The latest news and commentary on the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
NOTE: As the world adjusts to COVID-19, research continues on its origins, the effectiveness of masks, vaccines and boosters, new variants, workplace policies, politics and much more. The Washington Times is committed to accuracy in our reporting of the coronavirus. We continue to explore how COVID-19 affects us here in the United States and around the world.Â
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to update its guidance on coronavirus (available here) with information geared toward parents, employers, healthcare professionals and consumers. They also offer a COVID data tracker here where you can explore vaccination trends, levels of community spread and other valuable tools for making healthy choices for you and your family.
For more detailed information on total cases, total deaths, global maps and dashboards, visit the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center here.
Click on the maps below for more information on coronavirus cases by state and vaccinations by county, and for a fuller picture of COVID-19, scroll down for the most recent reporting from The Washington Times.
Arizona's Republican governor has signed legislation that will prevent state health officials from ever adding a COVID-19 vaccine to the list of required school inoculations and bar face mask mandates in any buildings operated by state or local governments.
Three U.S. Air Force Academy cadets whose refusal to get COVID-19 vaccines threatened their May 25 graduation -- along with the risk of a repayment demand for six-figure tuition costs -- will be awarded their degrees, officials said Saturday.
The White House is planning for "dire" contingencies that could include rationing supplies of vaccines and treatments this fall if Congress doesn't approve more money for fighting COVID-19.
After mass shootings killed and wounded people grocery shopping, going to church and simply living their lives last weekend, the nation marked a milestone of 1 million deaths from COVID-19. The number, once unthinkable, is now an irreversible reality in the United States - like the persistent reality of gun violence that kills tens of thousands of people a year.
North Korea said Saturday it found nearly 220,000 more people with feverish symptoms, even as leader Kim Jong Un claimed progress in slowing a largely undiagnosed spread of COVID-19 across his unvaccinated populace and hinted at easing virus restrictions to nurse a decaying economy.
COVID-19 is surging across the country and filling hospitals again, but leaders from coast to coast have bucked the return of mask mandates, signaling on-again, off-again rules are no longer politically tenable and nearing extinction.
Florida, where masks and most pandemic-related restrictions were shelved months ago, has seen a record-breaking resurgence in tourism this year as other major vacation destinations like New York and California continue to struggle.
Monkeypox is a serious virus that is popping up in unusual places, but public health experts don't expect another deadly plague layered on top of the coronavirus, which spreads far more easily.
The number of coronavirus deaths globally dropped by about 21% in the past week while cases rose in most parts of the world, according to the World Health Organization.
The locked-down Chinese metropolis of Shanghai will reopen four of its 20 subway lines Sunday as it slowly eases pandemic restrictions that have kept most residents in their housing complexes for more than six weeks.
Despite what the North's propaganda is describing as an all-out effort, the fear is palpable among citizens, according to defectors in South Korea with contacts in the North.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra tested positive for COVID-19 while in Germany to meet with other Group of Seven health ministers, his agency said Wednesday.
More than a dozen cadets at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado, face expulsion -- and potential six-figure bills for their otherwise-free education -- after refusing vaccination against COVID-19 on religious grounds.
The first couple's daughter, Ashley Biden, tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, forcing her to cancel plans to join first lady Jill Biden on a trip to South America.
The White House COVID-19 coordinator said fast-moving variants pose a "huge challenge" as infections spike but he is confident the combination of immunity and widespread use of an antiviral pill is keeping many people out of the hospital.
Eric Clapton, a critic of coronavirus vaccines and pandemic restrictions, has tested positive for COVID-19 and canceled two upcoming European gigs.
A trucker convoy that protested COVID-19 rules in March has returned to its Maryland staging ground, raising the prospect of new demonstrations in the nation's capital.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is decrying the "immaturity" of his nation's response to the COVID-19 outbreak and said officials' "non-positive attitude, slackness and inactivity" hindered efforts to control the virus, state media reported Wednesday.
North Korea on Wednesday added hundreds of thousands of infections to its growing pandemic caseload but also said that a million people have already recovered from suspected COVID-19 just a week after disclosing an outbreak, a public health crisis it appears to be trying to manage in isolation as global experts express deep concern about dire consequences.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized COVID-19 booster shots Tuesday for children aged 5 to 11, making them the youngest age group to be eligible for extra shots.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams wore a mask at an official event on Monday as city officials formally urged people to bring back face coverings due to the high transmission of COVID-19.
