When the coronavirus began spreading around the world, the remote Pacific archipelago of Kiribati closed its borders, ensuring the disease didn’t reach its shores for nearly two full years. Kiribati finally began reopening this month, allowing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to charter a plane to bring home 54 of the island nation’s citizens. Many of those aboard were missionaries who had left Kiribati before the border closure to spread the faith abroad for what is commonly known as the Mormon church.

Thirty-one states, as well as Washington, DC and Puerto Rico, are reporting decreasing or plateauing new COVID-19 case averages, ABC News reports, signaling that the massive surge caused by the Omicron (B.1.1.529) variant may be receding.

Howard Stern is calling on Meat Loaf’s family to speak out on vaccines following the rock icon’s death earlier this month. Meat Loaf died Jan. 20. TMZ reported at the time that the singer had been “seriously ill with COVID” and that “his condition quickly became critical.” It’s unknown at this time whether or not Meat Loaf was vaccinated against COVID.

The late rocker Meat Loaf was outspokenly anti-vaccine mandate and anti-mask before his death — once telling a reporter, “If I die, I die, but I’m not going to be controlled,” according to reports Friday. The 74-year-old “Bat Out of Hell” singer — who was reportedly critically ill with COVID-19 before he passed away Thursday — was opposed to pandemic restrictions, slamming lockdowns and mask mandates during an interview last summer.

A folk singer from the Czech Republic has died after deliberately catching Covid, her son has told the BBC. Hana Horka, 57, was unvaccinated and had posted on social media that she was recovering after testing positive, but died two days later. Her son, Jan Rek, said she got infected on purpose when he and his father had the virus, so she could get a recovery pass to access certain venues.

The homeless, the sick, the elderly: For people who fell through the cracks of the official system, the then-unprecedented decision to isolate the central Chinese city of Wuhan and its 13 million people was a matter of life or death.

More than two-thirds of the common side-effects people experience after a Covid jab can be attributed to a negative version of the placebo effect rather than the vaccine itself, researchers claim. Scientists in the US examined data from 12 clinical trials of Covid vaccines and found that the “nocebo effect” accounted for about 76% of all common adverse reactions after the first dose and nearly 52% after the second dose.

New coronavirus cases are falling in parts of the United States hardest hit by the fast-spreading Omicron variant, according to a Reuters analysis of public health data, offering an early indication the virus might once again be on retreat.

New York City and some north-eastern US states appear to be seeing rapid decreases in their numbers of Covid-19 cases in recent days, raising the possibility that the Omicron wave has now already peaked in some parts of America. In New York City the rolling seven-day average of new cases was less than 28,000 a day on 16 January, down from an average of more than 40,000 on 9 January.

Amazon's automated HR systems led to at least one worker being pestered with messages while he was off sick with COVID-19, NBC reports. Illinois Amazon warehouse worker Drew Duzinskas told NBC he tested positive for COVID-19 over the holidays. He said he notified Amazon, but that for days afterwards he received automated texts from the company telling him his balance of paid time off was going down because he was missing shifts.

Long before anyone had heard about Covid-19, Patrick Somerville was pitching Station Eleven as “a postapocalyptic show about joy.” Somerville’s largely faithful adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel’s 2015 novel takes place 20 years after a particularly nasty flu strain has wiped out 99 percent of the world’s population. It’s a world mostly without electricity and the other creature comforts of the reality we know. But unlike on traditional postapocalyptic dramas The Walking Dead or The Stand...

On a visit to a public hospital in a farming community in late November, I saw something that astonished me. Empty beds. Rows of them, their black plastic-covered mattresses stripped of sheets. Blue privacy curtains folded up over rails, out of the way. I had never seen a Zambian hospital like this. When I last toured one, nearly 15 years ago, patients lay two or three to a bed, head-to-feet-to-head. And more on the floor. More on thatch mats in the hallways. The patients were gaunt, their eyes huge above sunken cheeks. Hopelessness and suffering hung in the air.

Even a mild case of COVID-19 can result in higher odds of decreased mobility and physical function for adults aged 50 years and older, according to a new national study, putting a spotlight on how hundreds of thousands could need physical rehabilitation due to this pandemic.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed an executive order aimed at preventing price gouging of at-home COVID-19 test kits. The order, announced Saturday, prohibits sellers from increasing previous prices for the self-test kits by more than 10%. A nationwide shortage of those kits has led to price gouging, with some people reselling the kits for five times as much as they paid for them.

U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has tested positive for a breakthrough case of COVID-19. According to a statement released on Ocasio-Cortez's Twitter on Sunday, the Brooklyn-based Democratic congresswoman is symptomatic, despite being fully vaccinated and boostered.

Hospitals across the United States are postponing elective surgeries to free up staff and beds due to a surge in COVID-19 cases driven by the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus. Administrators say hospital staff shortages have been compounded in the last month by medical practitioners isolating or quarantining as they themselves are infected or exposed to the virus.

The 'Wonder Woman' star posted a video in March 2020 of herself and some famous friends singing the John Lennon hit as a response to the start of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Grichka and Igor Bogdanoff had hosted a TV science and science-fiction show in the 1980s.

Anti-vaccine activists have spent the past few days spreading lies about Betty White, the beloved actress who passed away at 99 years old on Dec. 31. But contrary to internet rumors, Betty White didn’t die after getting a covid-19 booster shot. “Betty died peacefully in her sleep at her home. People are saying her death was related to getting a booster shot three days earlier but that is not true,” White’s agent, Jeff Witjas, told Yahoo Entertainment.

The rapid surge of omicron infections in the United States may be relatively brief, measured in weeks rather than months, according to infectious-disease experts who have been astonished by the speed of the coronavirus variant’s spread — and who are hoping this wave ebbs just as quickly.