(AP) — Most Amer­i­cans should be giv­en the Pfiz­er or Mod­er­na vac­cines in­stead of the John­son & John­son shot that can cause rare but se­ri­ous blood clots, U.S. health of­fi­cials said Thurs­day.

An un­vac­ci­nat­ed Clax­ton Bay con­trac­tor, who test­ed pos­i­tive for COVID-19, is call­ing on the Min­istry of Health to hire more staff at the Cou­va Hos­pi­tal and Mul­ti-Train­ing Fa­cil­i­ty, and at the Point Fortin Area Hos­pi­tal to pre­vent COVID deaths.

NEW YORK (AP) — Can your pet get COVID-19? Yes, pets and oth­er an­i­mals can get the coro­n­avirus that caus­es COVID-19, but health of­fi­cials say the risk of them spread­ing it to peo­ple is low.

The North-Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) is giv­ing as­sur­ances it is do­ing every­thing pos­si­ble to pro­tect its staff even as they con­tin­ue to be in­un­dat­ed with in­creas­ing num­bers of “very ill COVID-19 pa­tients” in the Emer­gency De­part­ment.

● WHO chief says the new strain was de­tect­ed in at least 77 na­tions and was like­ly al­ready in most coun­tries ●

A new study by re­searchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ox­ford has found that two-dose COVID-19 vac­cine reg­i­mens do not in­duce enough neu­tral­is­ing an­ti­bod­ies against the Omi­cron coro­n­avirus vari­ant.  Ac­cord­ing to the study, this may an in­di­ca­tion that in­creased in­fec­tions in those pre­vi­ous­ly in­fect­ed or vac­ci­nat­ed may be like­ly.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh an­nounced yes­ter­day, T&T had record­ed its first im­port­ed case of the Omi­cron COVID-19 vari­ant of con­cern. Since then, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials have blamed the air­line and the pas­sen­ger for breach­ing pro­to­cols, say­ing that lo­cal au­thor­i­ties were not at fault. The trav­eller’s iden­ti­ty has not been re­vealed, but here's what we know about the sit­u­a­tion so far...

It is an im­port­ed case, which by the Health Min­is­ter's ac­count, should not have been al­lowed to en­ter the coun­try due to a pos­i­tive test pri­or to en­try. He says Port Health was able to pick up on the per­son up­on ar­rival.

Trinidad and To­ba­go’s fight against COVID-19 is once again ben­e­fit­ting from the gen­eros­i­ty of Chi­na fol­low­ing a re­cent do­na­tion of med­ical sup­plies, in­clu­sive of hun­dreds of thou­sands of gloves and sy­ringes, on Thurs­day 9th De­cem­ber 2021.

A Mus­lim or­gan­i­sa­tion based in Cen­tral Trinidad is of­fer­ing its med­ical fa­cil­i­ties to be used as a vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion point.

■ The pan­dem­ic dis­rupt­ed health ser­vices glob­al­ly and trig­gered the worst eco­nom­ic cri­sis since the 1930s, the World Bank and WHO say ■

CDC rec­om­men­da­tion comes amid in­creas­ing fears the new Omi­cron vari­ant will lead to a surge in in­fec­tions in the US.