announced more than 44,000 new cases. that's a 14% jump from just yesterday's record-breaking day and washington, d.c. is reporting a whopping 386% increase in infections over the last week. it's a -- it's all against this broc drop that the cdc is making a big change announcing it's shortening the isolate period for covid positive health care workers. they can now return to work after seven days of a negative test instead of waiting ten days, all in the hopes of relieving some of the intense strain put pont health care system. cnn's elizabeth cohen starts us off this hour live with more details on this. elizabeth, what's driving this decision by the cdc? >> so, hops which are already so overloaded, kate, they could get even more overload federal a lot of health care workers, doctors, nurses and others get infected with omicron and have to stay home even though they might not be terribly sick so the cdc has