When Congress sent tens of billions of dollars to schools — an unprecedented sum — to battle the coronavirus pandemic, the hardest part was helping students recover from severe academic losses. The money did help, but it did not finish the job.

The U.S. health regulator on Friday advised COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers that new shots for the fall 2024 campaign should target the JN.1 variant that was dominant earlier this year.

Advisers to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Wednesday unanimously voted in favor of recommending that COVID-19 vaccines for 2024-25 should target a strain within the lineage of the JN.1 variant that has been dominant this year.

Former National Institutes of Health official Anthony Fauci has faced many hostile questions from members of Congress, but when he appears before a House panel on Monday, he’ll have something new to answer for: a trove of incendiary emails written by one of his closest advisers.

Despite “FLiRT” variants, this may be the first COVID wave with little federal pressure to limit transmission or data to even declare a surge.

Novavax will only be able to offer a COVID-19 vaccine in the United States this autumn if regulators accept the shot it has started manufacturing that targets a variant that was dominant earlier this year, the company said.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attacked former President Donald Trump on his response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “Trump presided over the greatest restriction of individual liberties this country has ever known. He did not stand up for the Constitution when it really mattered,” Kennedy said Friday.

The so-called FLiRT variants of SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus that cause COVID-19 have been the dominant forms of the virus circulating this year globally, according to the World Health Organization.

COVID-19 remained a bigger killer than the flu last winter, despite hopes the pandemic virus would eventually blend into the background with other respiratory germs that cause seasonal epidemics, a U.S. study showed.

The coronavirus pandemic ushered in a wave of anti-Asian hate, but it also lit a flame in the hearts of many Asian Americans who turned to activism and advocacy in the face of racism.