Vaccine inequity and hesitancy made the Omicron variant more likely, scientists say
CNN
Many of the world's richest countries have spent the past year hoarding coronavirus vaccines, buying up enough doses to vaccinate their populations several times over and consistently failing to deliver on their promises to share doses with the developing world. The World Health Organization said the approach was "self-defeating" and "immoral."
It might be starting to bite. A new and potentially more transmissible variant of the virus likely emerged from a region with low vaccination rates.
The new variant, known as Omicron, was first identified in South Africa, although it is unclear whether it originated there or whether it was brought into the country from elsewhere in the region.
Over and over at a confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Democratic senators confronted Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about controversial comments they said he had made in the past. And over and over, President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of health and human services either denied having said those things or said he wasn’t sure he had said them.
Investigators are intensifying their search into what caused the collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and an Army Black Hawk helicopter, with recovery crews still working to pull wreckage from the Potomac River and initial concerns already raised about the path of at least one of the aircraft.