The White House estimates the country will see 100 million COVID-19 infections by fall and winter.

The estimate is based on several models, a Biden administration official told CNN.

The estimate was first reported by the Washington Post.

Officials say the 100 million case estimate could be avoided if precautions are taken and if the government receives more funding for resources, including updated vaccines and more testing.

Pfizer and Moderna are working to update their vaccines by the fall. But the country may not have enough money to buy enough vaccines for everyone.

That’s why the administration is asking Congress for more than $22 billion in aid.

Officials warn that if they don’t receive enough emergency aid funding, certain supplies, including antiviral drug Paxlovid, could run out as early as October.

As of Monday, Johns Hopkins University data shows that more than 997,570 people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S.

Officials told CNN the White House will commemorate the moment the country reaches the grim milestone.

BOSTON —

Since the start of the pandemic, Adjoa Anyane Yeboa's day-to-day schedule has changed.

"I was able to find more flexibility in my work life in order to take time and finally take time and do something for me," Yeboa said.

More work from home means more time to make plans for the future. For Yeboa, who's in her mid-30s, that means family planning.

"I've been thinking about egg freezing for a long time and only recently I finally decided to take the leap," Yeboa said.

Fertility experts say egg freezing has spiked about 20% during the pandemic.

"I see so many people settling for their partners or rushing to find somebody and to get engaged and get married because they're beating a clock and I didn't want to have to do that," Yeboa said. " I wanted to do things on my timeline."

Dr. Rachel Ashby, a reproductive endocrinologist and fertility specialist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston says there are key COVID-19 reasons more women are making the personal decision to freeze their eggs, including how isolation impacted relationships.

"The pandemic has delayed a lot of social interaction, so for people who were dating and planning on dating and looking for partners," Ashby said. "There were a lot of patients I've seen that were in a long-term relationship with this idea that this person I plan to build a family around, and the relationship did not survive."

There's been more time to think and for many, to turn to science.

The egg freezing process takes about two weeks and involves daily injections of FSH hormones to stimulate the ovaries to grow as many eggs as possible.

Then, the eggs are retrieved and preserved in a lab in subzero temperatures to be used at a later date.

"The biggest thing for women to know is that travel is not easily accomplished because you're coming in every few days, usually at 6:30 to 7 a.m. for bloodwork or ultrasound," Ashby said. "Over that two-week time frame, the follicles go from very small to mature."

Ashby says women who are thinking about doing this should focus on getting all the information first, to see if it makes sense for them.

The process can run anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 to freeze your eggs.

Ashby says more and more companies are including egg freezing in their health insurance but you should make sure your coverage also includes medication.

She cautions there are no guarantees, so potential patients should ask a lot of questions about fertility and see what's best for them.

Data shows that more men have died of COVID-19 than women.

Between April of 2020 and May of 2021, men accounted for 55% of COVID-19 deaths, Harvard researchers found.

Now a new study is shining light as to what may be helping women better survive the disease.

A study published in the journal, Family Practice, revealed that estrogen may help lower mortality rates among women.

UK researchers looked at women who received hormone replacement therapy six months after they were diagnosed with coronavirus.

The therapy helps restore estrogen levels during menopause.

Researchers found that women who received the therapy had a 78% lower mortality rate, from all diseases stemming from COVID, than women who did not go through the therapy.

Nearly 20 million lives were saved by COVID-19 vaccines during their first year, but even more, deaths could have been prevented if international targets for the shots had been reached, researchers reported Thursday.

On Dec. 8, 2020, a retired shop clerk in England received the first shot in what would become a global vaccination campaign. Over the next 12 months, more than 4.3 billion people around the world lined up for the vaccines.

The effort, though marred by persisting inequities, prevented deaths on an unimaginable scale, said Oliver Watson of Imperial College London, who led the new modeling study.

"Catastrophic would be the first word that comes to mind," Watson said of the outcome if vaccines hadn't been available to fight the coronavirus. The findings "quantify just how much worse the pandemic could have been if we did not have these vaccines."

The researchers used data from 185 countries to estimate that vaccines prevented 4.2 million COVID-19 deaths in India, 1.9 million in the United States, 1 million in Brazil, 631,000 in France and 507,000 in the United Kingdom.

An additional 600,000 deaths would have been prevented if the World Health Organization target of 40% vaccination coverage by the end of 2021 had been met, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases.

The main finding — 19.8 million COVID-19 deaths were prevented — is based on estimates of how many more deaths than usual occurred during the time period. Using only reported COVID-19 deaths, the same model yielded 14.4 million deaths averted by vaccines.

The London scientists excluded China because of uncertainty around the pandemic's effect on deaths there and its huge population.

The study has other limitations. The researchers did not include how the virus might have mutated differently in the absence of vaccines. And they did not factor in how lockdowns or mask-wearing might have changed if vaccines weren't available.

Another modeling group used a different approach to estimate that 16.3 million COVID-19 deaths were averted by vaccines. That work, by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation in Seattle, has not been published.

In the real world, people wear masks more often when cases are surging, said the institute's Ali Mokdad, and 2021's delta wave without vaccines would have prompted a major policy response.

"We may disagree on the number as scientists, but we all agree that COVID vaccines saved lots of lives," Mokdad said.

