Coronavirus

Updated at 2:15 p.m. ET

The European Union will soon start administering AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine — the third vaccine it has endorsed. The European Commission gave conditional authorization to the vaccine on Friday, hours after regulators recommended the move.

The European Medicines Agency said the AstraZeneca vaccine will prevent the deadly coronavirus from affecting people who are at least 18 years old. The vaccine has been administered in the U.K. since early this month.

As the Biden administration rolls out its own plans to fight the pandemic, states have struggled to distribute the vaccine to larger groups of newly-eligible Americans. Some governors are trying to scale up their vaccine operations — and smooth out the logistical kinks — with the help of the private sector.

In Washington state, Starbucks, Microsoft and Costco are lending expertise and manpower to public health agencies that are trying to dispatch their doses of vaccines more efficiently.

Europe's COVID-19 immunization program is in crisis mode as existing supplies of available vaccines are critically low — just as many European nations are facing another wave of infections.

Spain on Wednesday became the first European country to partly suspend its immunization campaign due to a low supply of vaccines, despite having the third-highest caseload in Europe. Local officials announced this week that the program in Madrid, the capital, will idle for two weeks.

Updated at 1:12 p.m. ET

The nation's economic engine slowed considerably in recent months, as it faced off against a winter wave of coronavirus infections.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that the nation's gross domestic product grew just under 1% in October, November and December — a marked downshift from the three previous months. On an annualized basis, the economy grew 4% in the fourth quarter.

A year ago, hundreds of desperate consumers were emailing Mike Bowen's Texas medical supply factory every day, looking to buy N95 medical respirator masks that can filter viruses: "Scared Americans and moms and old people and people saying, 'Help me,' " Bowen recalls.

Palestine Howze died April 14, 2020, in a North Carolina nursing home.

She had developed a pressure ulcer — or bed sore as they're commonly known. It flared up in December 2018 and just grew worse, says her daughter Lisa Howze. Infection set in.

"We begged them to take her to the emergency room, but they assured us that they could handle it," Howze says.

How to make sure the world is never so devastated by another pandemic?

Health officials from around the globe have been vigorously discussing that question over the past week at the annual meeting of the World Health Organization's Executive Board. The members, whose nine-day-long, mostly virtual gathering concludes on Tuesday, have heard recommendations from four separate panels.

With many U.S. schools still shuttered or operating on a limited basis, and millions of children learning remotely (or trying to), the stakes are high for Miguel Cardona. He is President Biden's pick to run the U.S.

Moderna says tests show that its COVID-19 vaccine offers protection against new variants of the coronavirus but that the vaccine is more effective against the variant first identified in the U.K. than the one found in South Africa. As a result, Moderna will test booster doses of its vaccine, including one that would be tailored to fight strains that have recently emerged.

Merck is halting development of its two COVID-19 vaccine candidates, saying that while the drugs seemed to be safe, they didn't generate enough of an immune response to effectively protect people against the coronavirus.

Senior citizens are increasingly finding themselves with new responsibilities and a lot of hard choices because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Those who have savings have to decide if they should dip into their accounts early, potentially eating away at funds they'd earmarked for later. Others are having to calculate how starting to receive their Social Security payments earlier than planned could reduce their checks in the future.

President Biden will reimpose a ban on many non-U.S. citizens attempting to enter the country. The move is an attempt to limit the spread of COVID-19 and contain new variants of the disease that have cropped up in several countries around the globe, according to media reports Sunday.

Almost exactly one year after the first case of the coronavirus was detected in the United States, the country has now reached 25 million confirmed infections. As it has for months, the U.S. remains by far the most coronavirus-riddled country in the world.