GENE­VA (AP) — The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion says overuse of gloves, “moon suits” and the use of bil­lions of masks and vac­ci­na­tion sy­ringes to help pre­vent the spread of the coro­n­avirus have spurred a huge glut of health care waste world­wide.

They are ac­cus­ing school of­fi­cials of pres­sur­ing their chil­dren to take the Covid-19 vac­cine.

GENE­VA (AP) — Late-night dis­co par­ty­ing. El­bow-to-el­bow seat­ing in movie the­aters. Mask-free bar­ing of faces in pub­lic, es­pe­cial­ly in Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca: Bit by bit, many coun­tries that have been hard-hit by the coro­n­avirus are open­ing up and eas­ing their tough, and of­ten un­pop­u­lar, re­stric­tive mea­sures aimed to fight COVID-19 even as the omi­cron vari­ant — deemed less se­vere — has caused cas­es to sky­rock­et.

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — Pfiz­er on Tues­day asked the U.S. to au­tho­rize ex­tra-low dos­es of its COVID-19 vac­cine for chil­dren un­der 5, po­ten­tial­ly open­ing the way for the very youngest Amer­i­cans to start re­ceiv­ing shots as ear­ly as March.

UN health agency says ini­tial da­ta shows BA.2 is a lit­tle more in­fec­tious than ear­li­er ver­sions of Omi­cron.

WASH­ING­TON (AP) — U.S. reg­u­la­tors are urg­ing drug­mak­er Pfiz­er to ap­ply for emer­gency au­tho­riza­tion for a two-dose reg­i­men of its COVID-19 vac­cine for chil­dren 6 months to 5 years old while await­ing da­ta on a three-dose course, aim­ing to clear the way for the shots as soon as late Feb­ru­ary, a per­son fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press Mon­day.

The T&T Po­lice Ser­vice has ex­tend­ed con­do­lences on the pass­ing of yet an­oth­er po­lice of­fi­cer, #14067 PC Ker­ry Ramkissoon.

■ The virus may now be less dead­ly as vac­cines con­tin­ue to pro­vide vi­tal pro­tec­tion, but new vari­ants can still emerge. Plus, how an ‘im­mu­ni­ty debt’ may have led to an in­crease in menin­gi­tis B cas­es and the symp­toms to look out for ■

BEI­JING (AP) — Ath­letes and team of­fi­cials are test­ing pos­i­tive for COVID-19 at much high­er rates than oth­er peo­ple ar­riv­ing in Chi­na for the Bei­jing Olympics, or­ga­niz­ers said Tues­day.

■ Some po­lit­i­cal lead­ers are call­ing for COVID to be treat­ed as an en­dem­ic dis­ease, but sci­en­tists warn that talk of a pan­dem­ic endgame is pre­ma­ture ■

The North-Cen­tral Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NCRHA) has de­vised an in­no­v­a­tive way of help­ing COVID pos­i­tive pa­tients to man­age their ill­ness­es.

The Min­istry of Health (MOH) has es­tab­lished a Long COVID-19 clin­ic at the Ari­ma Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, a one-stop so­lu­tion shop cater­ing for pa­tients who have suf­fered mild and/or se­vere strains of the virus.