The findings underscore both the achievements and the shortcomings of the vaccination campaign, said Adam Finn of Bristol Medical School in England, who like Mokdad was not involved in the study.

"Although we did pretty well this time — we saved millions and millions of lives — we could have done better and we should do better in the future," Finn said.

Funding came from several groups including the WHO; the UK Medical Research Council; Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Newsy is the nation’s only free 24/7 national news network. You can find Newsy using your TV’s digital antenna or stream for free. See all the ways you can watch Newsy here.

It started late 2021 with some tongue-in-cheek Tweets about bad Amazon reviews for Yankee Candles. 

Could they be a canary in the coal mind for a COVID surge to come? 

Northeastern University Assistant Professor and Researcher Nick Beauchamp was curious.  

He'd been looking at social media impacting COVID-19 data. His next hypothesis included the COVID symptom of anosmia, aka loss of smell.  

"I downloaded a bunch of review data, counted up the references to no smell or no scent and sort of shared a plot of that curve, which indeed matches the COVID curve," Beauchamp said.   

He then looked beyond candles, adding perfume reviews to the data and eventually publishing his findings.

"I try, in the project, to sort of check to see whether it holds for perfume. Yeah, it does hold for perfume ... Does it hold for flu? No, it doesn't hold for flu. Does it work even when you control for the sort of seasonality of both COVID and candle purchases and complaints? Yes, it seems to survive that," Beauchamp continued. 

His 2021 results, COVID cases predicted negative reviews but negative reviews did not predict cases.

SEE MORE: COVID-19 Survivors Still Dealing With Lingering Symptoms

"It's possible, or plausible, that the rise in complaints was actually due to COVID, you know, with all the usual caveats, but that the reviews themselves were not super good at giving us a heads up on when cases were rising," Beauchamp said.

He ran the numbers again June 2022 and found bad reviews went out and then cases went up.  

Beauchamp has visited the numbers again this month. He says so far, in October, the bad reviews have been on the rise for the past two months, cases have stayed flat or declined over the same period.  

Important to note: Case tracking has been impacted by factors like at-home testing. The CDC has also moved from daily case and death counts to weekly ones. 

Health experts are predicting a modest fall and winter wave, going off current case increases in Europe.   

Meanwhile, Beauchamp says the candle data is just interesting and funny, nothing more. But the research has impacted how his family thinks about health.

"We haven't taken to sniffing candles to test ourselves, but, you know, we are fairly cautious—and I think, probably because I spend time working on this—more cautious than the average household," he said.

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Trending stories at Newsy.com

WASHINGTON —

U.S. officials released an intelligence report Friday that rejected some points raised by those who argue COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab, instead reiterating that American spy agencies remain divided over how the pandemic began.

The report was issued at the behest of Congress, which in March passed a bill giving U.S. intelligence 90 days to declassify intelligence related to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Intelligence officials under President Joe Biden have been pushed by lawmakers to release more material about the origins of COVID-19. But they have repeatedly argued China's official obstruction of independent reviews has made it perhaps impossible to determine how the pandemic began.

The newest report angered some Republicans who have argued the administration is wrongly withholding classified information and researchers who accuse the U.S. of not being forthcoming.

John Ratcliffe, who served as U.S. director of national intelligence under former President Donald Trump, accused the Biden administration of “continued obfuscation.”

“The lab leak is the only theory supported by science, intelligence, and common sense,” Ratcliffe said in a statement.

There was newfound interest from researchers following the revelation earlier this year that the Department of Energy's intelligence arm had issued a report arguing for a lab-related incident.

Video below: US doctor on latest COVID-19 vaccine recommendations

But Friday’s report said the intelligence community has not gone further. Four agencies still believe the virus was transferred from animals to humans, and two agencies — the Energy Department and the FBI — believe the virus leaked from a lab. The CIA and another agency have not made an assessment.

Located in the city where the pandemic is believed to have began, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has faced intense scrutiny for its previous research into bat coronaviruses and its reported security lapses.

The lab genetically engineered viruses as part of its research, the report said, including efforts to combine different viruses.

But the report says U.S. intelligence “has no information, however, indicating that any WIV genetic engineering work has involved SARS-CoV-2, a close progenitor, or a backbone virus that is closely-related enough to have been the source of the pandemic.”

And reports of several lab researchers falling ill with respiratory symptoms in fall 2019 are also inconclusive, the report argues.

U.S. intelligence, the report said, “continues to assess that this information neither supports nor refutes either hypothesis of the pandemic's origins because the researchers' symptoms could have been caused by a number of diseases and some of the symptoms were not consistent with COVID-19."

Responding to the report, the Republican chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and a select subcommittee on the pandemic jointly said they had gathered information in favor of the lab leak hypothesis. Reps. Mike Turner and Brad Wenstrup, both of Ohio, credited the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence for taking a “promising step toward transparency.”

“While we appreciate the report from ODNI, the corroboration of all available evidence along with further investigation into the origins of COVID-19 must continue,” Turner and Wenstrup said.

But Alina Chan, a molecular biologist who has long argued the virus may have originated in the Wuhan lab, noted the public version of the report did not include the names of researchers who fell sick or other details mandated by Congress.

