New Year’s Eve party in L.A. is casualty of surge
The nation’s second-largest city called off its New Year’s Eve celebration Monday, and its smallest state reimposed an indoor mask mandate as fears of a potentially devastating winter COVID-19 surge triggered more cancellations and restrictions ahead of the holidays.
Organizers of the New Year’s Eve party planned for downtown Los Angeles’ Grand Park say there will not be an in-person audience. The event will be live-streamed instead, as it was last year. In Rhode Island, a mask mandate took effect Monday for indoor spaces that can hold 250 people or more, such as larger retail stores and churches.
And in Boston, the city’s new Democratic mayor announced to howls of protests and jeers that anyone entering a restaurant, bar or other indoor business will need to show proof of vaccination starting next month.
President Biden is set to address the nation on the latest variant on Tuesday, less than a year after he suggested that the country would essentially be back to normal by Christmas.
Booster promising for omicron
The third shot of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine provides a “reassuring” level of protection against the omicron variant, the pharmaceutical company announced Monday as the newest strain continues to spread rampantly.
The booster shot, the equivalent of half of the dose of the first two, increased antibody levels against omicron by 37 times, based on preliminary data, according to Moderna.
The company’s preliminary study looked at 20 booster recipients at 29 days post-shot.
Long lines for tests as cases spike
Just a couple of weeks ago, New York City seemed like a relative bright spot in the U.S. coronavirus struggle. Now it’s a hot spot, confronting a dizzying spike in cases, scramble for testing, quandary over a major event and exhausting sense of deja vu.
An omicron-variant-fueled wave of cases is washing over the nation’s most populous city, which served as a nightmarish test case for the country early in the pandemic. While health officials say there are important reasons why it’s not spring 2020 all over again, some Broadway shows have abruptly canceled performances, an indoor face mask mandate is back and testing is hard to come by.
“It’s disappointing that we haven’t developed a better system for this and that we weren’t better prepared for there to be another wave,” Jordan Thomas said Monday in her fourth hour of waiting for a test at a city-run health clinic near downtown Brooklyn.
With temperatures hovering near freezing, Nina Clark joined the line for the third time since her symptoms started Thursday. Once again, she
ended up walking away. Nation bans travel to 10 countries
Israeli ministers on Monday agreed to ban travel to the United States, Canada and eight other countries amid the rapid, global spread of the omicron variant.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s office announced the decision following a Cabinet vote.
The rare move to red-list the U.S. comes amid rising coronavirus infections in Israel and marks a change to pandemic practices between the two nations with close diplomatic relations. The U.S. will join a growing list of European countries and other destinations to which Israelis are barred from traveling, and from which returning travelers must remain in quarantine.
Once authorized, the travel ban will take effect at midnight Wednesday morning.
Israel has seen a surge in new cases of the more infectious coronavirus variant in recent weeks, and began closing its borders and restricting travel in late November. Foreign nationals are not allowed to enter, and all Israelis arriving from overseas are required to quarantine — including
people who are vaccinated.
Other countries to be added to the travel ban are Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Switzerland and Turkey.
AUSTRIA Nation reopens as cases drop
As the last few regions in Austria reopened restaurants and hotels on Monday, the country reported fewer than 2,000 new coronavirus cases, lowest number since October.
Austria saw 1,792 new infections in 24 hours, down from daily highs of around 13,000 daily cases in late November — a trend that stands in contrast to rising cases across much of Europe.
The small Alpine nation went into a 20-day lockdown on Nov. 22. National lockdown restrictions were lifted for vaccinated people on Dec. 12.
The capital, Vienna, opted to open shops last week, but kept restaurants and hotels closed until Monday.