(ATLANTA) — Any mask is better than no mask. But loosely woven cloth masks provide the least amount of protection and Americans in some cases might want to opt for higher quality masks like KN95 and N95 respirators, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote Friday in updated online guidance.
“Wearing a highly protective mask or respirator may be most important for certain higher risk situations, or by some people at increased risk for severe disease,” the CDC stated.
The updated guidance comes after weeks of health experts urging Americans to upgrade their masks in the face of omicron, warning that cloth masks are not effective enough at stopping the highly transmissible variant from spreading.
But with much of the public reluctant to wear a mask at all, the CDC recommendation stops short of calling on Americans to choose one mask over the other, maintaining that any mask is better than no mask. The CDC also argues that higher quality masks can be less comfortable, and if a person takes it off, they are left with no protection.
“What I will say is the best mask that you can wear is the one that you will wear and the one you can keep on all day long that you can tolerate in public indoor settings and tolerate where you need to wear it,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, told reporters this week.
N95 and K95 masks can be costly and harder to find, even as the U.S. government has built up a stockpile of 737 million N95s to ensure first responders don’t fun out. President Joe Biden said this week he is developing a plan to make the higher quality masks more widely available.
“Next week we’ll announce how we’re making high-quality masks available to the American people for free,” Biden said.
In its earlier guidance, the CDC urged Americans not to purchase surgical N95 masks so as to save them for health care workers. However, it noted that “basic disposable” respirators can be an option so long as supplies are available.
While this latest guidance stops short of calling on people to wear a certain type of mask, it includes more information about why a person might opt for a nonsurgical N95 or a KN95. It also suggests wearing a disposable surgical mask with a cloth mask over it to improve the fit.
“Some masks and respirators offer higher levels of protection than others, and some may be harder to tolerate or wear consistently than others,” the CDC stated in the updated guidance. “It is most important to wear a well-fitted mask or respirator correctly that is comfortable for you and that provides good protection.”
(NEW YORK) — Southern states have declared states of emergency as snow targets the East Coast this weekend.
The storm first hits the Midwest Friday night into Saturday. Roads will be dangerous in southern Minnesota and Iowa, where up to 10 inches of snow and gusty winds could cause whiteout conditions. The Midwest could see 6 to 12 inches of snow in some areas.
Saturday night into Sunday, the snow turns to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas.
A wintry mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain could make roads extremely dangerous.
Three to 6 inches of snow is possible in parts of the South, with 6 to 18 inches possible in the mountains of Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. This storm has the potential to give Atlanta its first measurable snow in four years.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam have issued states of emergency as the storm approaches.
“This storm will bring significant impacts from snow, sleet and freezing rain in different parts of the state, with likely power outages and travel disruptions,” Cooper warned.
Northam said, “I urge Virginians to take this storm seriously and make preparations now.”
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has also declared a statewide “state of preparedness.”
The storm will reach the mid-Atlantic later in the day on Sunday and may bring snow and a wintry mix to Washington, D.C., by Sunday evening. The Virginia, Delaware and New Jersey coastline will see rain and possibly strong winds.
For Monday morning, forecast models are showing heavy snow for the interior Northeast and light snow followed by rain for the major cities along the coast, like Boston, New York City and Philadelphia. But it is possible the storm shifts east, dropping heavy snow on the Interstate 95 corridor.
One to 3 inches of snow is possible for D.C., Philadelphia, New York City and Boston before it’s quickly washed away by Monday’s rain. Six to 18 inches of snow is forecast for the interior Northeast and New England.
For those in the Northeast, make sure to bundle up as you await the snow: temperatures in the Northeast are plunging to their lowest levels in three years this weekend.
Saturday morning the wind chill — what temperature it feels like — will be 2 degrees in New York, minus 12 in Boston and minus 28 in Burlington, Vermont.
ABC News’ Hilda Estevez contributed to this report.
Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration will launch a new website on Wednesday that Americans can use to request free at-home rapid COVID tests mailed to their doorsteps, senior White House officials said on Friday.
People will be able to order four tests per household at COVIDTests.gov. They won’t be delivered immediately, though. They will be shipped out 7-12 days after they’re ordered, senior officials said.
That means the first free tests won’t reach Americans until late January or early February, which will be too late to blunt the peak of omicron cases in many parts of the country. Still, the plan will allow Americans to have free tests on-hand in the coming weeks and months.
All that people need to enter on the site to receive a test is a name and an address. The White House will also launch a call line for people who don’t have computer access.
Another 500 million tests will eventually also be available, bringing the total to 1 billion free at-home tests distributed to Americans, but the White House hasn’t announced a timeline for the second batch of tests.
