The Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) be­lieves the one-month ex­ten­sion to al­low pub­lic ser­vants to be­come vac­ci­nat­ed, is an at­tempt by the State to buy it­self some time to en­sure the rel­e­vant leg­is­la­tion is in place so the au­thor­i­ties can act if and when work­ers refuse.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has put to­geth­er a five-mem­ber team to eval­u­ate the State's han­dling of the COVID-19 virus "with a pro­fes­sion­al eye" and present their find­ings in one week.

Pub­lic ser­vants have been giv­en an­oth­er month to abide by the Gov­ern­ment's vac­ci­na­tion pol­i­cy.

While the Gov­ern­ment has giv­en the green light for the re­sump­tion of open-air pyre cre­ma­tions for COVID-19 vic­tims, the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer (CMO) still main­tains that it pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant dan­ger.

With just hours to go be­fore the Gov­ern­ment's dead­line set in for pub­lic ser­vants to get vac­ci­nat­ed in or­der to be al­lowed to con­tin­ue work­ing from Mon­day, dis­trict health of­fi­cials in El Do­ra­do Sat­ur­day re­port­ed a slow­down in the num­ber of peo­ple com­ing for­ward.

The Min­istry of Health has record­ed 24 ad­di­tion­al COVID re­lat­ed death. This brings the to­tal num­ber of deaths to 3,180. There are cur­rent­ly 623 pa­tients in the hos­pi­tal. The min­istry has al­so record­ed 810 new COVID cas­es in the last 24 hours, bring­ing the to­tal num­ber of ac­tive cas­es to 16,429.

Get ready to learn more Greek let­ters. Sci­en­tists warn that omi­cron’s whirl­wind ad­vance prac­ti­cal­ly en­sures it won’t be the last ver­sion of the coro­n­avirus to wor­ry the world.

MEL­BOURNE, Aus­tralia (AP) — No­vak Djokovic was back in im­mi­gra­tion de­ten­tion Sat­ur­day af­ter his le­gal chal­lenge to avoid be­ing de­port­ed from Aus­tralia for be­ing un­vac­ci­nat­ed for COVID-19 was moved to high­er court.

Lat­est rec­om­men­da­tions prompt new calls for patent waivers to al­low more peo­ple ac­cess to treat­ments.

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — The Supreme Court has stopped a ma­jor push by the Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion to boost the na­tion’s COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tion rate, a re­quire­ment that em­ploy­ees at large busi­ness­es get a vac­cine or test reg­u­lar­ly and wear a mask on the job.

MEL­BOURNE, Aus­tralia (AP) — No­vak Djokovic faces de­por­ta­tion again af­ter the Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment re­voked his visa for a sec­ond time, the lat­est twist in the on­go­ing saga over whether the No. 1-ranked ten­nis play­er will be al­lowed to com­pete in the Aus­tralian Open de­spite be­ing un­vac­ci­nat­ed for COVID-19.

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Two brand-new COVID-19 pills that were sup­posed to be an im­por­tant weapon against the pan­dem­ic in the U.S. are in short sup­ply and have played lit­tle role in the fight against the omi­cron wave of in­fec­tions.