(AL JAZEERA) — Since its emer­gence in late 2021, Omi­cron (or BA.1) has quick­ly be­come the dom­i­nant vari­ant of the COVID-19 virus. The mu­ta­tions it har­boured meant it was more trans­mis­si­ble than the Delta vari­ant, so was able to spread rapid­ly through pop­u­la­tions around the world. It has been found to con­fer a milder ill­ness than Delta – though milder should not be mis­tak­en for mild.

Some par­ents looked teary eyed while oth­ers smiled and waved as they dropped off their chil­dren for school for the first time in al­most two years on Mon­day.

Many peo­ple, my­self in­clud­ed, didn’t even know that the North Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty had a mo­bile app avail­able un­til it was men­tioned two weeks ago at one of the Min­istry of Health brief­in­gs. The Pre­view by NCRHA app has been avail­able in the Google Play store since last Au­gust al­though, judg­ing by the num­ber of down­loads, it’s not been a very pop­u­lar down­load. The NCRHA bills it as a dig­i­tal plat­form to ‘man­age your at-home well­ness state’ so when I got di­ag­nosed with COVID-19 last week, I de­cid­ed to try it out. Here’s what my ex­pe­ri­ence was like down­load­ing and us­ing it. 

An un­vac­ci­nat­ed per­son is the lat­est COVID-19 vic­tim in To­ba­go, ac­cord­ing to the up­date for Thurs­day 3rd Feb­ru­ary 2022, re­leased by the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion, in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA).

(AP) — COVID-19 vac­cines are sav­ing an un­told num­ber of lives, but they can’t stop the chaos when a huge­ly con­ta­gious new mu­tant bursts on the scene, lead­ing peo­ple to won­der: Will we need boost­ers every few months? A new vac­cine recipe? A new type of shot al­to­geth­er?

The com­mit­tee ap­point­ed by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Jan­u­ary 17 to in­ves­ti­gate the qual­i­ty of pa­tient treat­ment with­in the Par­al­lel Health­care Sys­tem is seek­ing the help of for­mer pa­tients with its in­quest. 

There were two ad­di­tion­al COVID-19 deaths in To­ba­go on Wednes­day, ac­cord­ing to an up­date from the Di­vi­sion of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion. It brings the to­tal deaths on the is­land to 233.

BEI­JING (AP) — Long be­fore the glob­al pan­dem­ic up­end­ed sports and the world in gen­er­al, the 2022 Win­ter Olympics faced un­set­tling prob­lems.

■ De­spite hard-fought ef­forts and gen­er­ous donor sup­port, many vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions re­main un­pro­tect­ed ■

With Amer­i­can hos­pi­tals fac­ing a dire short­age of nurs­es amid a slog­ging pan­dem­ic, many are look­ing abroad for health care work­ers.

COVID-19 cas­es ap­pear to be on the de­cline since De­cem­ber and the Min­istry of Health is hop­ing this pat­tern es­tab­lish­es it­self as a trend. How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry’s epi­demi­ol­o­gy di­vi­sion tech­ni­cal di­rec­tor, it’s too ear­ly yet to cel­e­brate.

GENE­VA (AP) — The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion says overuse of gloves, “moon suits” and the use of bil­lions of masks and vac­ci­na­tion sy­ringes to help pre­vent the spread of the coro­n­avirus have spurred a huge glut of health care waste world­wide.