The number of people getting coverage during the just-wrapped, 2 1/2-month open enrollment period with the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange increased by nearly 25% over last year’s 81,903 enrollees. The state said this year saw the most since the exchange began operating as a state-based marketplace in 2019.

The White House is preparing to move on from Omicron. Emboldened by falling case counts, the Biden administration is plotting a new phase of the pandemic response aimed at containing the coronavirus and conditioning Americans to live with it.

"While this meta-analysis concludes that lockdowns have had little to no public health effects, they have imposed enormous economic and social costs where they have been adopted," the researchers wrote. "In consequence, lockdown policies are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument."

That’s part of a larger drop in cases and most coronavirus metrics. The county hit the peak of the current surge in the last few weeks, and numbers have dropped quickly. That had been expected based on data from around the world looking at how the omicron variant caused rapid increases followed by similarly rapid decreases in case counts.

In a Tuesday interview, Lombardo said he continues to encourage officers and other employees to get the vaccine. But with a recent dip in positive cases at the department, he lifted the vaccine mandate for new hires about a week ago.

Top senators on an influential health committee indicated at a hearing Tuesday that they plan to work on a bipartisan mental health and substance use package this year. The COVID-19 pandemic has seen record numbers of drug overdose deaths and rises in the number of individuals reporting symptoms of anxiety and depression. Experts have renewed ...