2.9 million vaccines administered that day. it's great day. that is more where we need to be. numbers can be alienating. man, does this have a personal affect on people. if you have been vaccinated, i haven't been vaccinated. i will as soon as it's my turn. if you have been vaccinated, if the people you are most worried about have been vaccinated, you know how it feels when they final glit their shots. it's like you didn't know what that stress had been doing to you until it's lifted. for me and susan b, i know her mom is one that got the vaccine this weekend but susan and i were so happy and so elated by it. we felt like we were the ones on drugs. it's such a relief when somebody who you're very worried about, something who you love and know is in danger gets that protection, it's such a relief. it's just this very unfamiliar feeling of hope. one thing that's nice is that you can also see the effects of that in health care workers, in the doctors and nurse who is are signing up for vaccination duty to give people their shots whether it is just the hours that they are doing shots at particular health care faciity of a mass vaccination clanic. they are psyched. they are help to do it. after a year of catastrophe for health workers and ir resolvable, retractable illness and menace to themselves and so much death. here is something that they are now doing that just unequivocally good that people try happily about when they finally get to their place in front of the line. today, the centers for disease control put out guidelines. we expected these late last week but they came out today. advising people who have been fully vaccinated what they can do now that they couldn't do before. among other things, if you can get vaccinated and the people you want to hang out with can also get vaccinated, you really can hang out with them together. at home without masks and without social distance. small groups of fully vaccinated people can be together in the home without taking precautions. that means yes to a hug. they're saying no in terms of unnecessary travel. getting vaccinated doesn't mean you can hop onto next flight to the place you most missed visiting. cdc says no change as well for vaccinated people in terms of still needs to wear mask and do social distancing when out in public. some things in your life will start to open up. let's talk about that. let's talk about that and much more with the drengt tor of the centers for disease control and prevention. it's real privilege to have you here. thank you so much for taking the time. >> thanks for having me. always great to be with you. >> roughly 20%ish of the country has one dose of the vaccine just under 10% of the country is fully vaccinated now. tell me about the bottom line of import of cdc guidelines about how life can change for people who are fully vaccinated. sgla first, i just want to indicate the stories that you just told are the inspiring stories we're hearing every day. we're up to nearly three million people vaccinated a day and we have more and more supply of vaccine coming and we really just want to encourage people to roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated when it's your turn. as you indicated, we're nearly 10% of the population vaccinated but that also means we have 90% of people not yet protected and we intend to take baby steps to make sure that people have hope, bheem have vk si nated can be back with their loved ones in their homes and the privacy of their homes. we are being cautious because 90% of the the population is not quite there yet. >> in terms of the sort of how far the guidance went today for what people are vaccinated can do and what ways they still need to be cautious. talk to me a bit about the travel decision because it seems to me if fully vaccinated people are protected from becoming seriously ill themselves, they are protected getting sick enough they could die from covid. they could infected with mild or asymptommatic and maybe pass it onto somebody else. that understanding about what vaccines do. how does that map on the the guidance that people shouldn't travel? i think i expected that vaccinated people would be told it's okay to fly. >> this is the first initial step of ourp guidance. we do need to -- we will need to and will update the guidance as more as more people get vaccinated. we'll update as if we information about how the dynamics are changing through the country over time. as we have more emerging evidence, here is what we know about travel. we know there's a lot of variants here in this country. some have brought in from travel. others have emanated from inside the country. we know after mass travel, after vacation, holidays, we see a surge in cases. we really want to make sure with 10% of people vaccinated that we're limiting travel. we're avoiding the upcoming surge just as we're trying to get more and more people vaccinated. >> when you said that this today at the white house when you said this was initial guidance and that you did expect that this may evolve, this may change over time. what is the data that we're waiting for in terms of how this -- how advice to vaccinated people may change. is it that we don't necessarily know how the variants will be behave in various populations? is it we don't know enough yet about whether or not vaccines protect people from actually getting the virus and being able to transmit to others even if it doesn't make you, yoirs sick. >> that's right. people who are vaccinated don't get severe disease. they don't hospitalized or die. we don't know they don't get disease at all, the breakthrough infections. when we have seen data from israel, we have seen people can get infected once they get vaccinated. they tend to have a lower amount of virus. breakthrough infections, you tend to have a lower amount of virus than people who are unvaccinated. even so, those asymptommatic vaccinated people with a low amount of virus might still be able to give disease to somebody else. that's what we want to be able to see is that possible. can they still transmit disease because that does have