INDIANA CONFIRMS 1ST OMICRON CASE

INDIANAPOLIS — Tests have confirmed Indiana’s first known case of the COVID-19 Omicron variant, state health officials announced Sunday.

The Omicron infection was detected in a test sample collected from an unvaccinated Indiana resident, the Indiana Department of Health said. No information about the patient was released, with the health department citing privacy laws.

The test sample was collected Dec. 9, and the Omicron variant was detected this weekend, the health department said.

Indiana was one of just seven states in which Omicron had not yet been detected after first being identified last month, according to health officials.

Indiana is averaging about 40 COVID deaths per day this month, and hospitalizations with the illness have topped 3,000 people for the first time in nearly a year.

YouTube TV restores access to Disney after dispute resolved

NEW YORK — YouTube TV began restoring access to Disney content after a dispute between the companies led to an interruption of service over the weekend.

YouTube told viewers Sunday they were restoring service so customers could once again watch networks provided by Disney such as ESPN, FX, National Geographic and local ABC stations.

During the outage, viewers lost access to all live Disney content including recordings they had saved to their libraries.

The outage stemmed from a breakdown in negotiations between YouTube and Disney over the contract between the companies, which expired late Friday. YouTube had wanted Disney to charge the company the same rate to carry its content that it charged other TV providers of similar size. The companies reached agreement Sunday.

YouTube apologized for the disruption and said it would provide a $15 credit to impacted customers.