The bill requiring the review allowed intelligence officials to redact information publicly to protect agency sources and methods.

“It’s getting very difficult to believe that the government is not trying to hide what they know about #OriginOfCovid when you see a report like this that contains none of the requested info,” Chan tweeted.

More than 600 million cases worldwide: COVID-19 has changed the world.

Though there are still those who've dodged it.

COVID-19 "superdodgers" who've been exposed to the virus plenty but never got sick.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates nearly half the population has never caught the virus and some scientists are working to learn why.

At the University of California San Fransisco and Rockefeller University in New York, researchers are studying to see if genetics play a role.

At Marquette University, assistant professor Dr. Nilanjan Lodh studies human genetics and infectious disease.

"There might be something physiologically going on there, which is good to know," Lodh said.

He thinks physicians could use the genetic information for future medicine, he doesn't believe people are simply born with superdodger immune systems.

"Kind of like the course of your actions throughout your life, that helps the immunity build up slowly," Lodh said. "It's not like one-day stuff. You're acquiring that immunity over time."

Lodh said what we eat, how often we exercise, where we live and what viruses we've been exposed to all contribute to one's current immunity.

Dr. Mary Beth Graham works in the division of infectious disease at Froedtert and the Medical College of Wisconsin.

"I find this to be interesting science. I don't know that it turns into that we can make it translational," Graham said. "They're looking at people's HLA type to see, is there something about that HLA type which makes them more susceptible?"

HLA are proteins found on most human cells, used by the immune system to recognize which cells belong in the body and which do not.

Graham said she too has never gotten COVID-19, officially. Though she isn't sure if you can chalk it up to her genetics.

"You can't say with 100% assurance I've never seen the virus before because the virus has been here for a couple of years," Graham said. "So what if I could have been exposed a few years ago? Would those antibodies still be prevalent?"

Graham also said testing genes is expensive and she doesn't see, when it comes to COVID-19, how it would help anyone.

"It is fascinating, but we can't go in and change our HLA type," Graham said. "It doesn't naturally lead into a new type of treatment."

Both researchers said picking up the virus, may be inevitable.

"Sometimes you might get COVID but you don't realize you have it," Lodh said.

So are there COVID-19 superdodgers out there? Nobody really knows for certain.

Doctors still say your best chance at avoiding serious or even fatal symptoms is to get vaccinated, but Dr. Graham and Dr. Lodh both said it's probably unlikely anyone will dodge COVID-19 forever.

"It's catchy," Graham said about the term 'superdodgers.'

"I probably don't believe people are really dodging stuff. This virus is mutating very rapidly, compared to any other virus that we know," Lodh said.

There is some additional certainty from our scientists.

As flu, RSV and other illnesses spread this winter, experts warn having those viruses will lower people's immunity.

Leaving everyone more vulnerable to COVID-19

Watch the video above for the full story.

Researchers are on the cusp of rolling out a new vaccine to combat the respiratory syncytial virus amid an increase in cases in recent months.RSV has become the second leading cause of hospitalization, and tens of thousands of people a year die from it. Children under 2 and adults older than 60 are most at risk for serious disease, and a vaccine has been elusive -- until now."It will be a huge, huge breakthrough for us to have an RSV vaccine available," said Dr. James Campbell, professor of pediatrics and the University of Maryland School of Medicine.RELATED: Sinai pediatrician describes ICU availability amid increase in RSV casesModerna released preliminary results of their vaccine for RSV that shows it's more than 80% effective at preventing serious disease in people older than 60. The company is preparing to submit the vaccine to the Food and Drug Administration for approval, which follows submissions from Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline late last year."The Pfizer vaccine, they also relayed results on giving that same vaccine to pregnant women, and then what happens is the antibodies the woman makes, gets passed through the placenta into the baby, and they showed very good protection in the first three months of life," Campbell said.Clinical trials are underway on a vaccine for babies and young children, who are among the high-risk groups for developing complications and dying from RSV.RELATED: Maryland hospitals concerned over surge of children with RSVThese would be the first RSV vaccines approved, which would be a feat because researchers have been working on them since the 1960s. Moderna's version uses the mRNA technology made famous by its COVID-19 vaccine."The reason why they could move so quickly on the COVID vaccine was because they had already been studying this RSV vaccine that we're just learning about now, and they used that same technology, and a lot of the tricks they found from that, in order to develop the COVID vaccine," Campbell said.RSV video playlist below:Campbell cautioned the results in the RSV vaccine study are preliminary and are not yet peer-reviewed, so while promising, he's waiting for the full details."That doesn't take away that this is really exciting news, but I think everyone should be waiting to see what the final, all the data show for this vaccine and the other RSV vaccines," Campbell said.Campbell said researchers are hopeful that some of these vaccines will be approved in time for RSV season in the fall.LINK: Maryland Department of Health website for RSV

WASHINGTON —

Video above: Doctor compares current COVID-19 strains to original virus

A crucial question has eluded governments and health agencies around the world since the COVID-19 pandemic began: Did the virus originate in animals or leak from a Chinese lab?

Now, the U.S. Department of Energy has assessed with "low confidence" that it began with a lab leak, according to a person familiar with the report who wasn't authorized to discuss it. The report has not been made public.

