Coronavirus Variants, GameStop, Polar Vortex: Your Weekend Briefing
Here’s what you need to know about the week’s top stories.
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Credit...James Estrin/The New York Times
1. U.S. health officials are waiting to see if more contagious coronavirus variants upend the country’s progress in its battle against the virus.
Most communities remain at an extremely high risk of contracting the virus, like New York City, above. But transmission seems to be slowing throughout the country, with the number of new average cases 40 percent lower on Jan. 29 than at the U.S. peak three weeks earlier.
Still, the average reported daily death rate over the past seven days was above 3,000, and we are by no means out of the woods yet.