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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued guidelines on attending celebrations and watch parties for and ahead of the Super Bowl on Sunday. The CDC advised that “attending large gatherings like the Super Bowl increases your risk of getting and spreading COVID-19,” calling on fans to watch the game at home with the people who live with them instead of hosting or attending a gathering. (Pitofsky, 2/1)

The pandemic has affected nearly every facet of daily life and the Super Bowl is no exception. The yearly game to settle who is the champion of the NFL is this Sunday. The game, along with its accompanying hype and parties, comes just as health officials are begging Americans to hunker down to help stop the spread of new strains of the coronavirus. (Wood, 2/1)

But like everything else in the year since the coronavirus pandemic swept the globe, Super Bowl LV in Tampa, Fla., has been adapted to Covid-19 health guidelines and scaled down, despite the excitement over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers becoming the first N.F.L. team to play in the championship game in its home venue — Raymond James Stadium. While the football being played on Sunday will look largely the same as in other years, nearly everything else surrounding the Super Bowl will be different. (Belson, 2/2)

Public health experts say their fears about pandemic-related testing supply shortages are coming true as tests for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) decline even as risky sex behavior may be more prevalent. Last summer, sexual health centers sounded the alarm that the pandemic was affecting their ability to screen patients for STDs. The issue is particularly concerning in Philadelphia, where rates of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia have for years far exceeded national averages. Many centers had to temporarily suspend their walk-in testing services — some of which serve patients who don’t have health insurance — and saw a drop in the number of people getting tested. (Ao, 2/2)

The baby boom that many Americans predicted would result from couples being isolated together during the coronavirus pandemic has not panned out so far. Instead, the opposite occurred in 2020, with more than 50,000 fewer births in several U.S. states compared with a year earlier, according to a survey conducted by the Guttmacher Institute. Birth rates in Arizona, California, Florida, Hawaii and Ohio saw significant declines in the nine months after COVID-19 was declared a national emergency, Bloomberg News reported. (Lee, 2/1)

The number of violent crimes committed in large American cities increased dramatically over the last year as the coronavirus pandemic raged. A new report from the National Commission on Covid-19 and Criminal Justice and Arnold Ventures found homicide rates spiking an average of 30 percent over 2019 levels last year, a rise that meant an additional 1,268 deaths in the 34 major cities the report covered. (Wilson, 2/1)