But others in the U.S. intelligence community disagree.

"There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how COVID started," John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, said Monday. "There is just not an intelligence community consensus."

The DOE's conclusion was first reported over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal, which said the classified report was based on new intelligence and noted in an update to a 2021 document. The DOE oversees a national network of labs.

White House officials on Monday declined to confirm press reports about the assessment.

In 2021, officials released an intelligence report summary that said four members of the U.S. intelligence community believed with low confidence that the virus was first transmitted from an animal to a human, and a fifth believed with moderate confidence that the first human infection was linked to a lab.

While some scientists are open to the lab-leak theory, others continue to believe the virus came from animals, mutated, and jumped into people — as has happened in the past with viruses. Experts say the true origin of the pandemic may not be known for many years — if ever.

Calls for more investigation

The U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the report. All 18 offices of the U.S. intelligence community had access to the information the DOE used in reaching its assessment.

Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, said she isn't sure what new intelligence the agencies had, but "it's reasonable to infer" it relates to activities at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. She said a 2018 research proposal co-authored by scientists there and their U.S. collaborators "essentially described a blueprint for COVID-like viruses."

"Less than two years later, such a virus was causing an outbreak in the city," she said.

The Wuhan institute had been studying coronaviruses for years, in part because of widespread concerns — tracing back to SARS — that coronaviruses could be the source of the next pandemic.

No intelligence agency has said they believe the coronavirus that caused COVID-19 was released intentionally. The unclassified 2021 summary was clear on this point, saying: "We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon."

"Lab accidents happen at a surprising frequency. A lot of people don't really hear about lab accidents because they're not talked about publicly," said Chan, who co-authored a book about the search for COVID-19 origins. Such accidents "underscore a need to make work with highly dangerous pathogens more transparent and more accountable."

Last year, the World Health Organization recommended a deeper probe into a possible lab accident. Chan said she hopes the latest report sparks more investigation in the United States.

China has called the suggestion that COVID-19 came from a Chinese laboratory " baseless."

Support for animal theory

Many scientists believe the animal-to-human theory of the coronavirus remains much more plausible. They theorize it emerged in the wild and jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through another animal.

In a 2021 research paper in the journal Cell, scientists said the COVID-19 virus, is the ninth documented coronavirus to infect humans — and all the previous ones originated in animals.

Two studies, published last year by the journal Science, bolstered the animal origin theory. That research found that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan was likely the early epicenter. Scientists concluded that the virus likely spilled from animals into people two separate times.

"The scientific literature contains essentially nothing but original research articles that support a natural origin of this virus pandemic," said Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona who has extensively studied COVID-19's origins.

He said the fact that others in the intelligence community looked at the same information as the DOE and "it apparently didn't move the needle speaks volumes." He said he takes such intelligence assessments with a grain of salt because he doesn't think the people making them "have the scientific expertise ... to really understand the most important evidence that they need to understand."

The U.S. should be more transparent and release the new intelligence that apparently swayed the DOE, Worobey said.

Reaction to the report

The DOE conclusion comes to light as House Republicans have been using their new majority power to investigate all aspects of the pandemic, including the origin, as well as what they contend were officials' efforts to conceal the fact that it leaked from a lab in Wuhan. Earlier this month, Republicans sent letters to Dr. Anthony Fauci, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines, Health Secretary Xavier Beccera and others as part of their investigative efforts.

The now-retired Fauci, who served as the country's top infectious disease expert under both Republican and Democratic presidents, has called the GOP criticism nonsense.

Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has asked the Biden administration to provide Congress with "a full and thorough" briefing on the report and the evidence behind it.

Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, emphasized that President Joe Biden believes it's important to know what happened "so we can better prevent future pandemics" but that such research "must be done in a safe and secure manner and as transparent as possible to the rest of the world."

___

AP reporters Farnoush Amiri, Nomaan Merchant and Seung Min Kim contributed. Ungar reported from Louisville, Kentucky.

North Korea imported more than 1 million facial masks and 15,000 pairs of rubber gloves from China in July, shortly before declaring victory over COVID-19, Chinese trade figures show.Pyongyang last week declared victory over the coronavirus, ending a little-detailed fight against "fever" cases that had risen to 4.77 million in the country of around 26 million people. It has registered no new such cases since July 29.Still, China exported 1.23 million facial masks to North Korea in July, worth $44,307, surging from 17,000 the previous month, according to data released by Chinese customs at the weekend.From January to July, the last month for which data is available, the North bought more than 11.93 million masks from China, data showed.North Korea did not import any COVID-19 prevention and control products from China in May, the data showed.China's overall exports to North Korea surged to $59.74 million in July from $19.05 million in June.Top exports were semi- or wholly milled rice, cigarettes, disodium carbonate and smoked sheets of natural rubber.North Korea bought $5.16 million worth of semi- or wholly milled rice, $1.98 million of soybean oil and fractions, and $1.21 million of granulated sugar in July, the Chinese customs data showed.China suspended cross-border freight train services with North Korea following consultations due to COVID-19 infections in its border city of Dandong, China's Foreign Ministry said on April 29.

While the CDC has eased its mask-wearing requirements, there are still more than 470 counties across the country where masks are recommended, due to high COVID-19 case numbers.