North Korea ignored South Korea's offer of COVID-19 aid for a second day on Tuesday as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un decides how to combat surging "fevers" in his nation of 26 million while preserving his power base at home.
The Biden administration on Tuesday said Americans can visit COVIDTests.gov to order eight additional at-home tests for the coronavirus.
Graduate students at Peking University staged the rare, but peaceful protest Sunday over the school's decision to erect a sheet-metal wall to keep them further sequestered on campus, while allowing faculty to come and go freely.
Now deep in the red two years into the pandemic, the 29-bed, $40 million hospital with a soaring, sun-drenched lobby and 110 employees is among three medical centers in the United States that say they are missing out on millions in federal pandemic relief money because the facilities are so new they lack full financial statements from before the crisis to prove how much it cost them.
Dr. Anthony Fauci says he wouldn't want to keep his post as chief White House medical adviser if former President Donald Trump won back the presidency in 2024.
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un is ordering the military to distribute medicine in Pyongyang and blasting top officials as negligent while the reclusive nation battles a surging outbreak of COVID-19.
Most of Shanghai has stopped the spread of the coronavirus in the community and fewer than 1 million people remain under strict lockdown, authorities said Monday, as the city moves toward reopening and economic data showed the gloomy impact of China's "zero-COVID" policy.
North Korea has confirmed 15 more deaths and hundreds of thousands of additional patients with flu-like symptoms as it mobilizes more than a million health and other workers to try to suppress the country's first COVID-19 outbreak, state media reported Sunday.
South Africa is experiencing a surge of new COVID-19 cases driven by two omicron sub-variants, according to health experts.
China withdrew as host of soccer's 2023 Asian Cup on Saturday in the latest cancellation of the country's sports hosting duties during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Four cadets at the Air Force Academy may not graduate or be commissioned as military officers this month because they have refused the COVID-19 vaccine, and they may be required to pay back thousands of dollars in tuition costs, according to Air Force officials.
Mayor Eric Adams wants New Yorkers to know it is safe to go out again.
The coronavirus has been spreading "explosively" in North Korea since April and killed at least six, state media said Friday in an unusual admission one day after dictator Kim Jong-un donned a mask and warned that a variant had slipped into the country.
Its surprise admission this week has left many outsiders wondering just how bad things really are, and there's rising worry that it could cause a major humanitarian crisis in a country with one of the world's worst public medical infrastructures.
White House COVID-19 coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha has issued a dire warning that the U.S. will be increasingly vulnerable to the coronavirus this fall and winter if Congress doesn't swiftly approve new funding for more vaccines and treatments.
Six people have died and 350,000 have been treated for a fever that has spread "explosively" across North Korea, state media said Friday, a day after the country acknowledged a COVID-19 outbreak for the first time in the pandemic.
President Biden told global leaders Thursday to contend with both the coronavirus and complacency by expanding COVID-19 vaccinations and thwarting variants that could disrupt the shift to post-pandemic life, even as he grumbled that lawmakers at home were stymying his own ambitions.
Hundreds or perhaps thousands of nurses will march through Washington on Thursday to demand workplace protections and better wages.
The number of new coronavirus cases reported worldwide has continued to fall except in the Americas and Africa, the World Health Organization said in its latest assessment of the pandemic.
President Biden on Thursday marked 1 million U.S. lives lost to COVID-19 by pressing Congress to pass new funding for the virus fight, saying "to heal, we must remember."
North Korea fired three short-range ballistic missiles toward the sea on Thursday, South Korea's military said, in the latest of a series of weapons demonstrations this year that came just hours after it confirmed its first case of the coronavirus since the pandemic began.
North Korea announced its first coronavirus infection more than two years into the pandemic Thursday as leader Kim Jong Un called for raising COVID-19 preventive measures to maximum levels.
Rumors circulating in China and among overseas Chinese social media are claiming Chinese President Xi Jinping, under fire for draconian COVID-19 lockdowns in Shanghai and elsewhere, will step down from power.