And more immediately, starting Saturday, people will be able to get up to eight tests per month reimbursed through insurance if they go out and purchase them on their own, either online or at stores.
“In the first couple of days, we’re encouraging people to just make sure you keep your receipts as the systems are getting up online,” a senior administration official said on Friday.
The White House is also incentivizing insurers to work with retailers and offer the tests for free up-front for people who show their insurance cards, similar to how prescriptions might be covered at the pharmacy. Those partnerships between insurers and retailers are still in the works.
This is on top of 50 million free at-home tests that have been doled out to community health centers around the country and 20,000 free testing sites.
Taken together, it all signifies a clear effort on behalf of the administration to increase the testing supply after omicron caught the government off guard.
The myriad testing options now in full swing will also likely take the pressure off the website launching on Wednesday, particularly as cases begin to fall in some northeastern areas.
Less demand will give the White House time to finish contracting all 500 million tests.
Currently, the White House only has tens of millions of tests on hand, a senior administration official confirmed Friday.
They’ve secured another 400 million or so that are still being manufactured and delivered.
But senior administration officials said they were confident they would be able to get tests sent out to any American who ordered a test next week within their shipping timeline of 7-12 days.
“We’re confident that with our contracting speed, which is very fast, with the ones we have on hand, and the timeline we’re laying out today, that we can meet all of our timelines and get these to Americans that want them,” a senior administration official said.
The tests will be sent via the U.S. Postal Service as first class mail.
The tests will not necessarily be of use to Americans who were exposed and want to take a test within the first 5 days of exposure, or come down with symptoms and want to test immediately, since they’ll take more than 7-12 days to arrive.
But senior administration officials ran through the host of other testing options Americans can use in those scenarios and defended this program as one “designed to ensure that Americans have at-home rapid tests on hand in the weeks and months ahead, as they have a need.”
The officials also said they were “ready” to meet demand on Wednesday and prevent any website crashes, as seen during former President Barack Obama’s launch of Healthcare.gov, which was overseen at the time by the current White House COVID Coordinator Jeff Zients.
“Of course, every website launch poses some risks, we are quite cognizant of that. But we have the best tech teams” across the administration, an official said. “So we’re ready for this and we’re ready for Americans to start ordering their tests on January 19.”
(WASHINGTON) — After a week of high-stakes diplomacy, the U.S. on Friday accused Russia of “fabricating a pretext” to invade its neighbor Ukraine.
It’s another sign that the “drumbeats of war” are getting louder, in the words of one U.S. ambassador, after three key meetings this week to defuse tensions raised by Russia massing approximately 100,000 troops on its borders with Ukraine.
But whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will act on a long-held desire to consume Ukraine, or whether his posturing is a bluff to strengthen Moscow’s hand and therefore its influence, is still an open question, according to senior U.S. officials.
A “massive” cyberattack against Ukrainian government sites on Friday sparked new fears that the very kind of sabotage plot that U.S. officials have described could already be underway.
“Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion, including through sabotage activities and information operations, by accusing Ukraine of preparing an imminent attack against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine,” a U.S. official said Friday.
U.S. intelligence has “information that indicates Russia has already prepositioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine,” the official added, saying the group was trained in urban warfare and the use of explosives.
The alleged plot would begin several weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which he attacked in 2014 by annexing Crimea and fomenting a war in its eastern provinces known as Donbas. That conflict has killed as many as 14,000 people in the last eight years, with artillery and sniper fire still exchanged weekly between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-led separatists.
Not long after, White House press secretary Jen Psaki spelled out the U.S. accusations in public.
“We are concerned that the Russian government is preparing for an invasion in Ukraine that may result in widespread human rights violations and war crimes, should diplomacy fail to meet their objectives,” Psaki told reporters at her daily briefing. “As part of its plans, Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion, and we’ve seen this before.
She repeated the U.S. official’s assertion that Russian action could occur sometime between the middle of this month and mid-February.
“We have information that indicates Russia has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false flag operation in eastern Ukraine,” Psaki continued. “The operatives are trained in urban warfare and in using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against Russia’s own proxy forces. Our information also indicates that Russian influence actors are already starting to fabricate Ukrainian provocations in state and social media to justify a Russian intervention and sew divisions in Ukraine.”
The Kremlin dismissed the accusations, saying no proof has been presented.
“All these statements still have just the character of hearsay and haven’t been confirmed by anything,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state news agency TASS.
The buildup since last fall of nearly 100,000 Russian forces, with potential plans for as many as 175,000, according to U.S. officials, has heightened fears of a full-scale invasion or new attack. In addition to the troops, Russia has stationed artillery systems and electronic warfare systems, according to U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, Michael Carpenter.