That’s according to the latest data from the CDC.

Experts tell CNN that many places that have high COVID-19 levels have low vaccination rates, limited access to health resources or may still be dealing with the contagious omicron variant.

Some of those counties never had mask mandates in place or lifted mask mandates early in the pandemic.

The CDC recommends people wear masks indoors if they live in counties with high levels of COVID-19.

Severity levels are determined by the number of new COVID-19 hospital admissions and inpatient beds occupied.

About 7% of the population in the U.S. lives in an area with high COVID-19 numbers, which is a decrease from last week.

Most adults in the United States agree that the worst of the coronavirus pandemic has passed, but they're divided over concerns and expectations for what's next, according to a survey published Tuesday by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

At this stage of the pandemic, opinions on masking and other restrictions aimed to minimize the spread are mixed — with a split largely down party lines.

Overall in the U.S., more than 60% of adults say they are concerned about the consequences of lifting restrictions and keeping them in place. But Democrats are far more likely to say they are concerned about the negative effects of lifting restrictions, while Republicans were more likely to be concerned about the negative effects of keeping restrictions in place.

More than 80% of Democrats said they were at least "somewhat" worried that immunocompromised people will be left behind if the government lifts masking restrictions, compared with 30% of Republicans. Democrats were also about three times more likely than Republicans to say that lifting restrictions could lead to more deaths in their community or cause hospitals to become overwhelmed.

About three-quarters of Republicans, meanwhile, said they worry that local businesses would suffer due to loss of revenue, compared with 50% of Democrats.

A majority of both Democrats (56%) and Republicans (73%) said they are worried that the mental health of kids and teenagers will suffer if restrictions are kept in place.

Red and blue states alike have started to lift mask mandates and roll back other pandemic-related restrictions such as vaccination requirements.

But on Friday — just a few days after KFF completed its latest survey — the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shifted the metrics used to drive local masking guidance, dropping the recommendation to mask indoors from 99% of people in the U.S. to less than 30%.

The new CDC recommendations also apply to schools.

Support for masks in schools has fallen since the start of the school year, and parents are now split on the issue, according to the KFF survey.

In September, more than 60% of parents favored some level of masking requirements in school. Now, 43% say masks should be required for all students and staff, 46% say there should be no requirement at all, and 9% say masks should be required only for the unvaccinated in schools.

The partisan divide is clear, with two-thirds of Democrats in support of universal masking requirements in schools and more than three-quarters of Republicans in favor of removing mask requirements completely in schools.

And as masking guidance shifts, vaccinations stagnate.

The KFF survey was fielded right as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration postponed making a decision on whether to authorize a Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for emergency use among children ages 6 months through 4 years.

Nearly 40% of parents of children younger than 5 said that communication from federal health agencies about vaccines for this age group has been confusing. Most say they don't have enough information about their safety and effectiveness, and more than two-thirds say they are not confident that COVID-19 vaccines are safe for young children.

Only about 1 in 5 parents of children younger than 5 says they plan to get their child vaccinated right away once they are eligible, according to the KFF survey.

About a third of children ages 5 to 11 are already vaccinated. But parents of another third of kids in this age group say that they will "definitely not" get their child vaccinated.

On Monday, new data from the New York State Department of Health showed that vaccine effectiveness waned quickly during the omicron surge, especially among children ages 5 to 11, but was still protective against severe disease.

The authors of the preprint study concluded that if other studies repeat these findings, the vaccine dose for younger children may need to be reviewed. The authors also said the data may demonstrate a need to continue "layered protections, including mask-wearing, to prevent infection and transmission" in younger children.

The KFF survey found that vaccination rates are higher for older children, with about 57% of children ages 12 to 17 vaccinated. But parents of another 30% say they will "definitely not" get their adolescent vaccinated.

Overall, vaccination rates among adults have remained largely unchanged, with only about half receiving a booster shot.

Yet more than a third of adults say it's safe to return to pre-pandemic activities.

This is especially true among Republicans (65%) and unvaccinated adults (60%), but it's far less common among Democrats (11%) and vaccinated adults (26%). Only a quarter of adults say it will be at least another year before it will be safe to return to normal.

The vast majority of those surveyed said "normal" life will be different going forward, including continued mask-wearing, continued precautions, changes to the way we work and social distancing.

A new study has found that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is less effective at protecting children from the omicron variant.

Researchers with the New York State Department of Health found that the vaccine's effectiveness dropped from 68% to 12% in children aged 5 through 11 between Dec. 13 through Jan. 24.

But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report on Tuesday that stated the vaccine effectiveness in children between the ages of 5 and 11 after its second dose was 46%.

"Two doses protect against COVID-19–associated emergency department and urgent care encounters among children and adolescents," the CDC report said. "However, vaccine effectiveness (VE) was lower during omicron predominance and decreased with time since vaccination."

The public health officials who conducted the study believe it may be due to the lower dosage they received.

Kids in that age group were given 10 milligrams, while anyone over 12 received 30 milligrams.

The study also found that the effectiveness in children ages 12 to 17 dropped from 66% to 51%.

The study results come as New York City is set to end its mask mandate on March 7, CNBC reported.

Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eased its masking guidelines.

