Eager to know when parts of America are finally approaching herd immunity against COVID-19? Then pay close attention to what’s happening in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Triggered by reopenings and fueled by the rise of more contagious variants, COVID numbers suddenly shot up across all four states last month. But then, just as suddenly, cases began to plummet right at the start of April — and they’re still plummeting today, even as restrictions are being lifted.

Could this swift reversal — which occurred despite rising mobility and mixing — herald the local onset of something like herd immunity (that is, the point when the virus starts to run

WASHINGTON — Top public health officials in the Biden administration acknowledged on Friday that the pace of coronavirus vaccinations is slowing. They said they were preparing for a new phase in the nationwide inoculation effort, one that seeks to address “unsettling gaps,” as Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, put it during a Friday briefing of the White House pandemic response team.

One graphic Walensky shared during the briefing showed such gaps in parts of the Deep South, the Midwest and the intermountain West, in particular when it came to vaccination of people 65 and older. COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, tends

Reuters

Fresh pizza vending machine prompts curiosity and horror in Rome

Raffaele Esposito, the 19th century Neapolitan credited with inventing Italy’s most famous type of pizza, may be turning in his grave: Rome has a new vending machine which slides out freshly cooked pizzas in just three minutes. “It looks good but it is much smaller than in a restaurant and there is less topping,” said Claudio Zampiga, a pensioner. People have been eating forms of flat bread with toppings for millennia, but it is generally accepted that pizza was perfected in Naples, where it was a street food for the poor.

Associated Press

Stars keep playoff hopes alive with 5-2 win over Lightning

Joe Pavelski had two goals and two assists to help keep the Dallas Stars’ postseason hopes alive with a 5-2 victory over the Tampa Bay Lightning on Friday night. The win moved Dallas within two points of Nashville heading into the final weekend of the regular season. The Stars play Chicago on Sunday and Monday, while the Predators host Carolina, which clinched its first division title since 2006 on Friday with Tampa Bay’s loss, on Saturday and Monday.

In America, it’s easy to believe — and likely correct, given the country’s rapid pace of vaccination and high level of prior infection — that the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic is over.

But in India right now, every day is worse than the last.

“In the last 24 hours alone, [India has] had 300,000 cases, and that’s most certainly an undercount,” said Dr. Kavita Patel, a Yahoo News medical contributor. “In some parts of India, like Mumbai and New Delhi, as high as 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 people are testing positive, [and that’s] actually, again, an underestimate. As a result, India’s hospitals are completely full. There is

WASHINGTON — President Biden on Wednesday called for employers to provide workers with paid time off for coronavirus vaccination, holding out as enticement a federal tax credit program that would reimburse such outlays by business owners.

“No working American should lose a single dollar from their paycheck because they chose to fulfill their patriotic duty of getting vaccinated,” Biden said in remarks from the White House.

As he spoke, the president stood before a blue screen emblazoned with the words “200 million COVID shots.” The purpose of the remarks was to tout the 200 millionth vaccine dose administered during his time in office. More than a quarter of all Americans are

WASHINGTON — To hear top officials in the Biden administration tell it, the effort to vaccinate Americans is a contest against the coronavirus, a determined opponent that could flare into a new surge (as it recently did in Michigan) or evolve into new variants before enough people have been inoculated to stop community spread.

“We’re still in a life-and-death race against this virus,” President Biden said earlier this month. He has frequently announced more aggressive vaccination timelines, promising that there would be enough vaccines for every American by the end of May. His administration kept to that goal even as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was taken out of circulation