“The drumbeat of war is sounding loud, and the rhetoric has gotten rather shrill,” Carpenter said Thursday after the third and last round of talks with Russia. “We have to prepare for the eventuality that there could be an escalation.”
That rhetoric – accusing Ukraine of abusing human rights and increasing belligerence – has dominated on Russia-language social media, according to the U.S. official. In December, it increased roughly 200 percent to nearly 3,500 posts per day, they said, in order “to justify a Russian intervention and sow divisions in Ukraine.”
That appeared to include a “massive” cyberattack against Ukrainian government sites on Friday. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said theirs and other sites were temporarily down, with a message posted on the site by the attackers, address to “Ukrainians!”
“All your information will become public, be afraid and expect the worst. This is for your past, present and future,” it said in part.
Andrei Yermark, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said later Friday that approximately 90 percent of sites have been restored and that critical infrastructure was not affected.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, and Yermak said the country’s security service was investigating now.
“Of course, we have some thoughts,” he added, saying this kind of attack was “one of the potential parts of the destabilization” that officials have warned about.
With partners like the U.S. and the U.K., “We will be ready to answer to this attack and continue to work with our partners to protect,” he said.
Psaki said President Joe Biden was briefed about the cyberattack against Ukrainian government sites, but held back from naming who might be behind it.
“We don’t have attribution at this time, and I can’t point to any more specifics … I would just note that we will take necessary and proper steps, of course, to defend our allies, support our partners, and support the Ukrainian people, but we’re still assessing that at this point in time,” she said.
ABC News’ Justin Gomez and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — With the midterm elections officially taking center stage in national politics, GOP candidates up and down the ballot are taking advantage of nationwide divides over education issues — homing in on controversies over how much power school boards should have to bolster their campaigns.
Parental involvement, curriculum choices, COVID policies and vaccine mandates dominated conversations relating to Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial race, after Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe said he didn’t think parents should have a say in what their children are taught at school, which, in part, ultimately delivered a win for Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin.
The controversy over whether and how to teach about race also helped bring school boards into the national conversation, further seeping the bodies into partisan politics. School boards are now so contentious that some state legislatures are looking to make their normally nonpartisan elections, partisan.
In 2021, Tennessee passed a bill to attach party affiliation to school board candidates, and Arizona, Missouri, Utah and Indiana are among the states flirting with the idea.
School board elections, as with other down-ballot races, often don’t pull hordes of attention from voters. But already in 2022, 20 school board recall efforts have been launched across the country, according to data tracked by the nonpartisan organization Ballotpedia. In 2021, 91 recall efforts were pursued, on average more than twice as many as had been seen in the past.
Like other battlegrounds, school boards have taken center stage in Arizona. GOP candidates for governor there and those hoping to unseat Sen. Mark Kelly in Washington have even started dropping in on school board meetings to shore up support.
School boards were propelled into the spotlight in the state after a document from a Scottsdale school board member listing personal information about parents who had criticized the district was shared by his son, according to the Arizona Republic. Politicians weighed in on the controversy that ensued and, ultimately, efforts to remove the member were successful.
Kari Lake, a former TV anchor, who is running for Arizona governor with backing from former President Donald Trump, and Jim Lamon, a businessman running to unseat Kelly in the Senate, held a joint rally outside the Scottsdale high school in late November ahead of a school board meeting to discuss the parental “dossier.”
Lamon offered to pay legal expenses for parents who chose to pursue lawsuits against the district related to coronavirus policies or other issues.
“These people in that school board meeting about to kick off here, they work for you,” Lamon said outside the Scottsdale meeting, according to the Arizona Republic.
“They work for the parents and the kids, not for themselves. And we don’t work for them. … We’re a peaceful group, we’re great parents here, and we’ll stand tall. And I got your back,” he added.
Lake cut an ad with mothers from the district announcing she would establish the “Arizona Parent Coalition” as governor, which would “serve as an oversight to unruly school boards and the union bosses.”
“When all of us parents rally together, we win. And when we win, we will root out critical race theory,” she said in a campaign video.
Lake is fundraising on the school board controversy as well, with a page on the Republican donation hosting site WinRed dedicated specifically to to it. She’s singled herself out from the GOP field across the state by calling for cameras in all classrooms, which her competitors and sitting GOP Gov. Doug Ducey have spoken out against.
Former GOP Rep. Matt Salmon, who is running for governor, has called on the Arizona School Board Association to distance itself from the national branch. He told ABC News that while he doesn’t think school board issues will necessarily draw single-issue voters, he does think they will engage previously unengaged ones.