Plummeting COVID-19 case counts across the United States are leading to lifted mask mandates and more conversations about steps toward normalcy — but more people are dying of the coronavirus now than during most points of the pandemic.

More than 2,000 COVID-19 deaths have been reported in the United States each day for the past month. Average daily deaths are falling, but from a very high point. They dipped just below that mark in recent days, to about 1,900 on Monday; the federal holiday may have delayed reporting.

Before omicron became the dominant coronavirus strain in the U.S., there were only about 100 other days when there were more than 2,000 COVID-19 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The only other time that deaths have been this high for this long was during the first winter surge, before vaccines were available. The omicron wave has also been deadlier for longer than the delta surge: In September, when delta was dominant, average daily deaths topped 2,000 for half as long.

More than 120,000 people in the U.S. have died of COVID-19 since omicron became the dominant variant in December, and COVID-19 has accounted for more than 1 in 5 deaths reported in 2022.

A common refrain early in the pandemic was that COVID-19 was most deadly for the elderly and people with certain health conditions. The people dying from COVID-19 now tend to be younger than before, and they're overwhelmingly unvaccinated, experts say.

"I've long since lost track of the number of people I've seen die of the disease, but the reality is that almost everybody who is critically ill, in the ICU or dying now remains unvaccinated. That has been true since the beginning. But in the beginning, people didn't have the opportunity to be vaccinated," said Dr. Stephen Threlkeld, medical director of the infectious diseases program at Baptist Memorial Health Care in Memphis.

"None of us taking care of COVID patients need CDC statistics or anyone else to tell us that, because we simply see that reality play out every day and have for quite some time."

But the data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is clear. In December, the risk of dying from COVID-19 was 14 times higher for unvaccinated adults than it was for adults who were fully vaccinated with their initial series. The gap was even larger when looking at those who also got their booster shot: 51 times higher.

Throughout the pandemic, the majority of COVID-19 deaths have happened in hospitals. But that share is even larger now, as nursing homes have become less of a hotspot. In 2020, more than 1 in 5 COVID-19 deaths was in a nursing home. But in 2022, fewer than 1 in 10 deaths have been in nursing homes, according to provisional data from the CDC.

Vaccination rates are higher among older people in the U.S., leaving a larger share of younger, unvaccinated people at higher risk for severe outcomes.

Nearly 90% of seniors 65 and older are fully vaccinated with their initial vaccine series, and about two-thirds of those eligible have gotten their booster shot. But less than two-thirds of adults under the age of 40 and less than a third of children are fully vaccinated.

And the vaccines are working. Seniors accounted for 81% of COVID-19 deaths in 2020, a number that dropped to 69% in 2021 and has stayed at 76% so far in 2022, despite the increased risk for breakthrough infection amid exponential community spread.

"The virus simply went to the fuel that it had remaining," Threlkeld said.

Racial disparities in COVID-19 deaths persist, but have decreased over time. Black, Hispanic and American Indian people are still about twice as likely to die of COVID-19 than white people, but that risk has fallen from about three times higher at the end of 2020.

And white people, who are less likely to be vaccinated than Hispanic people, have accounted for a growing share of deaths recently. An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that early in the omicron surge, the death rate for Hispanic people remained lower than the rate for white people, but death rates among Black people rose.

And as the virus spread rapidly throughout the country, social determinants of health have started to play a larger role in who becomes seriously ill and dies from COVID-19.

"Delta was much more deadly. But omicron is so widespread," said Dr. Faisal Masud, director of the critical care center at Houston Methodist.

Extremely high transmission rates mean the virus is reaching everyone, but it's hitting those from disadvantaged neighborhoods especially hard, he said. These are the people who are more likely to be uninsured and who may delay care, leaving chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension untreated.

"Patients who start with poor health come at a disadvantage," he said.

Texas has reported more COVID-19 deaths than any other state in the past week and is on track to soon outpace California in terms of total COVID-19 deaths. It's important to note the significant differences in health insurance rates and vaccination rates in the two states, Masud said. More than 70% of Californians are fully vaccinated, compared with about 60% of Texans, according to CDC data.

Overall, the proportion of omicron cases that have resulted in deaths appears to be lower than the case-mortality ratio for delta.

But it's a "denominator phenomenon," Threlkeld said, meaning a lower percentage of a much larger number is still going to be large.

"I think that's what people have forgotten: Just because something is a little less likely in a given person to cause severe disease, there are so many more people who've contracted this infection that you're going to have a lot of people who are ill," he said.

"We've certainly seen a lot of unvaccinated people who've done very poorly."

All government-mandated coronavirus restrictions in England were lifted on Thursday, including the legal requirement for people who test positive for COVID-19 to isolate at home.

Officials say that those who tested positive will still be advised to stay at home for at least five days. But, from Thursday they are not legally obliged to do so, and those on lower incomes will no longer get extra financial support to make up for a loss of income due to isolation.

The routine tracing of infected people's contacts has also been scrapped. Prime Minister Boris Johnson set out on Monday his Conservative government's strategy for "living with COVID" in the longer term. He said Britain is moving "from legal restrictions to personal responsibility," and that the end of all domestic legal measures marked the end of two of the darkest years in the country's peacetime history. 

