Philadelphia reinstates face-mask mandate for students and teachers, and WHO head warns pandemic is ‘most certainly not over’

The face-mask requirement for students and teachers in Philadelphia will be back in effect on Monday.

Dr. William Hite said the news would remain in effect until further notice.

The coronaviruses continues to evolve and so will our response to it, Hite said in a statement.

The trend at the highest levels seen since March is due to the BA.2 variant of omicron and two other subvariants that appear to be even more infectious.

A New York Times tracker shows that the US is seeing more cases than it did two weeks ago. The Northeast and Midwest are being hard hit with case reports higher than they were at the peak of last summer's delta surge. One third of Americans are living in areas with high levels of transmission, according to the CDC.

Many people are now testing at home and the data is not being collected, so there are concerns that the case numbers are even higher.

The tracker shows a 30% increase in hospitalizations from two weeks ago. The daily death toll has fallen from two weeks ago.

The head of the World Health Organization warned on Sunday that the swine flu is not over and urged governments to lower their guard.

The director-general of the World Health Organization told officials at the opening of the WHO's annual meeting thatdeclining testing means we are blinding ourselves to the evolution of the disease.

Tedros said that it is not over until it is over everywhere.

In a world in which testing rates have plummeted, reported cases are increasing in almost 70 countries.

Tedros has warned that leaving vast areas of the world unvaccinated would allow new variants to emerge that may prove vaccine resistant and be more lethal than previous ones.

Tedros said that vaccine hesitancy was driven by misinformation.

Pfizer and BioNTech said three doses of their vaccine for children aged six months to five years met all criteria for emergency use.

This isn't just going to go away, it's crashing the retirement hopes of many Americans.

The boosters for children will be rolled out.

The companies said that the vaccine showed 80.3% efficacy in an analysis of three doses at a time when omicron was the dominant variant, with a favorable safety profile similar to placebo.

According to the study, a low 3-ug dose of our vaccine provides young children with a high level of protection against the recent COVID-19 strains.

Covid-19 Reinfections: What You Need to Know0:00Covid-19 Reinfections: What You Need to Know

Ocugen said the FDA lifted its clinical hold on the trial.

We are very pleased that we can proceed with our clinical trials for COVAXIN. The need for delivering an additional, differentiated vaccine option remains a priority, according to Dr. Musunuri, CEO and co-founder of Ocugen.

The company will restart the trial immediately. The World Health Organization inspected the facility of the company that developed the vaccine.

MarketWatch has been reporting all the latest developments since the coronaviruses began.

You should be aware of other COVID-19 news.

Beijing extended orders for workers and students to stay home and ordered additional mass testing on Monday as the number of cases of the disease rose again, the AP reported. Many residential compounds in the Chinese capital have restricted movement in and out, but conditions are less severe than in the city of Shanghai, where millions of people have been locked up for two months. Beijing reported an increase in cases to 99 on Monday, up from a previous daily average of 50.

State media reported Monday that a large number of North Koreans, including leader Kim Jong Un, attended a funeral for a top official. Since admitting to an outbreak of the omicron variant, North Korea has only stated how many people have a fever daily, and only identified a few of the cases. According to the state media, there have been more than two million people who have fallen ill with an unknown disease, but only a small number of them have died. State media photos show Kim carrying the coffin of the Korean People's Army marshal who was said to have been a key role in grooming him as the country's next leader.

North Korea Reports First Covid Case, Locks Down All Major Cities 0:00North Korea Reports First Covid Case, Locks Down All Major Cities

According to an AP report, health officials are perplexed by the cases of severe liver damage in hundreds of young children around the world and are wondering if it is linked to COVID. The best evidence shows that a fairly common stomach bug isn't known to cause problems in healthy kids. It was found in the blood of children who had been stricken, but not in their sick bodies.

Here is what the numbers say.

The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 rose to 528.6 million on Monday, while the death toll rose to over 6 million.

The U.S. leads the world in cases and deaths.

The tracker from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that more than 200 million people in the United States are fully protected from diseases. Only 102.8 million of the population have had a first booster.

Almost 20 percent of people who had a first booster have had a second one.