Omicron: Biden warns of winter with 'severe illness and death' as COVID-19 cases rise

Yahoo Finance Live's Julie Hyman and Brian Sozzi examine the latest data on rising COVID cases in the U.S. and President Biden's statements regarding the pandemic, in addition to looking at how companies are delaying or suspending their return-to-office plans.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: We begin this morning with what is going on in terms of COVID cases. And that's because yesterday felt once again like an inflection point, a turning point, an important day in this pandemic. And that's because we seem to be getting an acceleration of case counts here in the United States. According to data collected from the CDC, reported by The New York Times and other outlets, the two-week change in COVID cases in the United States is 31%. A 31% increase with the daily average now hovering around 120,000 of new cases being reported.

And scientists are saying that Omicron in the United States could soon overtake Delta because of its easy transmissibility. Nationally, the share of cases caused by Omicron has risen to 2.9% from 0.4%. That has happened in just a week's time. That again, according to the CDC, and it's higher in some areas of the country. Of course, some of the cases that we're seeing, the new cases we're seeing, we don't know exactly which types of cases they are.

In New York City specifically, which of course, has been a locus for the virus at different points along the pandemic, test positivity has been doubling over the past three days. That's according to a health advisor to the mayor. As of December 12th, the positivity rate among tests 7.8% up from just 3.9% on December 9th. So that is what we're seeing here. And we heard from President Biden yesterday, who was warning once again that this spike that we're seeing is going to be especially acute for the unvaccinated.

- We are looking at a winter of severe illness and death on unvaccinated. For themselves, their families, and the hospital, they'll soon overwhelm but there's good news. If you're vaccinated and you have your booster shot, you're protected from severe illness and death.

JULIE HYMAN: And on that point, in terms of the number of vaccinations here in the United States, 72% of all Americans have had at least one dose. 61% are considered fully vaccinated here. And then, you can see the numbers are much higher for those who are 65 and older. And there are also higher interestingly if you include just ages 12 and up. So in other words, younger people, either those who are not eligible yet for the vaccine or those who have just become eligible like younger kids, their rate is lower as one might expect.

Brian Sozzi, I want to talk about some of the company reactions but just quickly want to mention, you and I on an anecdotal basis have been talking a lot about this as well. Just the fact that people we know have been getting COVID, even those who are fully vaccinated, and events have been canceled.

BRIAN SOZZI: Yeah. At first, your first blush is wow, maybe this is just a local news thing. But clearly, it's definitely not. I mean, I was outside of Wall Street yesterday, and there was a mobile testing site set up about 35 people deep. And you drive by a lot of the health clinics here in New York, you're seeing lines backed up outside. Really long, long lines for people to get tested. Really taking back to what we saw at the start of the pandemic. Now of course, Julie, the positive thing is here, people, a lot of people in this country are in fact vaccinated, but you do have to wonder about the potential market impact as people are going back out there, getting tested and potentially getting effect with the Omicron variant.