The NPR Politics Podcast - Despite Early Warnings Of An Omicron Surge, Testing Remains A Problem Nationwide

Episode Date: December 27, 2021

Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said officials knew there would be a surge from the Omicron variant since early data became available from South Africa. Despite that, COVID-19 tests have been incredibly hard to come by as cases continue to rise.This episode: voting and disinformation reporter Miles Parks, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, and health reporter Pien Huang.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's Tamara Keith, and it's that time of year again when we come to you and ask for a little bit of help. Every day we are here in your podcast feed, and there is so much that goes into gathering the facts and explaining what they mean, and also making us sound good. And in order to keep this going, we need your support. By donating to your local NPR station, you are not only helping your station bring you local news that matters in your community, and that is really important, but you're also helping us cover the White House and Congress. Your donation is crucial, from your hometown all the way to Washington and everywhere in between. To help us out, go to donate.npr.org slash politics to get started.

And thank you. Hi, my name is Annalise Weidman, and I'm here with my family at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, getting ready to see the park's lights for the first time this season. This podcast is recorded at 2.07 p.m. on December 27th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'll be admiring the lights with my family. Enjoy the show. Dollywood. Dollywood is great. I actually went there as a kid. Oh, really? It's an amazing place. It is. It's very cool. Lots of fun. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting and misinformation. And I'm As'm Miles Parks. I cover voting and misinformation.

And I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And Ping Wong is here from NPR's Science Desk. Hi, Ping. Hey, Miles. Hey, Asma. Hey there. So Omicron continues to scramble things in the United States. We've got hundreds of canceled flights, lots of affected football, including my fantasy football team, and the number of daily cases are still climbing. Ping, can you just start there, not talking including my fantasy football team, and the number of daily cases are still climbing. Ping, can you just start there, not talking about my fantasy football team, but talk about an overview of what COVID looks like in the country right now?

Yeah, well, case counts are really exploding across the country right now. You know, we're seeing record surges in cities, including San Francisco, Seattle, New York, D.C. Where I'm at right now has seen a five-fold jump in two weeks. And Chicago has seen 10,000 cases in one day. And all these numbers might not even be the full picture because testing has been really hard to access recently. You know, today Biden met with governors across the country. And at this meeting, Governor Asa Hutchinson from Arkansas said that getting COVID tested is still hard for people to find in a timely way. But still, the silver lining here is that while hospitalizations are rising, they're not rising as fast as they were at the beginning of the pandemic or even in the surge last fall. Yeah, that's been a little kind of like a

disconnect here. We're seeing all these cases rise. And yet I think people are feeling a little confused on just how scared to be right now, because obviously this is still a big threat for those Americans, millions of Americans that are unvaccinated. But what do we know about how this variant is impacting folks who are vaccinated at this point? So I think that's a really good question, and it kind of gets to the heart of why hospitalization rates might not actually be rising as fast. We saw a report from the UK government last week, and it showed that people who were vaccinated were still getting Omicron, but they just weren't getting very sick from it. Omicron does seem to be slightly less severe than the Delta variant, like 10 to 20% less. And, you know, it also seems more likely to attack the cells in the upper airways, less likely to get way down in

the lungs. So for people who are vaccine protected, it means even if they to attack the cells in the upper airways, less likely to get way down in the lungs. So for people who are vaccine protected, it means even if they do get Omicron, they're not likely to get very sick from it. But as you mentioned, it's still a huge threat for people who are unvaccinated. Even if Omicron is less severe than Delta, the damage it causes is still, as far as we know, about the same as the original COVID strains. So vaccine protection, boosters, really key right now in keeping hospitalization rates from rising as quickly as they have in the past. Asma, I want to turn to you. Last week, Biden said during a speech that Americans should

not worry about gathering together for the holidays as long as they were vaccinated and boosted. But now, over the last few days, we're seeing these cases rising. You know, we're hearing about how hard it is to get tests all over the country. And all of this travel is still continuing. Are there any regrets from the administration at this point on how this information about the holidays was presented to Americans? I don't think that I've heard any regrets from the White House about that message in particular. Right. And I actually asked the White House press secretary last week about sort of what is the message for families with children under the age of five who cannot be vaccinated. And, you know, you ask different administration officials this and they would encourage you to get tested. Now, this is where the hiccup is. As Ping was saying, you can't find tests in a lot of places. And I think that if there is any point of regret that I've heard from the president in the last week, it's been expressing some regret, acknowledging that there is more work to do around testing.

