A COVID spike is expected after the holidays. What you can do right now to prepare.
With the emergence of the omicron variant, local hospital leaders are preparing for a spike in COVID-19 cases following upcoming holiday gatherings.
Announcing the results of the 2026 INFORMS Board of Directors election and the new board for 2027.
INFORMS has named 12 distinguished leaders as the 2026 class of INFORMS Fellows, one of the highest honors in the profession.
Most medical devices do not hit the market through rigorous safety testing but by being deemed similar enough to something already approved—the “predicate” device through a mechanism known as the FDA’s 510(k) pathway. But similar is not a synonym for safe. While the assumption may be that substantial equivalence is a reasonable stand-in for a safety review, a share of devices cleared with this method still get recalled, and the FDA spends valuable time reviewing devices the same way, regardless of how risky it is on paper.
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With the emergence of the omicron variant, local hospital leaders are preparing for a spike in COVID-19 cases following upcoming holiday gatherings.
Flights are booked. Bags are packed. To cancel Christmas travel plans seems unfathomable at this point. But for many, so does the speed at which the omicron variant is spreading. The highly transmissible Covid-19 variant — which was first detected in late November but has since been detected in nearly 90 countries — is causing travel uncertainty around the globe.
As the omicron variant surges and COVID-19 cases spike, the Joe Biden administration is launching a number of initiatives in response: Military medical workers will prepare to help out civilian hospitals, new testing and vaccination sites will open, and the federal government will distribute 500 million at-home COVID tests for free.
A group of scientists funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is projecting the omicron variant may break pandemic records for coronavirus hospitalizations across North Carolina.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that over 77 percent of eligible people have received one COVID-19 vaccine dose, 65 percent are fully vaccinated with two doses and 32 percent have been boosted with an additional dose. Vaccines are weapons in keeping the virus at bay and preventing hospitalizations and deaths.

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