Walensky also pointed out that numbers of COVID hospitalizations generally include patients who go to hospitals for other reasons and just happen to test positive while they are there, as opposed to those who go to the hospital because they are sick with COVID.
"In some hospitals that we've talked to, up to 40% of the patients who are coming in with COVID are coming in not because they're sick with COVID but because they're coming in with something else and have had COVID or the omicron variant detected," she said.
Walensky did not have a number of how many children are on ventilators. Urging Americans to get vaccinated, she said she believes many hospitals do not have any vaccinated children on ventilators.