state of the pandemic and the united states and dr. fauci will follow with a discussion what we know of ba-5. first i want to talk about how we view this moment and talk about our strategy for manning ba-5. we have been tracking ba-4 and 5 for months. we have been clear-eyed that these kinds of subvariants were always a possibility. we have been watching this virus evolve rapidly and we've been planning and preparing for this moment. and the message that i want to get across to the american people is this, ba-5 is something we're closely monitoring and most importantly we know how to manage it. you know, if we think back to two years ago, we had a very limited set of tools to manage viruses like this. but today, thanks to the president's leadership, and the comprehensive response we've built up over the last 18 months, we have all the capabilities we need to protect the american people, vaccines and boosters, treatments, tests, masks, ventilation and so much more. but beyond having these capabilities, we have the infrastructure we need to make these tools widely available and easily accessible. dr. fauci will discuss in much greater detail, but i want to emphasize, we can prevent serious illness and keep people out of the hospital and especially the icu, we can save lives and minimize the disruption caused by covid-19. and even in the face of ba-5, the tools we have continue to work. we are at a point in the pandemic where most covid-19 deaths are preventible. our strategy to manage ba-5 relies on making sure americans continue to easy and convenient access to the tools. we'll continue mobilizing the entire federal government working with state and federal leaders, health care providers, employers, community-based organizations to do this. we are also going to communicate clearly that common steps that americans can take to protect themselves. to that end, let me walk through a few key things every american should know. first, vaccines remain our singlemost important tool to protect people against serious illness, hospitalizations and death. and staying up-to-date is essential as we see ba-5 rise across the country. we encourage all americans to get vaccinated if they haven't already, americans age five and above should get their first booster shot within-- after five months after the initial vaccination and if you haven't, don't delay. do it now. getting vaccinated now will not preclude you from getting a variant-specific vaccine later in this fall or winter. and for people who are 50 years of age or older, my message is simple, if you have not gotten a vaccine shot in the year 2022, if you've not gotten one this year, please go get another vaccine shot. you're eligible for your first booster or second booster, wherever you are in your vaccination schedule, if you've not gotten a vaccine shot this year, go get one now. it could save your life. my second message to all americans is would he have highly effective treatments that work against ba-5. including paxlovid. this is an oral anti-viral that reduces the risk of hospitalizations and death by 90%. we have worked very hard to acquire more of these pills than any other country in the world. and we've moved quickly to make these treatments widely available at more than 41,000 locations across the country. and we've built up a large network of test to treat sites. let me talk about test to treat. these sites are great. people can walk in, they can get tested, and if they're positive, they can speak with a medical provider and if they're eligible, they can get a prescription and have that prescription filled all in one convenient spot. if you test positive in the days and weeks ahead, please consult your health care provider about your eligible for treatment. or please visit covid.gov to find a test to treat location where you can get tested and treated all in one place. treatments can save your life. now, vaccines and treatments will help prevent seriously illness and death. we need to prevent the spread of illness and we have several tools to to that. let's start by talking about testing. as we face ba-5, here is how we think about testing. before attending a large indoor gathering or visiting with a high risk immunocompromised individual please consider taking a test, that's what i do. you don't want to be the person who brings covid to your grand parents or covid to a wedding. the administration has made tests widely available. we've required health insurers to cover at-home tests for free. we've been sending free tests straight to households through covid test.gov. testing not only helps you identify whether you're infected, but it helps prevent spread. another thing that helps prevent infection, and spread, is masks. there is broad consensus in the scientific community that wearing a high quality mask in indoor public spaces is an important tool to control the spread of covid-19. prevents you from getting infected and it pre-vents you from spreading to others. we've made high quality masks widely available and the c.d.c. has developed covid-19 community levels, when an individual had you had consider masking in indoor public place,. we encourage individuals to go to find in their community and mavericks masks are available and finally i want to talk about ventilation. increasing ventilation and putting in air purifiers, can make an enormous difference with spread. if you're a business, a school, or any kind of institution that brings people together indoors, please work to improve the quality of that indoor air. let me close with this, we are closely monitoring ba-5, we're encouraged that serious illness, hospitalizations and deaths have remained relatively low based on the level of infection. that's not by coincidence, by the way, it's not random. it's in large part due to our successful vaccination