SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California became the first state to formally shift to an “endemic” approach to the coronavirus with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s announcement Thursday of a plan that emphasizes prevention and quick reaction to outbreaks over mandated masking and business ...
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea will extend restaurant dining hours but maintain a six-person limit on private social gatherings as it wrestles with a massive coronavirus wave driven by the highly infectious omicron variant. The 109,831 new cases reported on Friday was another record and about a 25-fold increase from the levels seen in mid-January, when omicron became the country’s dominant strain. The more than 516,000 infections counted in the past seven days alone raised South Korea's caseload to over 1.75 million. Long lines snaked around public health offices and ...
HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong’s Fung Shing Restaurant was bustling this week as customers came for one last taste of the traditional Cantonese dim sum that has made it famous. With COVID-19 restrictions cutting too deeply into its bottom line, the restaurant will shut its doors for good on Sunday, another economic victim of the pandemic. Many fear the worst is yet to come with Hong Kong experiencing its most severe outbreak, and fret the authorities’ determination to stick to mainland China’s “zero-tolerance” strategy may prevent it from recovering as a financial and travel ...
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina’s capital and its surrounding county will end their broad indoor mask requirements within stores and other public places later this month. Friday’s decision covers the city of Raleigh, several other municipalities within Wake County and the county’s unincorporated areas. It comes a day after Gov. Roy Cooper encouraged local governments and school systems to end mask mandates. COVID-19 case and hospitalization rates are falling as the surge involving the omicron variant has ebbed. “The recent trends are all pointing in the right ...
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona health officials will soon go from releasing new state COVID-19 statistics every day to every week. Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona, who has been a special adviser to Gov. Doug Ducey, announced the change Friday on the state Department of Health Services’ website. In a blog post, Carmona said it was the right time to cut down to updating the state dashboard weekly “with all COVID-19 metrics steadily declining.” He says the daily reporting requires a lot of work and time from hospitals and state health officials. The post also had ...
DENVER (AP) — Citing declining COVID-19 hospitalizations as the omicron coronavirus variant wanes, Colorado on Thursday deactivated its crisis standards of care that enabled hospitals and emergency medical responders to prioritize the needs of the most sick and injured and allocate staff as needed to respond to the crisis. The announcement came as top health officials expressed cautious optimism that infections and hospitalizations will continue to decline in the coming months and possibly reach lows last seen in the summer of 2021. Modeling by the state health department suggests ...
