The White House said on January 6 the decision to enact vaccine mandates for schools is up to local school districts.
Top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci warned on January 5 against complacency about the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, saying the sheer number of cases could strain hospitals despite signs of lower severity.
The United States reported nearly 1 million new coronavirus infections on January 3, the highest daily tally of any country in the world and nearly double the previous U.S. peak set one week earlier as the spread of the Omicron variant showed no signs of slowing.
Illinois will require all eligible students and school employees to be vaccinated and re-instituted an indoor mask mandate under an order announced by Governor J.B. Pritzker on Aug. 26.
New York City will require public school teachers and staff to get vaccinated against Covid-19, Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Aug. 23, part of a push to get more residents inoculated and slow the spread of the highly contagious Delta variant.
Walmart Inc. is preparing to offer Covid-19 vaccinations in seven more states, as well as in Chicago and Puerto Rico, expanding beyond the two states where the company’s pharmacists are offering inoculations.
Chicago’s mayor issued a month-long stay-at-home advisory, and Detroit’s public schools called a halt to in-person instruction to curb the spread of the coronavirus as more than a dozen U.S. states reported a doubling of new Covid-19 cases in the last two weeks.
Students in Boston’s public schools will shift to remote learning due to the rising Covid-19 infection rate in the city that was ravaged by the pandemic in the spring.
The number of new Covid-19 cases among children in the United States rose 40% in the last two weeks of July, according to a report released just weeks before tens of millions of American students are scheduled to begin the new school year.
Americans were back on the road after more than two months of coronavirus lockdowns that kept them homebound, with beach-area traffic tripling since the low point in mid-April.