Tag: pandemic

Scientists are seeing signals that COVID-19′s alarming omicron wave may have peaked in Britain and is about to do the same in the U.S., at which point cases may start dropping off dramatically.

IN SUMMARY The Emergency Broadband Benefit program offers a subsidy each month toward broadband service for eligible households. The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the need for universal broadband access. Without reliable high-speed internet, it is difficult for students to attend online classes and for parents to work at home.

Why are so many vaccinated people getting COVID-19 lately? A couple of factors are at play, starting with the emergence of the highly contagious omicron variant. Omicron is more likely to infect people, even if it doesn’t make them very sick, and its surge coincided with the holiday travel season in many places.

In the weeks since the emergence of the Omicron variant, the United States had once again led the world with a record of confirmed cases of COVID-19. In a conversation with Transmission, Columbia Mailman Professor Jeffrey Shaman, a world-renowned authority in infectious disease modeling, says the actual number of infections is many times larger still and they continue to accumulate at a near-exponential pace.

A winter storm that hit the mid-Atlantic on Monday combined with pandemic-caused shortages of airline workers to push flight cancellations to a holiday-season high, creating more frustration for travelers just trying to get home.