“It looks like we’ve awakened the sleeping giant, and it’s not just this, it’s all kinds of government intrusion,” Salmon said. “I think this is part and parcel of a lot of things that people are seeing: that their way of life is not getting better. It’s getting worse.”
(CHICAGO) — Students are walking out of their classes in Boston, Chicago and other cities across the country in protest of in-person learning conditions as COVID-19 rages on.
Public school students in Boston left their classrooms at 10:30 a.m. Friday to demand that local leaders take more initiative in reducing the spread of COVID-19 in schools and implement a two-week period for remote learning.
“We will then stand there for exactly 10 minutes, one minute for every hundred thousand new COVID-19 cases found on the 2nd of January,” according to a post from the student-run Massachusetts COVID Walkout Instagram page.
Following the walk-out, students held a webinar to discuss their fears about the handling of the pandemic in schools. Students at the virtual event recounted their urge to take action and keep their fellow students, teachers and staff safe.
They are demanding a two-week remote learning period, proper Personal Protective Equipment for teachers, adequate technology for remote learning and the cancellation of some standardized testing.
In a statement to ABC News, Boston Public Schools said it “believes deeply in students advocating for what they believe in.”
“We further believe it is critically important that we encourage and support them in expressing their concerns, beliefs and positions to their leaders,” the statement said. “We will continue to listen to our students and families as we navigate this latest surge and the impacts it has on our ability to remain in person and deliver a quality education.”
In spring 2021, Massachusetts officials said remote learning would no longer count toward required learning hours. Any school-wide remote learning days must be made up by students and teachers at the end of the year.
Boston Public Schools has reported 3,483 COVID cases as of Jan. 5, according to the district website.
Students in Chicago also walked out of their classes Friday and chanted demands that schools address COVID-19 safety concerns.
As they walked en masse on the streets and toward the administrative offices of the Chicago Public School district, students yelled, “Si se puede,” or “Yes, we can,” as well as “No more oppression, change is now in session!”
Chicago Public Schools’ Radical Youth Alliance, a student-run advocacy group, also sent a letter of demands to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, CEO of Chicago Public Schools Pedro Martinez, Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Allison Arwady.
The students asked for transparency and accuracy in the school’s COVID-19 data, youth participation in decision-making and accountability for “mistakes.”
“As you consistently prove yourself and your leadership to be incompetent, we as Black and Brown young people are the common denominator of being the most harmed and impacted,” the letter read. “We are tired, exhausted, and frustrated.”
The group also backed the Chicago Teachers Union, which narrowly accepted a new agreement on COVID-19 safety precautions.
Chicago Public Schools had 10,928 cases among its students and staff since the start of the 2021-2022 school year, according to the district website.
In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said it “remains committed to fostering learning environments that allow students to respectfully deliberate issues with evidence and an open mind – and safely participate in civic action.”
According to the CPS website, students are required to wear masks in schools and answer a self-screener symptom questionnaire before school. Testing is optional.
Protests in New York, California and other states have highlighted the growing concerns that school leaders are failing to address COVID-19 and its impact on education and health in schools.
(NEW YORK) — Martin Shkreli became infamous, and earned the nickname “Pharma Bro,” after he hiked the price of a potentially lifesaving antiparasitic medication in 2015. On Friday, a federal judge ruled he should pay $64 million for his actions.
The judge said Shkreli should pay the financial penalty, equivalent to the profits from his scheme, and receive a lifetime ban from participation in the pharmaceutical industry.
Shkreli earned widespread condemnation in 2015 when he raised the price of Daraprim — an anti-malaria medication often prescribed for HIV patients — by 4,000% and initiated a scheme to block the entry of generic drug competition so that he could reap the profits from Daraprim sales for as long as possible, the judge said.
Through his tight control of the distribution of Daraprim, Shkreli prevented generic drug companies from getting access to the quantity of Daraprim they needed to conduct testing demanded by the Food and Drug Administration. Through exclusive supply agreements, Shkreli also blocked access to the two most important manufacturers of the active pharmaceutical ingredient for Daraprim.
Through these strategies, the judge said, Shkreli delayed the entry of generic competition for at least 18 months. Shkreli and his companies profited over $64 million from this scheme.
“Envy, greed, lust, and hate, don’t just separate, but they obviously motivated Mr. Shkreli and his partner to illegally jack up the price of a life-saving drug as Americans’ lives hung in the balance,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office sued with several other attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission.
Shkreli is currently serving a seven-year prison sentence after being convicted of securities fraud in August 2017 related to his work at hedge funds MSMB Capital Management prior to founding Turing Pharmaceuticals. He had called the trial a “witch hunt” and blamed his increase in the cost of Daraprim for making him a target of federal investigators.
