New lockdowns in United Kingdom

In response to a new, fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus, both England and Scotland announced tighter restrictions on Monday, keeping people home except for essential reasons and closing nonessential stores and personal care services. In England, the number of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 has jumped 30 percent from a week ago to 24,957—higher than the peak during the first wave of the pandemic in spring 2020.

What’s the latest on vaccines? Britain is distributing the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine in addition to the Pfizer shot. In the United States, many Americans have begun returning for the second of the two-dose vaccine regimen. As of Monday, U.S. healthcare workers have given nearly 4.6 million COVID-19 shots, and the effort ramped up over the weekend. France’s slow start has drawn criticism: By the end of Monday, several thousand people in the country will have received the injection.

Dig deeper: Read up on the U.S. vaccine campaign by the numbers in WORLD Magazine.