The strategy includes plans to massively scale back free universal coronavirus testing from April 1. England already tossed most virus restrictions in January, after infection rates and hospitalizations fell following a surge in late December. Face masks are no longer legally required anywhere and vaccine passports for entering nightclubs and other venues were nixed. 

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which set their own public health rules, have similarly opened up, though at different paces.

Some other European countries,  including Denmark and Sweden, have also recently lifted all COVID-19 restrictions.

Some critics have questioned whether it is too early to end all restrictions, especially isolation laws. The British Medical Association warned that Johnson's strategy fails to protect the most vulnerable people and those at the highest risk of harm from COVID-19.

Some 85% of people aged 12 and older in the U.K. are fully vaccinated, and about 66% have had their third or booster dose. 

The U.K. still has Europe's highest coronavirus toll after Russia, with more than 161,000 recorded deaths.

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A new study is showing how mask mandates affect COVID-19 case numbers during the pandemic.

Doctors from the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania looked at case numbers in counties weeks after mask mandates were implemented.

The study spanned between March and October of 2020, during the time cases were peaking across the country.

Researchers found that, on average, daily cases declined by 23% four weeks after mask mandates were implemented, in comparison to counties that did not have mask mandates.

Case numbers improved as time went on.

Daily cases decreased by 33% six weeks after mask mandates were implemented, compared to unmasked counties.

The study goes on to show that mask mandates were more effective in urban counties.

The study comes as the CDC prepares to issue new guidance on masks.

The director of the CDC has suggested that the health agency could soon issue a new mask guidance during a news briefing Wednesday.

The change could be announced as soon as next week, as White House officials asked Walensky to provide an update by March 1, before the president’s State of the Union Address.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky suggested the mask recommendations would be based on a community’s hospitalization rates.

She added that this would allow people to take a break from wearing masks when COVID-19 case numbers improve.

However, this would not be a permanent change.

If a community’s case numbers spike up, masks will have to go back on.

Walensky said Wednesday that people should still continue to wear masks in certain situations, including when people are symptomatic or are within ten days of positive diagnosis.

The agency is still working out the details of when masks are and are not necessary.

The change in guidance will come as a number of states announce their own modifications to COVID-19 safety measures.

Last week, ten states announce they were lifting mask mandates in indoor spaces and/or schools.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has expressed support in allowing states to make these changes as cases decrease.

“At the local level, there is a strong feeling of need to get back to normality,” said Fauci on MSNBC.

Employees at Walmart who are vaccinated are no longer required to wear a mask at work.

Walmart updated its COVID-19 policy for associates Friday.

In a memo obtained by CNN, the company announced that vaccinated workers will only need to wear a mask if it is required by the state or local government.

Workers who are not vaccinated and those who work in clinical care settings, including pharmacies, will be required to continue wearing face masks.

In addition to these policies, Walmart is also making changes to its sick pay policy.

Previously, associates received extra paid time off beyond sick leave if they tested positive for COVID-19.

Walmart is getting rid of this policy in March, except in places where it is required by the state or local government.

In addition, the retailer will no longer conduct daily health screenings in most places.

Screenings will continue in California, New York and Virginia, where they are required.

Policy changes at Walmart are now in effect.

The CDC published new information Friday about the performance of COVID-19 booster shots.

In a new study, researchers found that after receiving a third dose of the vaccine, protection wanes over time.

When the omicron variant was dominant, effectiveness decreased as soon as four months after the third dose.

However, protection from serious illness was still high after the third dose.

In the study, effectiveness was higher among people who had received the booster shot, than among people who only received two doses of the vaccine.

Researchers also noted that effectiveness after a booster was higher when delta was the dominant strain.

Health experts expect protection from the vaccines to wane.

Previous evidence had already suggested that vaccines offered less protection against the omicron variant in comparison to earlier versions of the virus.

The CDC still recommends people to remain up to date with COVID-19 vaccinations to protect themselves against the virus.

NEVADA (KTNV) — Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak ended the state's mask mandate on Thursday.

Masks will no longer be required inside most public places including casinos.

However, masks are still mandated in airports and on public transportation.

Sisolak also clarified that while masks will not be mandated on the state level, he said employers and organizations may still set their own policies around masks.

“Just like vaccines, masks are still a great tool we have to slow the spread of the virus. I expect going forward to still see Nevadans and visitors occasionally utilizing masks when they are out in public,” said Sisolak.

For schools, Sisolak says local districts can come up with their own policies.

Sisolak joins a growing list of Democratic governors who have announced plans to lift mandates this week as COVID-19 cases drop.

Nevada recorded its single highest day of new cases on Jan. 10 with 7,865 cases. Now, the state is averaging around 1,280 cases per day.

Meanwhile, the CDC recommends that everyone ages 2 and older should continue to wear a mask in indoor public settings.

This story was originally reported by Abel Garcia and Amy Abdelsayed on ktnv.com.

As the number of COVID-19 cases continues to decline, there's growing concern about another condition that's on the rise. It's called multisystem inflammatory syndrome and it's still a risk among children who also contract COVID-19.

Most doctors will tell you we're not out of the woods yet with COVID-19. While it's encouraging to see case numbers and hospitalizations going down, doctors at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, are seeing cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome go up. It's a syndrome that takes hold after recovering from COVID-19.

