Biden Conceding News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

♪ you're live in the cnn newsroom. i'm jim acosta in washington. we begin with president biden playing salesman in chief. the white house has been briefing house and senate democrats on the tentative deal to raise the nation's debt ceiling. a source says that a midafternoon phone call between president biden and house spe speaker kevin mccarthy has not happened yet. the call was to finalize the remaining details. experts say a default would be disastrous for the u.s. and global economies and that threat is still looming ominously at this hour. on capitol hill, lawmakers sound lik...

Testing positive for covid. >> many of the omicron cases interestingly are either without symptoms or minimally symptomatic. particularly the breakthrough cases. >> reporter: monday more than 7400 flights were delayed. and the seasonal rush is also creating a heavy demand on covid testing. >> all i can do is wait. several places is the same. >> reporter: testing locations are swamped with lines ramped around for blocks. and president biden conceding the steps he took earlier to scale up testing capacity have been insufficient in the wake of the omicron surge. >> we went there no over-the-count...

Europe. and he thinks that we're weak now -- the united states. he looks at, you know, inflation. he looks at the withdrawal from afghanistan. he looks at all of the domestic problems that president biden has. he looks at disarray in europe. he looks at infections in nato and thinks this is my moment. and as you said earlier, there is also a military moment. he can't keep forces in the field without invading because of the weather and all kind of other issues and so he feels that he has to make a move now. and if it is not going to be another invasion, it's going to be a really concerted effor...

Ukraine, georgia, and any other former-soviet states and on top of that, there is all kinds of other demands and a really heightened rhetoric in moscow about the seriousness of this issue and, i know, how antagonistic the russians see themselves towards the united states at this point. so, as wendy sherman's laid out, this isn't looking -- and putin has clearly given himself the option of moving into ukraine, again. i mean, he's already done it with the annexation of crimea. so we have to remember, this is phase three in many respects of -- of, you know, the pressure that putin's been putting ...

You know, a matter of days. i know that just kind of worried me. >> reporter: despite being boosted, clay's bmi of 35 placed him at higher risk, so clay's doctor prescribed him paxlovid, an antiviral that has been shown to reduce hospitalizations by nearly 90% among those at highest risk for developing severe disease. >> they are a game changer. and have the potential to -- to dramatically alter the impact of covid-19. >> reporter: paxlovid is a combination of oral pills that work by interfering with the virus's ability to replicate. based on paxlovid's high efficacy, the 20 million courses bo...