Over the past year, 1.6 million Nevadans — or about half of the state’s population — have been inoculated against COVID-19 in a roller-coaster rollout of the vaccine.

Nevada has become the first state to implement a health care premium surcharge on some 5,000 state employees not vaccinated against COVID-19 starting in July 2022.

Nevada’s coronavirus activity is inching up since the Thanksgiving holiday but remains only a fraction of what it was this time last year.

U.S. healthcare spending skyrocketed in 2020 as the federal government invested significantly in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). CMS’ Office of the Actuary released its annual report on health expenditures, which found spending increased by 9.7% in 2020 to reach $4.2 trillion. ...

White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday that there will be “no need” to shut down the U.S. economy “in any way,” adding that the country has the tools necessary to fight the Omicron variant. The big picture: There is an increase of coronavirus cases, driven by the Delta variant, across the country, and CDC ...

The omicron variant infects around 70 times faster than delta and the original Covid-19 strain, though the severity of illness is likely to be much lower, according to a University of Hong Kong study that adds weight to the early on-ground observations from South African doctors. The supercharged speed of omicron’s spread in the human bronchus was ...