COVID updates: New Zealand imposes restrictions amid omicron outbreak

New Zealand announced a new set of COVID-19 restrictions Sunday amid its first omicron outbreak.

The country, which had so far remained one of the few countries in the world without a surge of cases of the new variant, will impose new restrictions under the "Red" traffic light system starting at 11:59 PM local time on Sunday.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern reported in a press conference Sunday the variant is circulating in Auckland. 

There are nine newly confirmed omicron cases identified in a single family in the last day. The family had just returned from attending a wedding and other events where there were more than 100 people, officials said.

And due to the outbreak, Ardern announced that she and her partner are postponing their wedding.

-ABC News' Christine Theodorou

The Food and Drug Administration has expanded its approval for remdesivir, an antiviral drug used to treat COVID-19, to include people who are not hospitalized. Previously, the approval was limited to patients who were already hospitalized.

The expanded use was based on a study that found high-risk COVID-19 patients who were treated with remdesivir were less likely to be hospitalized than patients who got a placebo.

"Today's actions provide adults and pediatric patients, with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who are at high risk of severe COVID-19, with a treatment option they could receive outside of a traditional inpatient hospital setting, including at skilled nursing facilities, home healthcare settings and outpatient facilities such as infusion centers," Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement Friday.

The intravenous drug, known by the brand name Veklury, is approved for use in patients as young as 12 years old who weigh at least 88 pounds.

-ABC News' Sasha Pezenik

A federal judge in Texas shot down the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for federal workers.

A lawsuit was filed in December by Feds for Medical Freedom, compromised of government employees from various agencies and AFGE 918, a union which primarily represents employees from the Federal Protective Service and Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency.

Citing the Supreme Court’s most recent decision against OSHA, U.S. District Judge Jeffery Vincent Brown ruled there is a difference between public health measures and setting workplace and safety standards.

“The President certainly possesses ‘broad statutory authority to regulate executive branch employment policies,’” the judge wrote. “But the Supreme Court has expressly held that a COVID-19 vaccine mandate is not an employment regulation. And that means the President was without statutory authority to issue the federal worker mandate.”

Brown made clear that getting vaccinated is the best protection against COVID-19 and the lawsuit had to do with whether or not a president could issue such a sweeping order with the stroke of a pen.

The Justice Department will appeal the ruling, a spokesman said.

Following the ruling, a Biden administration spokesperson said "we are confident in our legal authority."

"Importantly, as we face the most transmissible variant to date, every leader should be focused on using the tools we know work to protect the American people. Vaccination is our strongest tool against the virus," the spokesperson said in a statement, noting that more than 93% of federal employees have gotten at least one vaccine dose.

-ABC News' Luke Barr

California state senator Scott Wiener has introduced a bill lowering the vaccine age of consent from 18 to 12.

"California law already allows 12-17 year olds to access various forms of healthcare without parental consent, eg: HPV & hep B vaccines, abortion care, birth control, mental healthcare, domestic violence-related care," Wiener tweeted Friday. "Let’s let teens protect their health."

San Francisco's director of public health and youth advocates were among those who joined Wiener at a Friday news conference introducing the legislation.

One youth advocate, Nyla, a seventh-grader, said, "We're exposed to so much that we're old enough to have a say so when something will benefit us. … This bill gives me hope for kids whose parents don't always make decisions in their best interest even when they mean well."

-ABC News' Izzy Alvarez