NEW YORK (AP) — Is it bet­ter to wear an N95 or cloth mask right now?  Health ex­perts sug­gest step­ping up pro­tec­tion against the high­ly con­ta­gious omi­cron vari­ant with stronger masks such as N95s or KN95s.

(AP) — The fast-mov­ing omi­cron vari­ant may cause less se­vere dis­ease on av­er­age, but COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. are climb­ing and mod­el­ers fore­cast 50,000 to 300,000 more Amer­i­cans could die by the time the wave sub­sides in mid-March.

Sec­re­tary of Health, Well­ness and So­cial Pro­tec­tion, Dr. Faith B.Yis­rael, met with To­ba­go’s COVID-19 Task Force on Mon­day 17th Jan­u­ary, to chart the way for­ward for how the is­land would tack­le the pan­dem­ic in­to the fu­ture.

Po­lit­i­cal and so­cial ac­tivist Umar Ab­dul­lah—who was charged in con­nec­tion with Sun­day's protest demon­stra­tion 'Push Back Two' at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain—is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear in court on Wednes­day Feb­ru­ary 16th.

● Ex­perts say two vari­ants can cross over to form a re­com­bi­nant ver­sion of both vari­ants. Plus, get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed against both COVID-19 and in­fluen­za is the best way to pro­tect your­self from ‘Flurona’ ●

COVID news from Jan­u­ary 17: Cana­da au­tho­ris­es pill for adults with mild, mod­er­ate COVID who are at high risk of be­com­ing se­ri­ous­ly ill.

The Trans­port and In­dus­tri­al Work­ers' Union (TI­WU) has added its voice to those con­demn­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice and the Gov­ern­ment, over the han­dling of a protest demon­stra­tion at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, on Sun­day 16th Jan­u­ary 2022.

MEL­BOURNE, Aus­tralia (AP) — Weary af­ter two years of some of the harsh­est COVID-19 bor­der re­stric­tions in the world, many Aus­tralians want­ed ten­nis star No­vak Djokovic kicked out of their coun­try for trav­el­ing to a ten­nis tour­na­ment with­out be­ing vac­ci­nat­ed.

Hin­du fam­i­lies across the coun­try can fi­nal­ly take com­fort know­ing they will be able to give fi­nal peace to their de­ceased loved ones, fol­low­ing the an­nounce­ment by the Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha of the spe­cial per­for­mance of MUK­TI PRAYAAN in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary.

BEL­GRADE, Ser­bia (AP) — No­vak Djokovic ar­rived in his na­tive Ser­bia on Mon­day af­ter be­ing de­port­ed from Aus­tralia be­cause he was not vac­ci­nat­ed against COVID-19, end­ing his hopes of de­fend­ing his Aus­tralian Open ti­tle.

Open­ing hours for the beach­es have been ex­tend­ed by two hours and peo­ple can now ac­cess the sea­side from 5 am to 2 pm start­ing from Mon­day.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Sat­ur­day ad­mit­ted to ac­ci­den­tal­ly break­ing the COVID-19 pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions.