Americans with private health insurance to be reimbursed for at-home COVID-19 tests
CBSN
Americans with private health insurance will be reimbursed for at-home tests, President Biden is announcing Thursday, and international travelers will now be required to undergo stricter COVID-19 testing, according to a phone briefing by a senior administration official Wednesday.
The new measures the president is expected to describe in remarks at the National Institutes of Health are part of a new administration strategy to curb the virus this winter, as the new Omicron coronavirus variant prompts concerns about how easily it may spread, how severe its symptoms are and whether existing vaccines are effective against it.
International travelers will be required to test negative within one day of their departure to the U.S., regardless of vaccination status or nationality. The earlier Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order already applied to virtually all inbound international travelers, including U.S. citizens, but had allowed fully vaccinated travelers a 3-day window, compared to a 1-day window, to be tested for unvaccinated travelers, based on the agency's modeling. The updated requirement would remove the extra days that fully vaccinated travelers had been allowed to be tested, an attempt to reduce the risk of bringing COVID infections into the U.S.
Beijing — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping and senior Chinese officials, warning of the dangers of misunderstandings and miscalculations as the United States and China butted heads over a number of contentious bilateral, regional and global issues. Blinken met with Xi in Beijing after holding talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Public Security Minister Wang Xiaohong.
The death of a highly regarded Missouri emergency room doctor whose body was found 11 months ago in a northwest Arkansas lake has been ruled a suicide, Arkansas authorities said Thursday, in a case that fueled social media speculation about whether his disappearance had been tied to his cryptocurrency dealings.
Chaos erupted overnight as police tried to break up a pro-Palestinian encampment at Emerson College in Boston, the latest flashpoint in a growing movement on college campuses around the country protesting Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza. Hundreds of people have been arrested in Massachusetts, Texas and California during the tense protests, following several rounds of arrests in New York in recent days.