Army Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, revealed in prepared Senate testimony this week that some U.S. intelligence agencies -- not identified by name -- believe the virus behind the COVID-19 pandemic may have been genetically modified in a laboratory and not transmitted naturally from an animal host in China, where it was first identified.
Teachers' unions are under scrutiny in the wake of a Harvard study that shows racial and economic achievement gaps widened during the COVID-19 virtual-learning lockdowns supported by the labor groups.
Chinese officials lashed out at the head of the World Health Organization on Wednesday for describing the communist nation's zero-COVID policy as unsustainable.
Aviation officials in Europe are lifting the requirement for masks on flights while noting that face coverings remain one of the best protection against the transmission of COVID-19.
The gun-homicide rate jumped by a whopping 35% in 2020 against the backdrop of the pandemic while gun-involved suicides remained steady but alarmingly high, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a report Tuesday.
Susan Rice, a White House adviser on domestic policy, tested positive for COVID-19 on Monday, making her the latest person in President Biden's orbit to get infected.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul tested positive for the coronavirus Sunday as the U.S. battles fast-moving omicron lineages that were first detected in central New York.
Mary Francis had no qualms about being a poster child for COVID-19 vaccinations on the Navajo Nation, once a virus hot spot. The Navajo woman's face and words grace a digital flyer asking people on the Native American reservation to get vaccinated "to protect the shidine'e (my people)."
Three Arizona parents are suing their children's school district over an online dossier the district is accused of compiling on those protesting its COVID-19 lockdown policies.
The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday it is limiting the use of the COVID-19 vaccine from Johnson & Johnson to adults who cannot access another version or might face a medical issue if they take another type.
A California measure that would allow children age 12 and up to be vaccinated without their parents' consent, including against the coronavirus, cleared its first legislative hurdle Thursday.
For the first time, the U.S. came close to providing health care for all during the coronavirus pandemic - but for just one condition, COVID-19.
Nearly 15 million more people died worldwide in 2020 and 2021 than would normally be expected, the World Health Organization said Thursday in an analysis of excess deaths that are linked to the COVID-19 crisis and its ripple effects.
A federal judge in Florida recently ruled that the Biden administration's transportation mask mandate is lawful -- less than two weeks after another federal judge from the same state had struck it down as government overreach.
Young adults led a surge of alcohol-related deaths across all ages and sexes during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study shows.
Most U.S. parents will not get COVID-19 vaccines for children younger than 5 years old as soon when they become available, a new survey shows.
In the very early days of COVID-19, even before the worldwide spread had begun prompting its classification as a "pandemic," one group of researchers put out a devastating prediction of what they said was about to happen.
Bill Gates just came out with a new book called "How To Prevent The Next Pandemic," describing his vision to do just that. Wake up. Rise up. This is a plan for total global dominance over the health of the human race. It's socialism, communism, collectivism.
Bill Gates said those over the ages of "50 or 60" will "probably have to get boosted every six months" until "we get even better vaccines." That was after he revealed how sucky the current slate of shots are by admitting he just tested positive for COVID-19, despite having four doses.
The number of positive test COVID-19 cases have spiked among attendees of the White House correspondents' dinner, and newspapers the nation over have been sounding the alarms, raising a ruckus, blaring the warnings. But here's the thing: So what? So freaking what?
If Americans are waiting for a return to pre-pandemic normalcies, then the wait's going to be a long one. Interminably long. Try never. Americans must demand their pre-pandemic freedoms. Expecting the government to return them is a plan of futility.
When COVID-19 first came ashore in America -- long before scientists really knew anything about the coronavirus -- the top brains said in one breathless voice: Wash your hands!
Vice President Kamala Harris just tested positive for COVID-19, despite being fully vaccinated, despite receiving two booster shots -- the latest on April 1 -- and despite wearing a face mask pretty much everywhere she went. So, not to be rude, but what's the point of getting the shot?
Oh, to be alive in this age of science fiction in America.
A new poll from The Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 56% of Americans want to keep in place face mask mandates for airplane, bus, subway and public transportation travelers and staffers. Unsurprisingly, most are Democrats.
Has anyone ever wondered what drug dealers did during COVID-19 related lockdowns?
There's the old aphorism that "time is money." While this is certainly true, it's not the whole truth. Time is much more than money; it is irreplaceable.