He has touted the fact that his administration has greatly expanded the use of at-home, over-the-counter tests. And that is true. But, you know, even in his conversation today with governors, he said it's not enough. It's clearly not enough. If we had known, he said we would have gone harder, quicker if we could have. And that echoes some comments we heard in an interview we gave to ABC last week as well, just saying is the case now, I guess I'm just left wondering, why was the White House seemingly caught on its back foot here? And we have long, it seems, known that there could be future variants. Why wasn't there a surge in testing, I don't know, that a lot of public health experts are asking right now. You know, Omicron came a month ago, right around Thanksgiving. It's been increasing exponentially every week from 1% to 12% to 73% of all cases in the U.S. Modelers told us that it could take over very quickly, and it's happened even sooner than they initially predicted. And I think we have some tape from Rochelle Olenski, the CDC director, talking with Judy Woodruff from PBS NewsHour about how they actually did see this coming. We have been following carefully the science and we have been working hard as we anticipated

this because we knew that Omicron had this capacity to increase at this rate. So, you know, the question is, if they did know right around Thanksgiving when we first started seeing those cases that Omicron was going to potentially increase this rate, why, you know, a month later, do we still feel like there's been a bit of a flat-footed response? And I guess the next question, too, is looking ahead, when are more tests going to be available? Has the Biden administration said anything at this point, Asma, about when this problem is going to get fixed or get better? So NPR had the White House chief medical advisor, Anthony Fauci, on Morning Edition. And he did also acknowledge that there may not be the necessary number of tests that

people want over the holidays. But he seemed to suggest that by January, this should be rectified to some degree. You know, starting in the new year, you'll be able to file reimbursement claims with your insurance to get compensated for these at-home over-the-counter tests. They can, you know, cost up to about, say, like 20 bucks for two, but that'll add up if you keep getting tested. And so you'll begin to get reimbursements with your insurance company. But the other big notable thing, starting in January, is that the White House says you'll be able to go online and order tests for free. It is very unclear as to how many tests per person you'll be able to order and when exactly

this website will be available. But that is, you know, a fundamental change than the way people have been able to access tests so far. Okay, so I want to turn from the current administration to the previous administration for a second. We had some new comments over the last week from former President Trump in favor of the COVID vaccines, which is a big deal because we know from polling that people who voted for President Biden have been more likely to get vaccinated than those who voted in November for former President Trump. So here's Trump last week in an interview with The Daily Wire's Candace Owens. Well, no, the vaccine worked, but some people aren't taking it. The ones that get very sick and go to the hospital are the ones that don't take their vaccine.

But it's still their choice. And if you take the vaccine, you're protected. Look, the results of the vaccine are very good. And if you do get it, it's a very minor form. People aren't dying when they take the vaccine. Asma, that right there is about as strong of a defense of these vaccines as we have seen so far this year from Trump. What has been the response to those comments? And, you know, the former president also acknowledged that he's gotten a booster shot. I will say from this White House, they have been publicly spreading former President Donald Trump's

message. Look, I mean, it has been hard to get the message out convincingly to a subset of the population that you need to get vaccinated and you need to get boosted now. And I think the greatest validator for many folks who have been resistant could potentially be Donald Trump. And hearing this from the former president say that it is a good thing to do and that you will not die if you get the vaccine is something that's hugely important. Now, will this go further? I don't know. I mean, I think a lot of us reporters have been curious in asking the White House, is there any way in which you all might have some sort of

