As the pandemic raged in Ecuador last year, they posted a social media photo of themselves dressed in biohazard suits kissing and holding a sign saying: "Today was to be our wedding day, but instead…"

The Oxford and AstraZeneca vaccines were added to the list of vaccines accepted for Guam quarantine exemption.

The vaccinations were announced late last week in a joint statement by U.S. Forces Japan and the Japanese government.

While the Pentagon can make vaccinations fully cleared by the FDA mandatory for troops, it cannot do so for the coronavirus vaccinations while they are authorized only on an emergency basis, unless the president orders it mandatory.

President Joe Biden wants to imbue Independence Day with new meaning this year by encouraging nationwide celebrations to mark the country's effective return to normalcy after 16 months of coronavirus pandemic disruption and more than 600,000 lives lost.

A new analysis of blood samples from 24,000 Americans taken early last year is the latest and largest study to suggest that the new coronavirus popped up in the U.S. in December 2019 — weeks before cases were first recognized by health officials.

The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 topped 600,000 on Tuesday, even as the vaccination drive has drastically brought down daily cases and fatalities and allowed the country to emerge from the gloom and look forward to summer.

The new report, published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, bolsters earlier studies indicating the virus entered the country under the radar and may have been spreading in the first two months of 2020, well in advance of warnings to that effect from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Elderly residents of Okinawa, home to most of the U.S. troops stationed in Japan, began queuing up for coronavirus vaccinations at the the Okinawa Convention Center.

IOC Vice President John Coates arrived in Tokyo on Tuesday, the same day that organizers and the International Olympic Committee were set to roll out the third and final edition of their so-called Playbooks.