Coronavirus cases are rising, nationally and in most states — an ominous trend heading into the week of Thanksgiving.
The big picture: Two-thirds of Americans plan to have Thanksgiving gatherings that resemble their pre-pandemic festivities, according to recent Monmouth University polling. But as cases rise, travel and indoor celebrations will put the millions of unvaccinated Americans at risk.
As many Americans prepare to travel and see loved ones ahead of Thanksgiving, developers and sellers of rapid at-home COVID-19 tests say they are prepared to meet an expected spike in demand for their products.
The big picture: The U.S. has been slower to embrace rapid at-home COVID-19 testing than Europe as regulatory hurdles helped make the tests scarce and overpriced. But the Biden administration has recently allocated billions of dollars to buy millions of rapid at-home COVID-19 tests to increase supply.
Michigan announced a new advisory on Friday, saying that all residents 2 years or older should wear a face mask at indoor gatherings regardless of vaccination status.
The Australian Open will require tennis players to be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus for the tournament in January, tournament director Craig Tiley confirmed in an interview, the New York Times reports.
The big picture: The requirement concludes months of "mixed messages from Australian government officials" on whether or not to implement a vaccine mandate, the Times writes.
The Connecticut Department of Public Health is investigating reports of patients who said they only smoked marijuana, but displayed opioid overdose symptoms and required naloxone for revival.
Driving the news: In one of the cases, the marijuana in question tested positive for containing fentanyl, according to the state's public health agency.
Australian company Fertilis has developed a new petri dish for in-vitro fertilization (IVF) that it says reduces human error and boosts success rates.
Why it matters: As couples increasingly delay childbearing to later in life, the need for effective assisted reproductive technologies like IVF is only expected to grow.
