TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — China is trying to navigate its biggest coronavirus outbreak without a tool it could have adopted many months ago, the kind of vaccines that have proven to offer the best protection against the worst outcomes from COVID-19.
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Tuesday that authorities were prepared for an anticipated increase in migrants crossing the border from Mexico, days before a public health order is set to end after being used to turn people away nearly 2 million times without a chance to seek asylum.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea on Wednesday added hundreds of thousands of infections to its growing pandemic caseload but also said that a million people have already recovered from suspected COVID-19 just a week after disclosing an outbreak, a public health crisis it appears to be trying to manage in isolation as global experts express deep concern about dire consequences.
LAFAYETTE, Louisiana (AP) — An attorney arguing for 24 states urged a federal judge Friday to block Biden administration plans to lift pandemic-related restrictions on migrants requesting asylum, saying the decision was made without sufficient consideration on the effects the move could have on public health and law enforcement.
BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand’s public health minister, who has spearheaded the country’s drive to decriminalize cannabis, says the government will distribute 1 million of the plants free when most legal restrictions on production and possession of the drug are lifted next month.
PHOENIX (AP) — Mary Francis had no qualms about being a poster child for COVID-19 vaccinations on the Navajo Nation, once a virus hot spot. The Navajo woman's face and words grace a digital flyer asking people on the Native American reservation to get vaccinated "to protect the shidine'e (my people)."
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Sluggishness, poor compliance with existing rules and little help from state public health officials crippled the response by Gov. J.B. Pritzker's administration to a November 2020 COVID-19 outbreak at a northern Illinois veterans home that claimed 36 lives, according to a state audit released Thursday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Following through on a campaign promise, the Biden administration on Thursday announced a wide-ranging enforcement strategy aimed at holding industrial polluters accountable for damage done to poor and minority communities.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration has begun expelling Cubans and Nicaraguans to Mexico under pandemic-related powers to deny migrants a chance to seek asylum, expanding use of the rule even as it publicly says it has been trying to unwind it, officials said Wednesday.
Black and Hispanic Americans remain far more cautious in their approach to COVID-19 than white Americans, recent polls show, reflecting diverging preferences on how to deal with the pandemic as federal, state and local restrictions fall by the wayside.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa is seeing a rapid rise in COVID-19 cases driven by yet another version of the coronavirus, health experts say.
Cases had been dropping in the country since February.
Moderna is seeking to be the first to offer COVID-19 vaccine for the youngest American children, as it asked the Food and Drug Administration Thursday to clear low-dose shots for babies, toddlers and preschoolers.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Nearly 2,000 homeless people died in Los Angeles County during the first year of the pandemic, an increase of 56% from the previous year, driven mainly by drug overdoses, authorities said.
Boston urged people to start wearing masks Thursday and the Biden administration weighed its next legal step in what is shaping up to be a high-stakes court fight over the abrupt end of the national mask mandate on airplanes and mass transit.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is filing an appeal seeking to overturn a judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs, officials said.
The notice came minutes after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked the Justice Department to appeal the decision handed down by a federal judge in Florida earlier this week.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is filing an appeal seeking to overturn a judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs, officials said Wednesday.
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Sweden’s former chief epidemiologist, considered the architect of the country's unconventional response to the coronavirus pandemic, isn’t going to work for the World Health Organization after all.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Migrants attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border at the highest level in two decades as the U.S. prepares for even larger numbers with the expected lifting of a pandemic-era order that turned away asylum seekers.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Thousands of people including truckers and firefighters from across the country gathered Sunday outside Los Angeles City Hall to protest vaccination mandates designed to slow the spread of COVID-19.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday proposed a rule to finally ban asbestos, a carcinogen that is still used in some chlorine bleach, brake pads and other products and kills thousands of Americans every year.