The latest The Food and Drug Administration on Monday authorized booster shots of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds, as well as third shots for kids as young as five who are immunocompromised. The agency also said anyone eligible for a booster shot can get one five months after their last vaccine dose instead of six months. The moves are awaiting a sign-off from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is expected to green-light them later this week. It's welcome news for many parents as schools reopen amid soaring infections from the omicron variant. While some school districts have reverted to remote learning, many are pressing ahead with in-person classes. After an alarming spike in omicron infections that began in late November, new cases have plummeted in South Africa over the past week and a half. Hospitalizations are down, too, and officials said the increase in fatalities has remained low compared with South Africa's three previous surges. All told, the first country to detect the new variant appears to have made it to the other side of its omicron wave relatively swiftly — an outcome other countries will keep a keen eye on as they battle their own rising caseloads. Among South Africa's health-care workers, boosters of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine appeared to slash hospitalizations by 85 percent, according to a new, not-yet-peer-reviewed study. Researchers looked at hospital admissions from mid-November to mid-December, tracking roughly 69,000 health-care workers who got a second Johnson & Johnson dose. How long will the omicron wave last in the United States? It's hard to say. Long- and medium-term pandemic forecasts have repeatedly turned out wrong, prompting some modelers to limit their predictions to one week ahead. Experts watching the variant's spread expect the wave here to be very tall and, like South Africa's, relatively quick — "measured in weeks rather than months," as my colleague Joel Achenbach reports. Researchers from Columbia University estimate infections could peak the week of Jan. 9, with about 2.5 million confirmed infections in that seven-day period, possibly more. Hospitalizations could still rise after infections start to taper, threatening to overwhelm hospitals in hard-hit places. The new variant could prove especially devastating in the Southeast, where vaccination rates are lower and fewer people heed public health recommendations. Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi are already experiencing some of the country's sharpest increases in hospitalizations since Christmas. Experts are watching to see whether outbreaks there will end up deadlier than in the North. The CDC's decision to cut the recommended isolation period for covid-19 from 10 days to five days drew a flurry of criticism from public health experts who said it was too permissive. Acknowledging the backlash, Anthony S. Fauci, the White House pandemic response chief, said health officials may soon add a testing requirement to the isolation guidance. The move comes as other countries are shortening their isolation and quarantine policies out of concern that omicron could sideline large portions of the essential workforce with mild or asymptomatic infections. Other important news The Biden administration defended its vaccine mandate to the Supreme Court, arguing that the justices shouldn't block a program that will save thousands of lives. Israel is expanding its booster campaign: Anyone 60 and over can now get a fourth vaccine shot. Washington, D.C., avoided big coronavirus waves for most of the pandemic. Now it's one of the country's worst hotspots. The United Arab Emirates is requiring coronavirus booster shots for citizens seeking to travel abroad. | 
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