COVID-19 updates: Elizabeth Warren tests positive

The senator says she's experiencing "mild symptoms."

As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.3 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 806,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering.

About 61.4% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.


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Federal court allows Biden's workforce vaccine-or-test mandate to proceed

A federal appeals court reinstated the Biden administration's nationwide workplace vaccine mandate Friday.

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals dissolved the stay issued by the Fifth Circuit last month on the rule, which would require employees at private companies with over 100 workers to get vaccinated or tested regularly.

The mandate "is an important step in curtailing the transmission of a deadly virus that has killed over 800,000 people in the United States, brought our healthcare system to its knees, forced businesses to shut down for months on end, and cost hundreds of thousands of workers their jobs," Judge Jane Stranch wrote in the opinion.

The rule, which was set to go into effect on Jan. 4, 2022, had been put on hold by the Fifth Circuit after it ruled that the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration didn’t have the legal authority to impose such a requirement on private businesses.

The Labor Department had previously said it won’t move forward with enforcing its workplace mandate until the matter was resolved in court.

Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said Friday she plans to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to block the order.

-ABC News' Benjamin Siu and Anne Flaherty


Omicron could spread up to 3 times faster than delta, new analysis finds

The omicron variant could spread two to three times faster than delta, according to a new report from the Imperial College London COVID-19 response team.

The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, also estimated that the risk of being reinfected with omicron is more than five times higher than that of delta.

Data could change as more information on omicron's spread is gathered, though the study offers an early indication of how much more transmissible the new variant is compared to delta.

-ABC News' Cheyenne Haslett, Dr. John Brownstein and Sony Salzman


NFL games pushed back

Due to a "substantial increase in cases across the league," the NFL announced that several weekend games have been pushed back.

Saturday's game between the Las Vegas Raiders and Cleveland Browns has been moved from Saturday to Monday.

The Washington Football Team vs. Philadelphia Eagles matchup and Seattle Seahawks-Los Angeles Rams game have both been moved from Sunday to Tuesday.


New York state reports over 21K cases setting new pandemic record

New York state reported 21,027 cases Thursday, setting a new single-day high, Gov. Kathy Hochul's office said.

"The winter surge in COVID-19 cases is a reminder that the pandemic is not over yet and we must take extra care to keep ourselves and each other safe," Hochul said in a statement. "The vaccine is still our best weapon to defeat the virus."

-ABC News' Josh Hoyos


Omicron will be dominant variant in US 'very soon,' Fauci says

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's leading expert on infectious diseases, warned Thursday that omicron will become the dominant variant of the novel coronavirus in the United States "very soon."

"It has an extraordinary ability to transmit efficiently and spread," Fauci, the chief medical advisor to U.S. President Joe Biden, told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos in an interview on "Good Morning America."

"It has what we call a doubling time of about three days and if you do the math on that, if you have just a couple of percentage of the isolates being omicron, very soon it's going to be the dominant variant," he explained. "We've seen that in South Africa, we're seeing it in the U.K. and I'm absolutely certain that's what we're going to be seeing here relatively soon."

Fauci, who is also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, urged Americans to "absolutely" get vaccinated against COVID-19, if they haven't already, and to also receive a booster shot when they become eligible.

"At this point, we don't believe you need an omicron-specific boost," he added. "We just need to get the boost with what you got originally for the primary vaccination."