Rationing Testing News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Um, and you want to be able to get a diagnosis so you can receive those. and then, other people are, you know, high-risk people that may still be vulnerable despite vaccination. so, people who are elderly. you know, 65, 70, or older who can still be hospitalized or die just by vaccination. and people with severe immune deficiencies. they -- they don't respond as well to the vaccine, and so they still are quite vulnerable and so having people around them test, asymptomatic caregivers, friends, family, social contacts, kind of helps keep the virus away from those people. so those -- that can be ...

We really have to ration now treatments because paxlovid is not going to be here in abundance in time for this omicron wave. and now, we have got two of our most important monoclonal antibodies knocked out, the lily and regeneron monoclonal antibodies do not work against omicron. all we have is the gsk monoclonal antibody and that is not available. so how do you ration paxlovid? how do you ration limited quantities of the gsk monoclonal antibody? and the answer is you want to make certain that person is actually infected and -- and have that test so i think that makes a lot of sense. and then,...

Bigger -- well, there's two big concerns. one, it's ridiculous year three in this pandemic and now we are rationing testing. we shouldn't have to be in that place but unfortunately that is eat reality. but here's -- here is the -- the other issue is the fact that as much as we're rationing testing, we really have to ration now treatments because paxlovid is not going to be here in abundance in time for this omicron wave. and now, we have got two of our most important monoclonal antibodies knocked out, the lily and regeneron monoclonal anlt bodies do not work against omicron. gsk, their monoclo...

Fact that we even have to have this discussion about rational -- rationing testing at this point. >> yeah. i mean, dr. hotez, i mean, i know it doesn't make any sense to you. why -- why are we in this situation? i mean, obviously, you know, i mean, it -- it's -- there's been two administrations now in which testing has not been adequate. >> it's -- it is never gotten off the ground and -- and from the very beginning, we have had -- we have struggled with this. and now -- of course, now we have some guidelines that are -- add some confusion. and actually, now send a mixed message because you kn...