Near­ly two years in­to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the ori­gin of the virus tor­ment­ing the world re­mains shroud­ed in mys­tery.

CDC rec­om­men­da­tion comes amid in­creas­ing fears the new Omi­cron vari­ant will lead to a surge in in­fec­tions in the US.

■ Key prob­lem for in­ter­na­tion­al dose-shar­ing pro­gramme is wealthy coun­tries do­nat­ing COVID-19 vac­cines with short shelf life, WHO says ■

The U.S. Em­bassy Port of Spain has con­firmed that the first of two ship­ments of the 304,200 dos­es of Pfiz­er COVID-19 Sy­ringe, has ar­rived in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

(AP) — Vac­cine mak­ers are rac­ing to up­date their COVID-19 shots against the newest coro­n­avirus threat even be­fore it’s clear a change is need­ed, just in case.

Ox­ford Uni­ver­si­ty study finds mix­ing a first dose of the Pfiz­er or As­trazeneca vac­cine with a sec­ond Mod­er­na shot yields high­er an­ti­bod­ies

(AP) — As the omi­cron coro­n­avirus vari­ant spreads in south­ern Africa and pops up in coun­tries all around the world, sci­en­tists are anx­ious­ly watch­ing a bat­tle play out that could de­ter­mine the fu­ture of the pan­dem­ic. Can the lat­est com­peti­tor to the world-dom­i­nat­ing delta over­throw it?

■ Sarah Gilbert says lessons of cur­rent health cri­sis must not be lost and urges cau­tion as new vari­ant rips through Britain ■

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City em­ploy­ers will have to man­date COVID-19 vac­ci­na­tions for their work­ers un­der new rules an­nounced Mon­day by May­or Bill de Bla­sio.

(CARPHA) — Coun­tries across the world, in­clud­ing the Caribbean, are rolling out more strin­gent mea­sures for trav­ellers, in­clud­ing ad­di­tion­al test­ing and even trav­el bans, as part of their plan to com­bat the lat­est COVID-19 vari­ant, Omi­cron.  In light of this, CARPHA Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, Dr. Joy St. John con­tends: “The de­ci­sion to im­pose en­try re­quire­ments be­longs to the na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties”. 

The coun­try has record­ed sev­en ma­ter­nal deaths of which four were from COVID-19. This is ac­cord­ing to the Di­rec­tor in the Di­rec­torate of Women's Health, Dr Adesh Sir­jus­ingh.

The Min­istry of Health is re­port­ing 26 more lives have been lost to COVID-19 in its lat­est up­date, and that an­oth­er 601 peo­ple have test­ed pos­i­tive for the dis­ease.