After 18 months of wondering when this will all be over, it's increasingly clear that there will never be a moment of victory for vaccines against variants or humanity against the virus.
The big picture: Case counts remain stubbornly high even where just about everyone who wants a shot has had one. Countries like Australia and New Zealand that had sought to keep out COVID-19 altogether are now learning to live with the virus.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued an executive order Monday prohibiting COVID-19 vaccine mandates by any "entity," including employers, if someone objects to the vaccine for "any reason of personal conscience."
Why it matters: The new executive order goes further than the Republican governor's previous vaccine mandate ban passed in August, which prohibited vaccine mandates by any state government entity or entities that received public funds.
Merck said Monday it submitted an application to the Food and Drug Administration for an emergency use authorization for molnupiravir, its experimental antiviral COVID-19 treatment.
Why it matters: An oral antiviral drug designed to prevent or treat COVID-19 could be a key tool to combat the pandemic, and Merck's drug, which it developed with Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, could be the first one authorized in the United States.
Nine out of 10 Medicare Advantage members are enrolled in plans that earned the government's highest quality marks for 2022, according to new federal data.
A growing part of the U.S. will face an increased risk of critical infrastructure, like emergency services and hospitals, being rendered inoperable due to severe flooding linked to climate change over the next 30 years, a report out Monday from the First Street Foundation shows.
The big picture: Hospital systems are increasingly being disrupted due to climate-fueled weather disasters like more intense hurricanes, flooding, heatwaves and, in some cases, cold snaps, and have to harden their infrastructure.
New Zealand officials announced Monday that COVID-19 vaccines would soon be mandatory for most workers in the education and health sectors.
Why it matters: The country is battling an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant, with Auckland the epicenter. NZ's most populous city has been under lockdown restrictions since August.
Sydney businesses reopened Monday after more than 100 days of lockdown measures implemented by Australian authorities.
The big picture: Some bars and entertainment venues in the city of 5 million residents opened at 12:01am, as most restrictions were relaxed for fully vaccinated people in the New South Wales state capital amid declining coronavirus cases.
Pfizer will vaccinate all residents over the age of 12 in the Brazilian city of Toledo as part of a study measuring the effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine, the company said in a statement.
Why it matters: Researchers in the study hope to monitor viral transmission in a real-life scenario after the population has been inoculated.
Parents and kids can trick or treat outdoors safely this Halloween, especially if they are vaccinated, NIAID director Anthony Fauci told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.
Why it matters: During the program, Fauci noted that COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the U.S. are declining, calling it “good news."
Hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members remain unvaccinated ahead of the impending deadlines set by the individual service branches, the Washington Post reports.
Driving the news: The deadlines for active-duty members are quickly approaching, and while the military's overall vaccination rate has increased, it is still shy of full compliance.
National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins said Saturday on CNN that it's "truly heartbreaking" to see fellow evangelical Christians hesitant to get vaccinated against COVID-19 due to disinformation.
Why it matters: "We see still more than 1,000 people [per day] losing their lives to this disease — almost all of those unvaccinated and, therefore, didn't have to happen," said Collins, who's due to retire at the end of 2021.
The big picture: He and his wife, Angela West, both tested positive for the virus, according to statements posted to the former Texas GOP chair's Twitter account. He wasn't vaccinated against the coronavirus, but Angela West was.