program, our efforts to get people boosted and making sure that treatment and testing are widely available. let me make another really important point. we are experiencing about 300 to 350 deaths a day. that's unacceptable. it's too high. and we will continue to use the infrastructure we have built and the tools we have to lower suffering and death as we manage ba-5. it's clear with every american doing their part we can get through the ba-5 infection together. with that, let me turn it over to dr. walensky. >> thank you, dr. jha, as always i'm going to walk you through the latest data. seven-day average of hospital admissions is about 5100 per day, while this represents only a slight increase week over week, it does represent a doubling of hospital admissions since early may. the seven-day average of daily deaths are still too high as dr. jha just said, we are at about 350 per day. as you all know by now, each week, c.d.c. updates genomic surveillance data so we can monitor what variants are present in each region of the country. over the last several weeks, om sub lineage ba4 and 5 have been increasing in the united states. these are sublineages of om variants or variations of the initial omicron strain and decedents of the virus that initially circulated in 2020. monitoring closely ba-4 and 5 since it emerged in south africa and we've been reporting on the sublineages in the united states since their detection in april. and the c.d.c.'s weekly cast estimates, ba-5 is to represent 65% of circulating variants and ba-4 is predict today represent 16%. omicron ba-121 is predicted the reminder circulating at about 17%. the data will be made available later today on c.d.c.'s covid data tracker. we do not know yet about the clinical severity of ba-4 and 5 compared to omicron subvariants, but we know it to be more transmissible and immuno evading. people with prior infection of ba-1 or 2, are still at risk with 4 and 5. and c.d.c. is closely monitoring the public health impact they have. several factors will play a role how they will impact the united states and impact of the subvariants will likely be felt different around the country. including the level of vaccination and boosting in communities. the amount of prior infection a community experienced, and the level of public health mitigation measures that are in place. while there's no evidence available to suggest that the ba4 or 5 caused more severe disease and we're still collecting data on the vaccines effectiveness against ba-4 and 5. we know that vaccine effectiveness against severe disease and death remines high for other omicron sublineages and likely for 4 and 5. so staying up-to-date on your covid-19 vaccines provides the best protection against severe outcome. currently, many americans are undervaccinated. meaning they are not up-to-date on their covid-19 vaccine. not all people over the age of 50 have received their first booster dose. of those who have received their first booster dose, only 28% of those over 50 have received a second booster dose. and of those over the age of 65, only 34% have received their second booster dose. so, my message right now is very simple, it's essential that these americans, as dr. jha said, get their second booster shot right away. now, on this slide, our data from april that illustrate the importance of staying up-to-date on your covid-19 vaccines. among those 50 and older those vaccinateed with primary series and one booster dose represented by the navy blue line had four times the risk of dying from covid-19 compared to those who had a primary series and twoor more booster doses, shown by the purple line. this graph shows our covid-19 community levels and allows individuals and communities to take action to protect themselves and others based on their local level. they also allow us to focus efforts on protecting those at most severe risk of covid-19 illness and importance the monitoring your local level to know what precautions are needed to protect yourself, loved ones and your community. we update covid levels every week on thursday. last week, c.d.c. reported 32% of the u.s. population is living in a high covid-19 community level represented by orange. in these areas, c.d.c. generally recommends masking policies and that individuals wear a mask in indoor public settings to protect themselves against infection. we reported last thursday that 42% of the u.s. population is living in median community represented by yellow. in these areas, encouraging individuals to make decisions about masking based on their own individual level of risk. to find your covid-19 community level visit c.d.c..gov or covid.gov and type in your community to see your own community level. at c.d.c. we will continue to monitor covid-19 and provide timely updates regarding the latest guidance as we've done throughout the course of the pandemic. we know that as the virus continues to evolve, our response and guidance must evolve with it. thank you and i'll now turn things over to dr. fauci. >> thank you very much, dr. walensky. i'd like to talk a little more specifically now about the evolution of variants, particularly focusing on ba-5. if i could move to the first slide, please. just as a background, as you see here, and you look from june of 2021, how successive variants, due to mutational changes, have essentially bumped one variant off the table after the other, leading to the broader category of omicron, where we are right now. next slide. and if you look at that, that really gets translated into what we've experienced from a public health and clinical standpoint, in the different waves or surges that we in this country have seen, with alpha, delta, and then as you see on the far right, with omicron. but omicron as a broad category has been particularly problematic. next