“Next week, the White House says it will start to wind down a COVID-19 program that pays to test, treat and vaccinate people who don’t have health insurance. It’s one of several immediate impacts after Congress declined to add $22.5 billion in funding to a broad government spending bill passed last week.” (Sure, let’s all let our guard down now that we’ve hit a lull. What could possibly go wrong?)

+ Nearly half of all European countries have recorded increases in new Covid-19 cases in the past week. And while wastewater surveillance of Covid is relatively sparse in the US, 62 (15%) sites have a >1000% increase in viral RNA detected in the past 15-day period.