The U.S. na­tion­al emer­gency to re­spond to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic end­ed Mon­day as Pres­i­dent Joe Biden signed a bi­par­ti­san con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion to bring it to a close af­ter three years — weeks be­fore it was set to ex­pire along­side a sep­a­rate pub­lic health emer­gency.

A new study by the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) has found that ex­ten­sive dis­rup­tions in the di­ag­no­sis and man­age­ment of non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs) in the Amer­i­c­as, in­clud­ing the Caribbean, oc­curred dur­ing the coro­n­avirus (COVID-19) pan­dem­ic.

Pfiz­er’s COVID-19 pill Paxlovid won an­oth­er vote of con­fi­dence from U.S. health ad­vis­ers Thurs­day, clear­ing the way for its full reg­u­la­to­ry ap­proval by the Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

As the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic en­ters its third year in the Re­gion of the Amer­i­c­as, Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) Di­rec­tor, Dr. Jar­bas Bar­bosa, has called on coun­tries to strength­en sur­veil­lance and bridge gaps in vac­ci­na­tion cov­er­age to end the emer­gency and bet­ter pre­pare for fu­ture health crises.

On the an­niver­sary of the de­c­la­ra­tion of COVID-19 as a world­wide pan­dem­ic, there are re­newed calls for a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry in­to the Gov­ern­ment's han­dling of the sit­u­a­tion.

Eight more peo­ple—four el­der­ly males, three el­der­ly fe­males, and one mid­dle-aged fe­male—have lost their lives to COVID-19, be­tween March 1 and 7, 2023, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est ad­vi­so­ry from the Min­istry of Health.  These lat­est deaths have pushed up the na­tion­al death toll for COVID-19 to 4,355 lives lost.

Ca­roni East MP Rishad Seecha­ran wants to know why the Health Min­istry is seek­ing to re­cruit an in­de­pen­dent con­sul­tant to as­sess its re­spons­es to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic when a com­mit­tee al­ready sub­mit­ted a de­tailed re­port on the stan­dard of care of COVID-19 pa­tients last year.

Chi­na on Tues­day said it has been “open and trans­par­ent” in the search for the ori­gins of COVID-19, af­ter ques­tions about how the pan­dem­ic be­gan re­ceived new at­ten­tion.

In the high­est week­ly jump in COVID-19 cas­es since Oc­to­ber 4, 2022, the Min­istry of Health re­port­ed 559 new COVID-19 cas­es on Tues­day. These new cas­es were record­ed be­tween Feb­ru­ary 22 and 28. The sev­en-day rolling av­er­age of COVID-19 cas­es, mean­ing the num­ber of new COVID-19 cas­es record­ed dai­ly dur­ing the sev­en days, al­so rose to 80 cas­es a day, on av­er­age, mark­ing a high since Oc­to­ber 2022 and the high­est for 2023 to date.

Japan is eas­ing its coro­n­avirus bor­der mea­sures for tourists from Chi­na be­gin­ning Wednes­day by test­ing on­ly ran­dom pas­sen­gers, a top gov­ern­ment spokesman said Mon­day.

There was a slight drop in the num­ber of new in­fec­tions of COVID-19 over the past week, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est ad­vi­so­ry from the Min­istry of Health.

The Event "de Par­ty done: free COVID-19 anti­gen test­ing tak­ing place on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade un­til 5 pm to­day.