NIAID director Anthony Fauci told CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday that health officials are considering revising masking guidelines for vaccinated Americans.
Why it matters: Fauci said that the United States is "going in the wrong direction" as cases surge across the country, driven by the more contagious Delta variant.
Naomi Osaka's Tokyo Olympic Games are off to a winning start, after Japan's tennis superstar beat China's Zheng Saisai 6-1, 6-4 in the first round Sunday.
The Department of Justice has decided not to launch a civil rights investigation into whether policies in New York, Pennsylvania and Michigan contributed to pandemic deaths in nursing homes, according to a letter sent to Republicans.
Why it matters: The Trump DOJ requested data from the three states plus New Jersey last August "amid still-unanswered questions about whether some states, especially New York, inadvertently worsened the pandemic death toll by requiring nursing homes to accept residents previously hospitalized for COVID-19," per AP.
Latino children in the U.S. are twiceas likely to be uninsured as non-Latino children, according to an analysis by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.
Why it matters: More than 1.8 million Latino children in the U.S. have not had health insurance since before the pandemic, putting them at greater risk for COVID-19. The virus has hit Latinos especially hard, resulting in higher infection rates, hospitalizations and unemployment.
The big picture: There have been 7.8 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, per million doses among adults, which is higher than expected in the general population, according to CDC data.
Florida, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota have recently curtailed their COVID-19 daily reporting, shifting to weekly or monthly updates despite witnessing upticks in virus-related cases, hospitalizations and deaths, AP reports.
Why it matters: The trend of reducing reporting worries some health care experts, many of whom believe more data is better amid the pandemic. Some people treat state virus dashboards as essentials help make decisions social gatherings mask wearing, and broad community risk.
TOKYO — The COVID rule-breaking was obvious at Friday's opening ceremony, when athletes were clearly visible on TV with masks below their noses, but an athlete tells Axios that the rule-breaking has been going on well before that.
It's been happening at least since athletes arrived in the Olympic Village, where masks were dropped below noses and different teams were forced to share buses.
As the Delta variant continues to drive a fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic in the U.S., Biden officials see a booster shot among at least some vaccinated Americans as increasingly likely.
Why it matters: Another round of shots — beginning as early as late fall — could not only boost the level of protection against the virus among the vaccinated, but also help curb its spread throughout the population.
