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More Americans are getting the Covid-19 vaccine, but a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that 32 percent of people in the United States remain unlikely to get vaccinated against the virus. The newest group of vaccine doubters are parents of children who just received approval to get the shots. A poll in late October from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that fewer than 1 in 3 American parents want to vaccinate their 5- to 11-year-olds. (Daryl Austin, 11/27)

For the nearly two years that COVID has hung over our heads, my children have been at risk of contracting and spreading the disease. I recently got them vaccinated, and I will never forget the relief I felt as we walked away from the mass vaccination site. I am a college professor and am routinely in small rooms with students who have tested positive for COVID, even with mask and vaccine mandates in place at my university. While getting my girls vaccinated doesn’t completely eliminate their chances of getting sick, it significantly reduces their risks. To me, vaccination is crucial for protecting children and families. (Emily Mendenhall, 11/24)

The federal workforce of more than 3.5 million employees has met President Biden’s vaccine requirement deadline with 92 percent getting at least one dose. Mr. Biden’s proposal to require vaccines for workers in larger businesses is now on hold due to legal challenges, but that should not distract from the fact that vaccine mandates help get more shots into more people. (11/28)

There’s a grim inevitability to the fact that the latest concerning strain of the Covid-19 virus — known as B.1.1.529, and now nicknamed the Omicron variant 1  — should have been first identified in South Africa. So far, SARS-CoV-2’s most devastating impacts have been in developed countries. The U.S., U.K. and European Union have accounted for about a third of deaths, compared to their roughly 10% share of the world’s population. However, it’s been in the BRICS grouping of fast-growing middle- income nations where an outsized share of new variants of concern have been isolated and analyzed for the first time. From the original strain in China, to the Delta lineage picked up in India, the Gamma variety isolated in Brazil and the Beta and latest Omicron strains from South Africa, only the U.K.-related Alpha variant has emerged outside these countries. (David Fickling, 11/26)

There’s very little we know for sure about Omicron, the Covid variant first detected in South Africa that has caused tremors of panic as winter approaches. That’s actually good news. Fast, honest work by South Africa has allowed the world to get on top of this variant even while clinical and epidemiological data is scarce. So let’s get our act together now. Omicron, which early indicators suggest could be more transmissible even than Delta and more likely to cause breakthrough infections, may arrive in the United States soon if it’s not here already. (Zeynep Tufekci, 11/28)

When the travel ban was finally lifted this month, Brits visiting the U.S. got a shock. Not only were rapid COVID tests hard to find; prices were at rip-off levels. A survey conducted by the Independent newspaper found an antigen test at Orlando International Airport cost $65; it was $75 in San Francisco and $100 in a Washington, D.C., travel clinic. By contrast, antigen home test kits are provided free of charge from Britain’s National Health Service and come in a box of seven tests that can be picked up at local pharmacies (airport tests are around 35 pounds or $46.88). The tests are useful in areas where the virus is surging. Some schools make antigen tests mandatory before a parent-teacher meeting; they can be required for a hospital visit or for entering a nursing home. (Therese Raphael, 11/26)

“What was the worst part about Covid? Besides masks, of course. ”That was the question one of my school administrators greeted me and my fellow Texas classmates with on my first day as a high school junior in August. (Zoe Yu, 11/28)