Here's a look at some of today's COVID-19 news.
This Day in History:, New Orleanians Take to the Streets for Mardi Gras. February 27, 1827. Groups of masked students danced in the streets, marking the beginnings of the city's Mardi Gras celebrations. The Mardi Gras celebration was brought to the region by French settlers towards the end of the 1600s. By the time students in New Orleans danced in the streets in costumes and masks. the celebration of Carnival had been popular in Mobile, AL, for more than 100 years. The New Orleans student celebrations were inspired by their Paris studies. Within five years, a French plantation owner had begun raising money to fund the celebration. The first fully organized Mardi Gras occurred in 1857
Revelers decked out in traditional purple, green and gold came out to party on Fat Tuesday in New Orleans’ first full-dress Mardi Gras since 2020. The fun includes back-to-back parades across the city and marches through the French Quarter and beyond, with masks against COVID-19 required only in indoor public spaces.
Parade routes are shorter than usual, because there aren't enough police for the standard ones, even with officers working 12-hour shifts as they always do on Mardi Gras and the days leading up to the end of the Carnival season.
But with COVID-19 hospitalizations and case numbers falling worldwide and 92% of the city's adults at least partly vaccinated, parades and other festivities are back on after a season without them.
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Hundreds of thousands of devotees crowded a revered Hindu temple in Nepal’s capital for a festival on Tuesday as coronavirus cases decline and life returns to normal.
Around a million devotees were expected to visit the temple to Hindu god Shiva on Shivaratri, one of Nepal's most cherished festivals.
Temples, schools and markets have begun to reopen in recent weeks as the number of COVID-19 cases declines. On Monday, just 180 new infections were reported, down from a peak of over 9,000 per day in January.
Most adults in the United States are getting back to some degree of pre-pandemic normalcy, but they're divided over concerns and expectations for what's next.
Three surveys conducted in February -- from the Kaiser Family Foundation, Axios/Ipsos and the Washington Post in collaboration with ABC News -- asked adults to assess the current state of the pandemic in the United States.
Only a third of adults think the virus is "completely" or "mostly" under control, according to the Post/ABC survey. But most think the worst is behind them, the KFF survey found.
As the United States emerges from the Omicron wave, Covid-19 testing has slowed to a fraction of what it was at the beginning of the year.
In mid-January, as daily case counts reached their peak, about 2.5 million tests were processed each day in the United States. Now, there are about 670,000 tests coming through each day, according to data from the US Department of Health and Human Services.
"Testing, especially as the Omicron wave goes down, does not lose its relevance," epidemiologist Dr. Michael Mina emphasized. "Testing is how we see the virus. We can't see it if we do not test."
Read more of the day's COVID news here:
The White House will roll out a new strategy laying out the next phase of its response to the coronavirus pandemic on Wednesday, two administration officials told CNN, outlining a vision that involves fewer disruptions to daily life while preparing for the unpredictable potential of another game-changing variant.
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