In May 2020, Shkreli petitioned for an early release from prison, saying he wanted to research a potential cure for COVID-19. The request was denied.
(NEW YORK) – The first big viral trend of 2022 is here, and it’s a colorful word game called Wordle.
Players who visit Wordle’s website have six chances to guess a five-letter word, which has been randomly selected from a database. With each try, the game tells you how close your letters are to the “word of the day.” If the letters you pick are in the word but in the wrong order, Wordle highlights them in yellow. If the letters are in the word and placed correctly, they get highlighted in green. Gray-highlighted letters means they don’t appear in the word of the day.
“It’s a good, fun game,” says Gizmodo Executive Editor Andrew Couts. “It only takes a couple of minutes, and it’s something to talk about with your friends.”
“It seemed after the holidays, everybody seemed to be playing this game and sharing it on Twitter, sharing it all over social media,” says Couts, adding that Wordle’s distinct visual style is key to its success.
“It creates kind of a cool little pattern that the game makes it really easy to share on social media…so you can show people how well you did on the word of the day. And I think that’s one of the big things that has made this game take off.”
While the game’s rules are simple, Couts says there are a few strategies to maximize your chances of Wordle glory.
“Picking words with a bunch of vowels, and picking words with common consonants like S’s or T’s or K’s is a good way to kind of get the word of the day quickly.”
That simplicity cuts both ways – which could open up the game to people who are willing to increase their odds through shadier means.
“It’s also a very simple website and it’s very easy to cheat if you really wanted to,” says Couts. “You can look at the source code of the website, for example, and see the entire list of the words of the day. So you can know them in advance. But that kind of takes all the fun out of it.”
And after all, Couts says, now is just the right time for some innocent, online fun.
“It’s actually a nice thing on the internet for once, so that’s very welcome.”
Hear ABC News Radio’s Michelle Franzen report on the latest viral craze:
(NEW YORK) — Bundle up: temperatures in the Northeast are plunging to their lowest levels in three years this weekend as snow blasts the South and the East Coast.
Wind chill warnings and advisories are in effect across New England, where it may feel like 35 to 40 degrees below zero Friday night into Saturday morning. In Boston and New York City wind chills could drop to 15 to 20 degrees below zero Friday night.
The snow will first hit the Midwest. By Sunday morning, the icy rain and snow will rip through the South from Atlanta to Raleigh.
This storm has the potential to give Atlanta its first measurable snow in four years on Sunday.
The Southeast could then see heavy rain and thunderstorms Sunday night, causing power outages, coastal flooding and travel disruptions for the Interstate 95 corridor.
The storm then takes aim on the Northeast, where it’ll hit Sunday night and Monday morning.
As of now, the storm tracks more inland in New England and New York state, leaving more of a rain event for the I-95 corridor and the New York City area. But that could still cause travel disruptions for New York City commuters.
ABC News’ Hilda Estevez contributed to this report.
(SEOUL, South Korea) — North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea Friday afternoon, three days after the regime claimed a successful launch of a newly developed hypersonic missile.
“South Korean military detected two projectiles believed to be short-range ballistic missiles fired northeast towards the East Sea from Uiju, North Pyonganbuk-do,” South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told reporters Friday.
Pyongyang has tested its missile capabilities three times this month. On Wednesday, North Korea’s state media, Korean Central News Agency, hyped the test-fire of the claimed hypersonic missile by reporting that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspected the launch himself.
North Korea’s show of force took place on the same day the regime expressed discontent over new sanctions implemented by the U.S.
“If the U.S. adopts such a confrontational stance, the DPRK will be forced to take a stronger and certain reaction to it,” a North Korean foreign ministry spokesperson said in a statement.
Cheong Seong-Chang of Seoul-based Sejong Institute said these missile launches were an expression of frustration over U.S. sanctions on the regime’s mass destruction weapons and ballistic missile programs.
“Considering that North Korea has been testing new weapons at dawn or early morning, it’s reasonable to assume that North’s missile test launch this afternoon was improvised to showcase backlash against the U.S. sanctions,” he told ABC News.
Shin Beom Chul, a researcher at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, saw the consecutive missile launches as an effort to gain more bargaining chips by North Korea.
“Considering that political dialogue is restricted due to COVID-19 at the moment, it seems North Korea intends to strengthen its nuclear capabilities in the meantime,” Shin told ABC News. “At the same time, this consecutive military provocation has more than one purpose – to neutralize the U.S. efforts with stronger sanctions and also to secure the status of a de facto nuclear powerhouse.”
