■ PA­HO da­ta shows COVID-19 cas­es con­tin­ue to rise in North Amer­i­ca, dri­ven by the Unit­ed States. Omi­cron vari­ant has now been re­port­ed in 19 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries ■

● Sci­en­tists at Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty say the im­proved vac­cine would pro­vide pro­tec­tion against new and emerg­ing vari­ants ●

■ Hoard­ing of COVID shots hin­dered eq­ui­table glob­al roll­out in 2021, and ex­perts warn of dis­tri­b­u­tion chal­lenges next year ■

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Fight­ing the omi­cron vari­ant surg­ing through the coun­try, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden an­nounced the gov­ern­ment will pro­vide 500 mil­lion free rapid home-test­ing kits, in­crease sup­port for hos­pi­tals un­der strain and re­dou­ble vac­ci­na­tion and boost­ing ef­forts.

The In­ter-Re­li­gious Or­ga­ni­za­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (IRO) has is­sued an of­fi­cial state­ment ex­press­ing sup­port for vac­ci­na­tion against COVID-19.

Health­care work­ers as­signed to the Cau­ra Hos­pi­tal and the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal re­ceived a spe­cial vis­it from Min­is­ter of Health Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, yes­ter­day, Mon­day 20th De­cem­ber 2021, as the min­is­ter be­gan a se­ries of vis­its to COVID-19 fa­cil­i­ties.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cou­va South, Rudranath In­dars­ingh MP, has crit­i­cized the Gov­ern­ment for threat­en­ing to with­hold pub­lic ser­vants’ salaries if they fail to get vac­ci­nat­ed against the COVID-19 virus.

● Chief sci­en­tist says it would be ‘un­wise’ to con­clude from ear­ly ev­i­dence that Omi­cron is a milder coro­n­avirus vari­ant ●

Vac­cine sham­ing and threats are pre­vent­ing more peo­ple from get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed against the COVID-19 virus and its vari­ants.

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — As coro­n­avirus cas­es surge in the days be­fore Christ­mas, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden plans to stress in a speech the im­por­tance of get­ting vac­ci­nat­ed to pro­tect from the wave of in­fec­tions tied to the new omi­cron vari­ant.

(AP) — The new omi­cron vari­ant took on­ly a few weeks to live up to dire pre­dic­tions about how huge­ly con­ta­gious it is but sci­en­tists don’t yet know if it caus­es more se­vere dis­ease even as the world faces ex­plod­ing cas­es just be­fore Christ­mas.

T&T record­ed its high­est death rate since the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic with 33 new deaths re­port­ed yes­ter­day. The Min­istry of Health al­so re­port­ed 956 new pos­i­tive cas­es, the sec­ond-high­est num­ber of con­firmed cas­es.