COVID-19: Resources

It's almost time to raise the curtains again in New York City, says mayor Bill de Blasio. In a press conference Thursday morning, de Blasio said that he expects Broadway and off-Broadway shows to reopen by September, and that he plans to facilitate that target date. "Broadway needs to come back, and we will move heaven and earth to bring Broadway back," he said. New York City's theaters have been shut down for more than a year, since Mar. 12, 2020.

A year after the pandemic plunged the U.S. economy into it worst crisis since the Great Depression, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is largely satisfied with the central bank's rapid-fire response.

"I liken it to Dunkirk," Powell said in an interview with NPR's Morning Edition, referring to the emergency rescue of British and Allied forces from France in World War II. "It was time to get in the boats and get the people, not to check the inspection records and things like that. Just get in the boats and go."

Something weird happened on the primitive mountain bike trails outside of Kansas City last spring. Coleen Voeks says she went from seeing a person or two stretched out along miles of trail there, to seeing a mass of humanity.

"As soon as the pandemic hit everybody went outside," says Voeks, a trail running coach. "So the trails became so crowded with people, new people, families, you know, people who'd never been to the trails before."

A key focus of President Biden's National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness is to "protect those most at risk and advance equity, including across racial, ethnic and rural/urban lines."

AstraZeneca's latest data analysis affirms effectiveness of its COVID-19 vaccine and is roughly in line with the results released Monday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is revoking her own plan for a tight national lockdown ahead of the long Easter holiday. The abrupt move comes one day after Merkel announced the lockdown, warning that because of rising infection rates and new coronavirus variants, Germany is facing "a new pandemic."

Merkel called the plan "a mistake" on Wednesday, and she took the blame for the decision in a statement posted by her Christian Democratic Union party.

India is seeing a substantial number of coronavirus variants. But it is unclear whether these are contributing to a new surge in cases there.

On Wednesday, India reported 47,262 new cases, the highest jump since November. Coronavirus-related fatalities are also increasing with 275 deaths reported on Wednesday, the most India has seen this year.

Updated March 26, 7:15 p.m.

A year after the pandemic shut down the country, a growing number of infectious disease experts, epidemiologists, public health officials and others have started to entertain a notion that has long seemed out of reach: The worst of the pandemic may be over for the United States.

On a biweekly virtual conference call in early March, Bishop Lawrence Wooten of Williams Temple Church of God in Christ in St. Louis asked county health officials to use churches to help bring the COVID-19 vaccines to predominantly Black neighborhoods in north St. Louis County.

Wooten recommended a few worship facilities and recreational sites, because the county executive specifically asked him to help get more African Americans in north St. Louis information about the vaccine and registered for the shot.

For months, journalists, politicians and health officials - from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to Dr. Anthony Fauci - have invoked the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study to explain why Black Americans are more hesitant than white Americans to get the coronavirus vaccine.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday announced an intensified coronavirus lockdown going into Easter, warning that new mutations raised the specter of a potentially deadly "third wave" of COVID-19 as Europe struggles in its vaccination campaign.

Speaking early Tuesday, Merkel said restrictions would be extended until April 18. She called on citizens to stay home and for shops to close for five days over the Easter holiday.

A safety board overseeing AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine trial is raising concerns about the company's data. In an unusual post-midnight statement, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said the Data and Safety Monitoring Board, which monitors the trial, is concerned that "outdated information" may have been included in the trial results.

Updated at 10 a.m. ET

The economy is staging a strong but still incomplete recovery, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is set to tell Congress on Tuesday, exactly a year after stock markets hit their lowest level during the pandemic.

The economy is now "much improved," Powell is set to say according to prepared remarks, thanks to "swift and vigorous action" by Congress and the central bank to avoid an even more crippling downturn.

In a year when so much about schooling has changed, add this to the list: A significant increase in the number of households where students were homeschooled.

That's according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Household Pulse Survey, an online survey that asks questions about how the pandemic is changing life in U.S. homes.

Hawaii, Florida, Seattle and the South of France are among the dream destinations for New York City undergraduates who have been forced to postpone the traditional college ritual of spring break for the second year in a row, because of the pandemic.

"I'd be getting a house with 10 people, with a pool, and we'd be going crazy in Miami, right below downtown Miami," said Sile Ogundeyin, 22, a senior economics major at Columbia University, who was sitting on the steps of the library with his friends.

Preliminary results from a late-stage study examining the efficacy of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine indicate it is significantly effective at preventing severe illness from COVID-19.

Two teams of European scientists, working independently, say they believe they've identified the cause of a rare blood clotting condition that has occurred in some people after receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

If correct, their research could mean any blood clots that occur could be easily treated.

There were reports earlier this month of roughly 30 blood clots occurring after vaccination, a few of them fatal. This led more than a dozen European countries to suspend their use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

As some states begin relaxing pandemic restrictions on gatherings, many families are eager to reschedule weddings and other long-postponed events. That's welcome news for function halls and other event-related businesses, even as they continue to navigate a new normal, with the pandemic not over yet.