$48.5 million from an opioid settlement to be paid out through the next 18 years will help Pima County efforts to prevent overdoses from fentanyl and other drugs, and raise awareness about free Narcan available to the public. Read more»

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized a new non-mRNA COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use Wednesday, greenlighting a shot made by Novavax that the government secured 3.2 million doses of earlier this week. Read more»

Dr. Robert Malone, who claims he invented mRNA vaccine techonology, mades speeches and did interviews where he said the COVID-19 vaccine is not safe and creates long-term health problems for children. Read more»

About two years in and 75 million pandemic infections later, the Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to the two-dose regimen of Moderna's newly tagged Spikevax vaccine against the novel virus that causes COVID-19. Read more»

Though COVID-19 has claimed around 830,000 lives in the United States, only two states have added COVID-19 vaccines to the list of immunizations mandated for schoolchildren - the main reason, experts say, is they are wary of opening another front in the wars over mandates. Read more»

The number of daily reported COVID-19 cases soared to more than 14,000 Monday - amid the surge of the Omicron variant - the second-most since the pandemic began, surpassed only by the 17,000 reported exactly one year ago. Read more»

One day after the number of COVID-19 cases reached a pandemic high in the United States, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky defended this week's announcement of shortened isolation and quarantine stints for people who have tested positive for or been exposed to the virus. Read more»

People exposed to COVID-19 who aren't vaccinated, and those who test positive but don't have symptoms should isolate and quarantine for five days, followed by five days of strict mask use, the CDC announced Monday. Read more»

President Biden will announce new actions to fight the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, measures that include dispatching 500 million at-home tests to Americans, creating new federal testing sites and deploying 1,000 service members to hospitals across the county. Read more»

Studies of coronavirus vaccine efficacy on younger children hit a speed-bump Friday, as Pfizer and BioNTech announced they will alter their clinical trial to include a third shot for children aged 6 months to 5 years after the two-dose regimen failed to live up to expectations. Read more»

Twenty-five states have identified cases of the new Omicron variant of COVID-19, federal public health officials said Friday as they released new data on the first 43 U.S. cases - but officials emphasized that the highly transmissible Delta variant still remains the main threat. Read more»

As more indoor venues require proof of vaccination for entrance and with winter — as well as Omicron, a new COVID variant — looming, scientists and public health officials are debating when it will be time to change the definition of “fully vaccinated” to include a booster shot. Read more»

The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System can detect possible safety issues in vaccines, but anyone can submit an unverified report, and viral messages continue to misuse the VAERS data, and flawed calculations, to claim the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children is unsafe. Read more»

Health officials said this week that it should be OK for families to gather over the holidays, as long as people have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and take other precautions against the spread of the disease. Read more»

Federal health officials on Friday moved to expand access to COVID-19 booster shots to all American adults, in an effort to bolster protection against infections as case counts rise again across the United States. Read more»