will not participate or attend in the president's speech. we'll have more on why in a moment. lots to get to this morning. our reporters, correspondents, guests, standing by to bring you the latest. >> but we begin this morning with the new covid infection surging to near record levels. cnn's senior medical correspondent elizabeth cohen joins us with more and, elizabeth, breakthrough infections now account for a growing share of hospitalizations. but we should note the risk to the unvaccinated still remains very high. >> that's right, bianna. the bottom line here is that with omicron, if you're fully vaccinated or even better fully vaccinated and boosted, your chances of ending up in the hospital are really teeny tiny. if you're unvaccinated, omicron poses a much, much more serious threat to you. so, hospitalizations as we can see in this graph, hospitalizations are surging, surging, surging. i do want to add some context to this. these are hospitalizations of