The drugmaker Merck will help produce shots by its rival Johnson & Johnson, President Joe Biden announced Tuesday. That should help speed up manufacturing of the only single-dose vaccine available in the states after the company faced unexpected production problems. The White House also announced it’s bumping up its weekly vaccine distribution from 14.5 million doses to 15.2 million. Almost 20 percent of U.S. adults have received at least one dose of a vaccine, and 10 percent are fully immunized.

Truckloads of the third COVID-19 vaccine authorized by the Food and Drug Administration will soon roll out across the country. Johnson & Johnson expects to ship 20 million doses in the United States this month and a total of 100 million by the end of June.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday reined in a California county that continued to bar indoor worship in defiance of a Supreme Court ruling.

Lawmakers passed a $1.9 trillion economic rescue plan along party lines on Saturday, bringing President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 relief package a step closer to reality. The economic stimulus bill includes direct payments of $1,400 to individual taxpayers who make $75,000 or less per year or less than $150,000 for a couple. It also expands extra unemployment benefits to $400 a week and includes funding for schools, vaccines, and state and local governments. The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration.

A Japanese mother committed suicide in her Tokyo apartment last month after testing positive for the coronavirus. The woman in her 30s was asymptomatic and felt guilty that she may have infected her daughter and husband. “It is inexcusable that I have become a nuisance,” her final note said, according to local media.

The bodies lay in the streets of Axum for days, pockmarked with gunshot wounds. At night the residents of Ethiopia’s holiest city listened, horrified, as hyenas fed on the corpses. For many, these were people they knew.

Rumors surfaced in early December of a massacre at Axum’s Church of St. Mary of Zion, but the government blocked reporters from the embattled Tigray region. Only after authorities lifted a blackout on phone and internet communication in February could they confirm the true horror: 800 people killed in and around the church in one weekend (Nov. 28). 

The U.S. healthcare establishment’s plan for curbing the pandemic requires pushing the COVID-19 vaccine out to vulnerable populations as quickly as possible. Homeless people meet many states’ criteria for priority immunization but pose unique challenges for health workers who want to help them.

Some states specifically list the homeless in their vaccination plans, while others prioritize people of a certain age or with specific pre-existing conditions, which include many homeless people.