We begin tonight with the latest wave of Covid infections making it feel like December of 2020. As an example, New York City is once again the epicenter of this stage of the pandemic and it’s not alone, New Jersey, Florida, Delaware and Massachusetts also recently reported new daily records. This as the national average of new infections approaches at all time high set almost one year ago. Meanwhile, some experts are questioning the new CDC isolation guidelines. Long Covid testing lines remain throughout the country, with waiting time toping four hours in parts of Florida. The recent surge in cases has spurred another wave of postponements and cancelations. Airlines canceled more than one thousand domestic flights today, adding to the misery of air travelers still trying to return home from the holidays. And the CDC has now identified nearly ninety cruise ships where Covid outbreaks have been detected. And in the sports world, the Holiday Bowl in San Diego was canceled just hours before kickoff, become the fifth bowl game Covid casualty so far.

The CDC is now saying the Omicron variant is responsible for nearly sixty percent of all Covid cases across the country as of Christmas day. The highly contagious variant is ravaging New York City. Here in Manhattan, one in fifty residents tested positive just in the past week. Tonight, New York’s Covid numbers soaring high as skyscrapers. The city has seen its Covid case average climbed to more than twenty thousand a day, a nearly eleven-fold in last month. New York is now reporting more new cases per capita than in any other states. Across the country, hospitals are starting to feel the impact. Just after Thanksgiving, Jackson Health in Miami had thirty-seven Covid patients, it now has over two hundred. In Massachusetts, new cases are skyrocketing, it’s now one of the seven states reporting record high daily affections, more cases than at any time since the start of pandemic. Testing sites overwhelmed, lines still stretched for hours. The misery continues at the nation’s airports. Today alone, more than a thousand flights canceled, over five thousand US cancelations since Christmas Eve, some it due to staff shortages fueled by the Omicron variant. And tonight, more reaction to the new CDC guidelines, which cut the suggested isolation time for those who test positive and are asymptomatic from ten days to five. But there are some pushback from the Associations of Flight Attendants, which says it could create an unsafe work environment, which will cost a much greater disruption than any staffing shortages.