implications for who they might be unmasked with and whether they are at high risk for disease. the more virus circulating, the more variants possible. the variants can emerge and di mennish the effect of the vaccine. while we're vaccinated people, we really want to make sure there's less andless virus circulating that doesn't put our vaccine efficacy at risk. >> i feel like when those of us who aren't health care professionals talk about the vaccine and the variants, a will the of what we talk about is whether the variant strains are susceptible to the vaccine or whether or not they will defeat the vaccine in some way. it sounds like we should be thinking about it the other way too. we immediate to vaccinate as many people as fast as possible as really as suddenly as possible. we need a mass vaccination rate in part to prevent the emergence and circulation of the variants, is that fair? >> you are exactly right. we know that mutation -- the virus mutate and they mutate the more virus you have. the more virus out there and replicating in an individual person and in all of the society, the more likely that variants will emerge which is why we want to keep the case numbers down. we really want the keep the amount of virus down. that will keep the amount of mutations down. as we do that, those mutations won't emerge that put the risk of efficacy of our vaccines. >> that makes clear what we're in is race. it's the virus that we're racing against with our vaccination efforts. it's 2.9 million and hoping we're going to increase that pace. how fast do we need to go on our side of the race in order to out pace the mutating virus. dr. michael olsterholm said we're losing the race. he's predicting another big surge. what are you aiming at in terms of how fast the vaccination efforts need to get? >> i think we need to understand that march and april are critical periods here. we know they are more transmissable than the wild type virus. we have more and more vaccine coming. this is why we have said for the next couple of months, while we are scaling up vaccination as much as we can, as fast as we can, as much vaccine as we can, please, wear your mask. continue with the strategies and give us fighting chance of making sure we can get vaccine into possible as soon as possible. you roll up your slooefr and get et so we can be sure we are winning this race. >> i will say, something uncomfortable and annoying like mask wearing is easier, at least for me, to do. it's easier for me to take as a public health imper tifr and good citizen request if i know that i don't have to do it forever. being told, like, these next couple of months are critical. we can get there. the end is, at least, reasonably in sight. i feel like that's motivating. people who are tired of it ought to feel like we're doing it for a reason and we get to a place where a lot of the measures can be relaxed safely because we have a low enough amount of virus circulating and immunity that we're okay. >> i think you're exactly right. i would say, today to me was a really hopeful day. yes, it was baby steps. people can finally start seeing what a life without mask might look like. i can't tell you how many people texted me on my cell phone while i was giving the press conference to say you mean i can go see my mom again. those baby steps matter a lot. we can spend time with our loved ones again. >> now, at the same time, last week cdc released an mmwr that said, among other things, that mask mandates are associated with decreased transmission and decreased deaths from covid. it was fairly definitive result. they are dropping not only mask mandates but almost all, in texas, all the business restrictions designed to limit the transmission. do these states consult with cdc before they made these decisions? >> i was not aware of any consulting they did with us on these decisions. what i will say is every state, every governor has to make these decisions. i think our guidance has been pretty clear. i think science has been pretty clear. we are asking people to wear masks and i have said before and i'll say again, i do not wear mask because my governor tells me i need to. it protects me, my loved onces and my community. i want to be out of this. >> let me ask you about a policy thing that i can sort of see coming or anticipating is coming that is going to potentially be an interesting either point of conflict or opportunity here depending on how you look at it. if osha, which was sleepwalking, forgive me, for much of the trump administration on covid, in particular. if osha comes out with rules that say workplaces need to protect their employees by requiring masks from everybody on the premises. i don't know that osha will do that. i can definitely anticipate that as a possibility from this it ration of osha. would that effectively create a federal mask mandate at all workplaces regardless of what's happening in individual states. if osha is requiring that for all workplaces, that would mean all restaurants, bars, anywhere anyone works, wouldn't it? >> yeah. i think we're going to have to take this based on where we are at a given period of time. i think we need to be wearing masks. i think it's the right thing to do to protect the public, to protect one another as we have more and more people vaccinated, as vaccinations become, vaccines become available all around the country for anybody who wants it. i think the calculus in that is all of this in who should be wearing masks and when will change. i look forward to the day we get to make those decisions because so many people are vaccinated. >> the last time you were here, we talked about teachers and cdc guidance about reopening schools safely, concerns among people pm adults wo work at schools whether it's teachers, school tafers, janitors, counselors, school bus drivers that whatever the cdc guidance is about how to safely reopen schools, they were concerned about not being vaccinated before that happened. dr. david kessler was here last week and said starting this week, march 8th, teachers and school staffers and school bus drivers and