you're interested in a vaccine, how about this weekend instead? 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. nascar track, which is a place my brother-in-law paul is intimately familiar with. my brother-in-law loves nascar. loves it. he loves all kinds of car racing from formula one to drag racing. motorcycle stuff, everything. 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. yeah. the answer from him was yes please. i will get up early and get my vaccine there. 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 bull's eye on her in terms of 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. susan's mom and my brother-in-law went together, stuck their arms out the car window and they're all done. 11,000-plus new hampshire residents fully vaccinated in one weekend at the nascar track. all with one-dose vaccine. 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 over 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 finally hit 2 million vaccine shots administered in a single day. we talked about that last week. hit that record first time last week. on saturday, we shattered the record. we just hit 2 million last week, then saturday, we just hit 2.9 million shots in one day. absolutely fantastic. that was on the day the senate passed the covid relief bill as well. so we get this $1.9 trillion relief bill and 2.9 million vaccines administered that day. it's great day. that is more where we need to be. numbers can be alienating. particularly big numbers. man, does this have a personal effect 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 finally get their shots, right? it's like you didn't know what that stress had been doing to you until it's lifted. for me and susan, 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, somebody 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 nurses who 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 facility or a mass vaccination clinic, they are psyched. so happy to be able to do it. after a year of catastrophe for health workers and irresolvable, intractable illness and menace to themselves and so much death. here is something that they are now doing that just unequivocally good that people cry 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 without masks. if everybody is fully vaccinated that means yes to the poker foursome, mom and dad, 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 director of the centers for disease control and prevention. cdc director dr. rochelle walensky here for interview. 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. >> 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 3 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, people who are vaccinated can be back with their loved ones in their homes and the privacy of their homes. while still 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. but still a slight chance they could infected with mild or asymptomatic infection, slight chance to maybe pass it on to 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 our guidance. we do need to -- we will need to and will update the guidance as more as more people get vaccinated. we'll update it as we have 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 you just reiterated here. 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, yourself, sick? >> that's right. we know from clinical trials that 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 other countries, emerging 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 asymptomatic 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 other point is as you said. the more virus circulating, the more variants possible. those variants can emernl and diminish the effects of the vaccine. while we're vaccinating people, we really want to make sure there's less and less 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 lot of what we talk about is whether or not the variant strains of the virus 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 need 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 rna viruses 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, specifically the mutating virus that we're racing against with our vaccination efforts. makes me happy we're speeding up efforts, it's 2.9 million and hoping we're going to increase that pace. dr. asheesh dr. ashish ja said he was hoping we could get up to 4 million doses a day. 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. saying that variants are transmitting fast enough our pace of vaccination isn't enough to stave off another big surge. how fast do we need to be going? 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 transmissible 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 people as soon as possible. and as individuals, when that vaccine is available to you, roll up your sleeve and get it so we can really be sure we are winning this race. >> just at psychological level, 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 imperative 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. provided we push through and finish strong. 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 high enough level of 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. then get news out of texas and mississippi, now wyoming, they are dropping mask mandates just as time you're saying are crucial finish strong last couple of months, 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. i wear mask because it protects me, my loved onces and my community. and because 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 iteration of osha at this time in the pandemic. if that did happen, 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, adults who work at schools, whether it's teachers, school bus drivers, janitors, counsellors, 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 matter their comorbidity. we saw this directive go out from hhs telling all states whatever is going on in terms of eligibility rules, by end of march we expect everybody who works in a school to have one dose of a vaccine. just wanted to ask you if this is live and active, if you think it's plausible everybody who works in school can get at least one dose by end of march? are you on track to make that happen? >> i'm really enthusiastic about this. advisory committee has said since before i came into the administration that teachers and educators and child care workers and front line workers should be vaccinated in 1b. that's with people over the age of 75. they're now 9,000 pharmacies in the federal pharmacy program that are distributing around 2 million doses of vaccine a week. yes, i believe that we can do this. we have about 5 million to 7 million educators that we need to vaccinate and about 36 states were 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 states where 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 this 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. it's a high bar, we're trying to reach a lot of people in 28 days or 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 the end 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. throughout the pandemic. 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. not just for practitioners and experts but also for the general public because 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 on the cdc's website right now, even as other people who are good in that 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 again? >> 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 reporting, more laboratory 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? obviously, there's a big chunk of this plan that is -- of this bill that's targeted to improve the covid response. not just rolling out vaccine but everything else. what's in that bill that will make your job easier and the cdc more capable? >> there's so many component of that bill from vaccine rollout, 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. i will say that the public health infrastructure of this country has really suffered over the