like public service announcement or cooperation with the former president? It doesn't look like, you know, that's at all in the works. But there is an acknowledgement that there is a part of this population that has been resistant to vaccinations. And no matter how many times Joe Biden or one of his medical advisors goes out there and tells people they ought to do this, that is not convincing folks at all. Now, will it be enough to hear from Donald Trump, the former president? I don't know. I mean, I guess we'll have to see where vaccination rates go over the next couple of months. All right, let's take a quick break, and we will talk more about all of this when we get back. And we are back. Ping, while we've got you here, I think it's also worth talking about some of the medical progress beyond vaccines

around COVID-19 that have happened, including pills that have helped to cut the severity of cases. Can you tell us a little bit more about this? Yes. So last week, the FDA authorized the first take-at-home COVID treatment. It's a series of antiviral pills called Paxlovid from Pfizer. And for people at high risk of COVID, it reduces the risk of hospitalization or death by 88%. It's new, it needs to be taken within five days of first getting symptoms, and it's not widely available yet. See, the government has a contract with Pfizer to buy 10 million courses, but the government says that they only have 65,000 courses of treatment going out to various states this month. When it does become widely available,

though, it could be a game changer. You know, currently, the only drugs available to stop people with mild COVID from getting worse are monoclonal antibodies. And these are expensive to make and to administer, you know, someone has to go into an infusion clinic and get an IV to get one. And some of these monoclonal antibodies don't actually seem to be working very well against Omicron. So these pills, when they are widely available, would be a really helpful tool. Asma, is there a discussion at this point within the administration about expanding mandates, vaccine mandates for things like domestic flights? I mean, that's a question that's posed to this White House every couple of weeks,

particularly because there is a vaccine mandate and a testing requirement to enter the United States from abroad. And, you know, folks have been asking, why is there such a mandate for international travel, but not domestic travel, especially as we've begun to see cases really skyrocket around the holidays? And, you know, folks kind of anticipated that. Look, I don't really see politically that being something that is politically popular at all. And I think it's a real big challenge for the administration. We have already seen how much opposition there was to masking, then to vaccines and mandates themselves.

That being said, though, Ping, I've got a question for you. It seems like the consistent message we have been hearing from this White House is vaccination is the way to end this pandemic. But it's been going on for many, many months now. And I'm curious what you're hearing from public health experts. Is that really the way to go? I do think that that is something that I've been hearing a lot from public health experts, which is to say, yes, we are in a different place right now in this pandemic than we were at the beginning of it or even in past surges. You know, we have some people vaccinated. We need more people to be vaccinated. We have new tools available. We have these pills. But we still need to not forget the need to also keep up with these other public health measures that we have been talking about

over and over again. For instance, you know, public health experts are now saying that even though the CDC has continued to recommend a two-ply cotton mask, it may be time for everyone to be upping their mask game, you know, wearing KN95 masks, KF94 masks, double masking if you're wearing surgical masks. I mean, to your point, Pink, today at the briefing that I was at, we saw Anthony Fauci, CDC director, they were all wearing what appeared to be N95 masks. But it's interesting that they are doing that themselves in the White House, but we're not seeing that message to the public. Exactly right. health experts are telling me and our listeners that we need to really be wearing masks that are more protective, especially against Omicron, which seems to be spreading about three times as fast as the Delta variant. But, you know, the CDC has not updated their mask guidance. And, you know,

we're still not seeing contact tracing where it needs to be, you know, people still need to be isolating and they need to be knowing, like, the proper procedures to follow if you're exposed or, or, you know, if you test positive for COVID. But those those messages seem to have fallen by the wayside of the get vaccinated, get boosted message. All right, well, let's leave it there for now. Ping Wong, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for having me. I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting and disinformation. And I'm Asma Khalid. I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting and disinformation. And I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.