janitors and child care workers would be eligible for vaccines no comorbidity. we saw this going out telling all states whatever is going on in terms of eligibility rules, we expect everybody who works in a school to have one dose of a vaccine. do you think this is plausible that everybody who works in the school can get one dose by tend of march. are you on track to make that happen in. >> i'm really enthusiastic about this. they've said since before i became into the administration that teachers and educators and child care workers and front line workers should be vaccinated in 1b. that's people over the ail of 75. they're now 9,000 pharmacies in the federal pharmacy program that's distributing around two million doses of vaccine a week. yes, i believe that we can do this. we have about five to seven million educators that we need to vaccinate and about 36 states we're already doing this before this program. yes, i believe this is doable. >> newly in states where teachers and school staffers and i stress this includes school bus drivers and people working the cafeteria. everybody who is a school staffer in any way. you're talking to people right now who are in state where is they weren't previously eligible. they are now regardless of age or any comorbidities. do they need to go through this cdc's, federal pharmacy program explainer in order to do this. do they still contact the state normally as if they are a newly eligible group even if they weren't before in month? >> that's going to be state by state situation. i can't speak on generalities. what i can say is that these -- through the federal pharmacy programs, teachers and educators should be able to access vaccine at every state. we're trying to reach a lot of people in 22 days. we're motivated. we have all hands on deck. we have tool kits to try to ensure that teachers can have access. we have stake holders. everybody involved to go full court press to try to make this happen by tend of the month. >> because the trump administration didn't publish reliable covid data. other people tried to pick up the slack. groups like the covid tracking project which did phenomenal public facing work. they closed up shop due to expectation you'll be able to pick up the slack and cdc will become the authoritative source of data about the epidemic. so many of us want to be tracking these things day-to-day. to be frank, as of right now, none of that information, hospitalization numbers, new case numbers, death numbers, vaccination numbers, none of that information is easy to find or well presented even as other people who are good many space are leaving you can take up that room. what are the plans that you've got to improve that so the general public can go to cdc to get the best data on this pandemic. >> data monitorization has been a huge effort with the cdc. this is something we are actively working on. we are relying on data from all states and territories and tribes to compile those data. the infrastructure and data was really thin, has been pretty frail for the last many years. not just because of -- not just during covid and we're actively working to ensure that we have more electronic case rorgt, more happen toir reporting and more reporting from all of these states. it's an active area of work. i really am looking forward to resources from the american rescue plan to help facilitate that. >> interesting. are there other things that are going to be newly possible for cdc because of the covid relief bill, because of the american rescue plan that haven't been possible until now. there's a big chunk of this plan that is -- of this bill that's targeted to improve the covid response. what's in that bill that will make your job easier and the cdc more capable. >> there's so many component offense that bill from vaccine roll out, vaccine education, engagement, testing. there are many things that are components of the american rescue plan that we will deeply rely on in the months and year ahead. the public health infrastructure of this country has really suffered over the last decade. 56,000 jobs have been lost in public health in the last decade. 180 in this last year alone. if we are going to build a public health infrastructure that is able to tackle issues such as h1n1. we have all seen them in the last year as the public health infrastructure has opinion frail and covid-19. we need a public health infrastructure. we need resources to pay for the work force. we need laboratories. all of that is -- i'm looking forward to and data monitorization as you noted. >> one last question for you. for all the progress that we have made, we are still up nearly 60,000 new infections per day. i was interested to see dr. fauci briefs on progress in anti-virals. how close do you think we are to effective anti-viral treatment so people who do get infected, tens of thousands of americans getting infected every day now. how close are we to something that will a cure for people that get infected who do get sick? >> i think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact we made extraordinary progress in 14 months with this disease. we have three vaccines that are safe, effective. they have been proven in clinical trials. we have more work to do in therapeutics. new investigational drugs that dr. fauci talked about today. this virus will be with us for some period of time and i think we'll have some period of time to start working on further antivirals. we have them for inpatients. we have them at our iv. we need more potent therapies. >> it is really an honor to have you here tonight. thank you very much for making the time. i don't know you don't have to do it. >> thank you so much for having me. much more to get to. stay with us. me much more to get to. stay wh itus (woman) what should we do with it first? (man) road trip. (woman) yes. (woman) off-road trip. (man) how hot is the diablo chili? (waitress) well, you've got to sign a waiver. [loud laughter] (woman) is this even a road? (man) yeah. (woman) so what should we do second? (vo male) the subaru forester. the most adventurous forester ev