slide. because as you see here, on this family tree of sars-cov-2, which shows the variants that we here in the united states and throughout the world have experienced with alpha, beta, delta, but note that omicron has a broad category has multiple lineages, ba1, 2, ba2.12.1, and 4 and 5, from march to july, how we've had successful evolution and increasing dominance of the ba-4, ba-5, now shown on the slide it's about 70% total whereas ba-5 is more than half and as you'll be hearing from the c.d.c., those data will be updated and showing even greater percentage. why does this happen? next slide. if you look here at this slide, there's increasing growth capacity of new variants. alpha to delta, but notice the big jump when omicron came in in november. it had a much, much greater transmission capability than delta, but over the last several months we've seen each successive variant have had a bit of a transmission advantage over the prior one. and right now, with ba-4, 5 and we don't know what the future will hold as we might get even more subvariants. so let's focus right now for a minute on ba-5, next slide. what do we know about it? as i mentioned it has a growth advantage compared to the earlier omicron subvariants. it substantially evades and induced by people by vaccination and infection. but the vaccine effectiveness against severe disease, fortunately for us, is not reduced substantially or at all compared to other omicron subvariants. next slide. more on ba-5. we know now from experience that we've had over the last couple of months and others in other countries that it doesn't appear to be associated with greater disease severity or hospitalizations compared to the most recent subvariant. also, good news, is that the current anti-virals and map is predicted to work as treatments, as is evusheld predict today work as a pre--exposure, what does that mean? the meaning of sars-cov-2 and variants emerge if the virus circulates globally and in this country. we should not let it disrupt our lives, but we cannot deny that it is a reality that we need to deal with. but as you'll hear from all of us, the good news is that we have the tools to do this. we need to keep the levels of virus to the lowest possible level and that is our best defense. if a virus is not very robustly replicating and spreading, it gives it less of a chance of a mutation which gives it less of a chance of the evolving of another variant. importantly, we have the tools. as you've heard from dr. jha. vaccines continue to have protection against severe disease, however, and this is something that we all recommend, immunity wanes, so it's critical to stay up-to-date with covid-19 vaccines as primary vaccines and as boosters where appropriate. next slide. also, we need to monitor the covid levels in your community, which the c.d.c. does well, and in that regard, follow the c.d.c. guidance for masks and other mitigations, depending upon the density of infection in the community. in addition to, treatments for covid-19 are widely available as you've heard from dr. jha. if you test positive for covid-19, talk to a mecke -- health care provider as soon as possible about treatment options. and once again, the bottom line, something that, a, we don't panic on. b, we don't let it disrupt our lives, but we take it seriously enough and utilize the tools that we have to mitigate. and the final point is looking forward, we are doing now, and it's critical to do so, to develop the next generation of vaccines and therapeutics and for that, we do need the support of the congress and resources for us. i'll stop there and back to you, dr. jha. >> thank you, thank you tony, thank you, rochelle. let's open it up to q & a. and we'll have that moderated from the white house. >> thanks, dr. j. ha. steve miller at associated press. >> thank you all for doing this, just a follow-up on dr. fauci's point there, waning immunity in the recent days, with the administration considering expanding eligibility for fourth shots or second boosters to all adults given that waning immunity. can you update us upon the administration's thinking on that and then on the multi-vaccine development, have orders been placed with that money that you identified last month with manufacturers? how many of those doses do you expect to have in hand for high risk populations once the fall hits? >> two good questions. let me get started on the first one. and then i'm going to-- love to hear from tony on it as well. in terms of opening up boosters to people under 50 or to all adults, let me be very clear, we have conversations all the time about what are possible things we can be doing to better protect the american people so those conversations have been going on for a while. we are also very, very clear, i am very, very clear that these are decisions made by our regulatory agencies, the f.d.a. and the c.d.c. and so i know that the f.d.a. is considering this, looking alt it and i know the c.d.c. scientists are looking at this and the data as well. the decision is purely up to them, but those conversations, as i said, along with a whole other what else can we be doing to protect the american people. >> we'll be leaving now to keep our 40-year commitment gavel to gavel coverage of congress. the u.s. senate come in to debate nominations for alcohol, tobacco firearms and explosives, and at least two votes are expected today. live coverage of the senate on c-span2. the presiding officer: the senate will come to order. the chaplain, the reverend dr. barry black, will open the senate in prayer. the chaplain: let us pray. we acknowledge today, o lord, your power, mercy, and grace. we need your power, for the challenges we face require more than human wisdom and strength. we need your mercy, for we transgress your law and fall short of your glory.