The Rockefeller Foundation announced the launch of the Global Vaccination Initiative, a $55 million investment over two years to support country-led efforts to fully vaccinate 90% of the most at-risk populations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.

Worldwide demand for Pfizer Inc.’s oral COVID-19 antiviral treatment Paxlovid has been unexpectedly light due to complicated eligibility requirements, reduced testing and potential for drug interactions, a Reuters review of data and interviews with experts found.

The BA.2 Omicron subvariant of the coronavirus is responsible for 86% of U.S. COVID-19 cases and more than 90% of infections in the Northeast, according to data on April 12 from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The U.S. national public health agency said on April 4 the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron was estimated to account for nearly three of every four coronavirus variants in the country.

The U.S. national public health agency said on March 29 that the BA.2 sub-variant of Omicron was estimated to account for more than half the coronavirus variants in the country.

A sub-variant of the highly transmissible Omicron version of coronavirus known as BA.2 is now dominant worldwide, prompting surges in many countries in Europe and Asia and raising concern over the potential for a new wave in the United States.

A World Health Organization spokesperson said on March 18 that the end of the COVID-19 pandemic was a long way off, citing a rise in cases in the WHO’s latest weekly data.

One in four children with COVID-19 symptoms develop “long COVID,” according to data pooled from 21 earlier studies conducted in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America. Also, according to a study reported on March 14 in JAMA Pediatrics, women who wish to pass protective antibodies induced by COVID-19 vaccines to their babies via breast milk should opt for the mRNA shots from Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech.

Asia passed the grim milestone of 1 million coronavirus-linked deaths on March 11, a Reuters tally showed, as a spike in Omicron variant infections spreads across the region after starting in nations such as Japan and South Korea.

Malaysian researchers found that treatment with the anti-parasite drug ivermectin did not prevent patients with COVID-19 from becoming severely ill in a randomized clinical trial published in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal on February 18.