COVID-19 updates: Austria orders nationwide lockdown for unvaccinated residents
The lockdown for unvaccinated residents began at midnight on Monday.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 763,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University's Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
Just 68.8% of Americans ages 12 and up are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Biden administration urges schools to provide COVID-19 shots, info
The Biden administration sent letters to superintendents and principals across the United States on Monday, urging them to set up COVID-19 vaccination clinics inside their elementary schools.
"Parents rely on their children’s teachers, principals, school nurses, and other school personnel to help keep their students safe and healthy every school year," U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra and U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona wrote in the letters. "We need your help now more than ever to continue to protect our communities and our children."
They also asked the school leaders to distribute information "from trusted sources" about COVID-19 vaccines to all families with children ages 5 to 11, and to host community engagements with parents in partnership with local pediatricians and "other trusted medical voices" in the community.
"The communications you issue -- in languages accessible to your parents -- will be critical in helping families learn more about the vaccine," Becerra and Cardona wrote.
The letters went out on the same day that first lady Jill Biden and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy plan to visit an elementary school in McLean, Virginia, that was used as one of the first sites in the country to begin administering the polio vaccine in 1954.
School officials would not be responsible for handling COVID-19 vaccines or giving shots to students. Instead, they would partner with a local vaccine provider already administering shots, such as a pharmacy or community health clinic.
The schools would be allowed to use federal dollars through the American Rescue Plan to offset any costs with providing the space and organizing the vaccine drive.
-ABC News' Anne Flaherty
States sue over vaccine mandate for health care workers
Ten states are suing the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services over the Biden administration's vaccine mandate targeting health care workers.
About 17 million health care workers who are employed at places that get funding through CMS are required to get vaccinated by Jan. 4, 2022. They do not have the option to test.
"The mandate is a blatant attempt to federalize public health issues involving vaccination that belong within the States’ police power," stated the suit, which was filed by Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is running for Senate.
The attorneys general of Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, Alaska, South Dakota, North Dakota and New Hampshire have joined the lawsuit, which is one of many filed against different parts of the Biden administration's vaccine requirements but the first to target the health care worker mandate.
Twenty-six states are suing over the mandate that applies to businesses, while another handful are suing over the federal worker mandate. Last week, a federal court temporarily blocked the business vaccine rule.
-ABC News' Cheyenne Haslett