“You can still develop this huge inflammatory response, you know, a few weeks later,” Children’s Mercy Hospital Dr. Angela Myers said. “Which can affect the liver, the heart, the lungs, the kidneys, develop a rash and high spiking fevers,”

Myers said the syndrome didn't seem to be a problem with the delta variant, but omicron is different. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome cases have again risen to what they were before there was any vaccine available.

“Even though a young child might not have significant symptoms with a COVID-19 infection, they are at risk for developing this multisystem inflammatory syndrome later,” Myers said.

That's why doctors are pushing for more children to get vaccinated and to keep COVID-19 prevention methods in place.

Children under the age of 5 could be eligible to receive Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the month if Food and Drug Administration regulators give the OK.

So far, 22% of elementary-aged kids are fully vaccinated. That's compared to a little more than half of 12 to 17-year-olds.

Watch the video above for the full story.

Almost anywhere with a sewer connection can help the Center For Disease Control's (CDC) system for tracking COVID-19 in wastewater.  

The CDC’s Network Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) includes labs to track COVID cases.

"As you can see here, there's all these tubes, and they just have 200 microliters of this clear liquid that has all the RNA and DNA from the wastewater sample," said Joaquin Bradley Silva, lab manager at UC Berkeley.

From the samples, scientists can tell how much of the coronavirus is in an area. The CDC’s NWSS project lead says they can identify it down to the zip code.

Now, they’re starting to share that information with the public on their online COVID tracker. More than 500 sites will begin submitting data in the coming weeks.

Alexandria Boehm, a professor of civil engineering at Stanford University, leads a team of researchers testing samples from wastewater processing plants across northern California.

She says the program will help move the U.S. from a pandemic to an endemic state.  

"It's really exciting that the public can see all the hard work we've been doing and maybe become more educated about how wastewater can provide a glimpse into the public health of their communities," Dr. Boehm said. 

Monitoring wastewater provides information on a population in a single sample. It also is less biased than individual case data, which may under-represent asymptomatic infections and cases in communities with lower testing rates. 

Some critics have voiced concern about the nuance of interpreting the data.  

The CDC’s project lead says their tracker’s main metric will be looking at the percentage change of concentration over a 15-day period. People can also see how many samples tested positive at a site over that same 15 days, but it won’t compare site to site. For example, users won't be able to look at California next to Washington D.C.

This is just the start for what CDC plans to use wastewater surveillance for. By the end of this year, they plan to track other health threats like influenza and E. coli.

This story was originally reported on Newsy.com.

The U.S. surpassed 900,000 COVID-19 deaths on Friday, according to Johns Hopkins University, as the country deals with the after-effects of record spread caused by the highly contagious omicron variant.

But, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the daily case rate is falling following the spread of omicron, the number of deaths caused by the recent outbreak continues to climb.

It's been about six weeks since the U.S. surpassed 800,000 COVID-19 deaths in December. Since then, the average daily death toll has risen to more than 2,000 a day — a level not seen since last February.

Trends in COVID-19 deaths tend to trail behind trends in COVID-19 cases, so the daily death rate will likely fall in the weeks ahead. But hospitals in some parts of the country remain overwhelmed with patients sick with the virus.

The tragic milestone comes a year after the initial distribution of COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. According to the CDC, 80% of those eligible for a vaccine in the U.S. have gotten at least one shot.

While the omicron variant has shown some resistance to vaccines compared to past variants, the shots are still extremely effective in preventing severe infection or death. According to a recent study released by the CDC, between Dec. 25 and Jan. 8, unvaccinated people were 23 times more likely to be sent to the hospital with omicron than those who were fully vaccinated and boosted.

According to a database kept by Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. continues to lead the world in both deaths and total cases of the virus. Brazil (630,000) and India (500,000) are the only other countries that have recorded more than half a million COVID-19 deaths.

LAS VEGAS — A newly-launched tool by Nevada state officials gives digital access to their COVID-19 vaccination records through QR codes.

SMART Health QR Code uses data stored in Nevada WebIZ, the statewide immunization information system.

The codes, unique to each individual, have the same information as a CDC vaccine card: name, date of birth, vaccine date, and type.

It serves as an official State of Nevada digital record that a SMART Health verifier app can only scan.

How to get a SMART Health QR Code

To get a unique QR code that contains the same information as your CDC vaccine card, visit izrecord.nv.gov and search for your record.

According to a FAQ sheet from the state, the SMART Health Card QR Code will be visible at the bottom of the COVID-19 Vaccination Record.

Download your record and save your QR code as a digital file on your phone, computer, or anywhere you store your digital information.

Is the information secure?

The state says the SMART Health QR Codes are generated at random each time you pull the immunization record. They are not stored on a server.

SMART Health QR Codes do not link to Nevada WebIZ to verify the information.

All patient and COVID-19 vaccine information is stored in the SMART Health QR Code, protected by cryptography.

A regular smartphone camera cannot scan this QR code, and only verified mobile apps can interpret the data.

How to get help

If your record is incorrect or you can't find it, the state has a COVID-19 Helpline at 1 (800) 401-0946.

To learn more, check out the FAQ sheet or visit nvhealthresponse.nv.gov.

Information provided by Nevada Health Response.