Average of new U.S. coronavirus cases falls below delta peak

The United States has recorded more than 1 million “excess deaths” since February 2020, government mortality statistics show, a toll that exceeds the officially documented lethality of the coronavirus and captures the broad consequences of the health crisis that has entered its third year.

The excess-deaths figure surpassed the milestone last week, reaching 1,023,916, according to Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The center updates its estimate weekly.

Connecticut has extended its mask mandate for schools through the end of the month, joining other states that are treating classrooms differently than other indoor gathering places in the omicron variant’s waning days.

The Democrat-controlled state Senate voted 21-14 to extend Gov. Ned Lamont’s (D) school mask mandate that was set to expire Tuesday to Feb. 28, the Hartford Courant reported. Lamont said Tuesday that he had signed the bill.

More leaders across the country have revealed plans to curtail their coronavirus restrictions as the omicron variant’s case count wanes.

A group of Republican senators is pushing back against efforts to create a federal “no-fly” list for unruly passengers, arguing that doing so would essentially draw an equivalence between terrorists and opponents of mask mandates.

The eight lawmakers voiced their concerns in a letter Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland. They noted that, according to Federal Aviation Administration data, most reports of unruly passengers have been related to mask requirements during the pandemic.

“While we strongly condemn any violence towards airline workers, there is significant uncertainty around the efficacy of this mandate, as highlighted by the CEO of Southwest Airlines during a recent Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing,” the senators wrote. “Creating a federal ‘no-fly’ list for unruly passengers who are skeptical of this mandate would seemingly equate them to terrorists who seek to actively take the lives of Americans and perpetrate attacks on the homeland.”

Coronavirus vaccines given during pregnancy might provide protection to babies after they are born, according to a new study.

The study, released Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that infants whose mothers were fully vaccinated with mRNA shots while pregnant were about 60 percent less likely to be hospitalized for the virus in their first six months of life. That protection appeared to be stronger if the vaccination occurred after the first 20 weeks of pregnancy.

It’s the first real-world evidence demonstrating that maternal vaccination may benefit not just the mother but the baby.

Ontario will begin to ease its limits on social gatherings Thursday and lift the proof-of-vaccination requirement for all public venues March 1, provincial Premier Doug Ford announced Monday.

Ford cited the region’s declining coronavirus case counts and hospitalizations as reasons for rollbacks. Some outdoor events will have no restrictions, but mandatory mask-wearing requirements will be preserved, he added.

These changes are not responses to the self-styled “Freedom Convoy” protesters who have blocked major U.S.-Canada trade routes, disrupted daily life in cities such as Ottawa, prompted the resignation of Ottawa’s police chief and inspired copycat demonstrations around the world, according to Ford.

The nation’s seven-day average of new coronavirus infections has fallen to a number not seen since the delta surge of last summer began to abate, though cases remain higher than during much of the pandemic.

The United States had an average of 153,029 cases per day as of Monday, according to tracking by The Washington Post. That’s below the highest seven-day average during the wave caused by the highly contagious delta variant, the 165,187 recorded on Sept. 1. It is also a sharp drop from the pandemic high of 807,897 reached on Jan. 22.

Ottawa’s Police Chief Peter Sloly resigned Tuesday amid criticism of the force’s handling of the protests that have descended upon the city since late January.

Sloly’s resignation comes a day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government invoked the Emergencies Act, a never-before-used law that will grant the federal government more powers to deal with the blockades.

Sloly’s resignation was confirmed by Canada’s Minister of Public Safety Marco Mendicino at a news conference in which the government announced a loosening of covid-19 measures related to travelers.

Last month, after nearly two years of parenting in a pandemic, Morgan Burke was angry.

Her days had been spent at home, she said, the hours divided up among cooking for her three children, cleaning up their messes and doing their laundry while her husband did his paid work upstairs.

Her stress has been acute since the start of the pandemic: Burke, 35, and her whole family — including her older two kids, now 7 and 4 — had coronavirus symptoms in March 2020, before tests were widely available, when they were just a few days into what was supposed to be a week-long Florida vacation. Burke, who lives in the Charlestown neighborhood of Boston, was seven months pregnant at the time, so “we stayed for six months and had a baby in Florida,” she said.