Covid-19

Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ) has spent the year isolating to protect herself from the coronavirus. She is finally cancer-free after a battle with a tumor in her lung. Now she has COVID-19. It wasn't from a casual trip to the supermarket or a vanity nail appointment, Rep. Watson Coleman went to the Capitol briefly on Wednesday, Jan. 6 for the certification of the 2020 Presidential Election.

She, along with a slate of other officials, were rushed to a safe room when the Captiol came under attack from President Donald Trump's supporters. While in that room with the members, several Republicans refused to wear a mask, despite being offered one. While Watson Coleman was wearing her mask, five days later, she tested positive for COVID-19. The only place where she'd been in close quarters with anyone was in that room with the other members.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal late Monday castigated Republican lawmakers for their life-threatening refusal to wear face coverings and demanded that they be held to account after the Washington Democrat tested positive for Covid-19, a diagnosis that came after she was forced to hide in a room with GOP colleagues who declined to wear masks as a violent pro-Trump mob rampaged through the U.S. Capitol last week.

"This is not a joke. Our lives and our livelihoods are at risk, and anyone who refuses to wear a mask should be fully held accountable for endangering our lives because of their selfish idiocy."
—Rep. Pramila Jayapal

The European Union started the approval process for its third vaccine on Tuesday after WHO scientists warned that herd immunity from coronavirus was unlikely this year even with mass inoculation schemes.

The 27-nation EU -- under fire for lengthy approval processes and slow national rollouts of drugs -- promised an "accelerated timeline" after confirming drug company AstraZeneca had applied for approval for the jab it developed with Oxford University.

US President-elect Joe Biden will receive his second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine on Monday, his office announced, three weeks after his first injection was broadcast live on TV to boost public confidence in the jab.

Biden, 78, told Americans "there's nothing to worry about" when he got his first dose of the Pfizer vaccine at the Christiana Hospital in Newark, Delaware on December 21.

The pope and Britain's Queen Elizabeth became the latest high-profile figures to join the global vaccination campaign against the coronavirus as Germany on Sunday reported 40,000 fatalities since the pandemic began a year ago.

And German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that the worst was still to come.

Healthcare advocates are criticizing the Trump administration's approval—amid overwhelming opposition, a global pandemic, and as the number of uninsured Americans grows—of Tennessee's plan to overhaul funding of its Medicaid program, calling the decision "reckless" and "irresponsible."

Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, called it "a radical waiver that puts Tennessee's Medicaid beneficiaries at risk."