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The head of the U.N. health agency said Wednesday holiday gatherings and the spread of the most prominent variant globally led to increased transmission of COVID-19 last month. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said nearly 10,000 deaths were reported in December, while hospital admissions during the month jumped 42% in nearly 50 countries — mostly in Europe and the Americas — that shared such trend information. “Although 10,000 deaths a month is far less than the peak of the pandemic, this level of preventable deaths is not acceptable,” the World Health Organization director-general told reporters from its headquarters in Geneva. (1/10)

Experts said there are several reasons why people might still be dying from the virus, including not enough people accessing treatments or getting vaccinated as well as waning immunity. Additionally, if more people get sick, even if in lesser numbers than in previous waves, it will naturally lead to more people becoming hospitalized and, in turn, dying. "We do have very good vaccines that [researchers] have been able to adjust as the variants have changed and very good treatment options that have been shown to decrease the risk of hospitalization as well as deaths," Dr. Shivanjali Shankaran, an associate professor of infectious diseases at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, told ABC News. (Kekatos, 1/10)

COVID-19 and flu activity in Georgia are rising sharply, Georgia Department of Public Health officials say. Yes, but: The number of new cases of RSV, which is particularly dangerous for infants under 6 months, is "stabilizing," state epidemiologist Dr. Cherie Drenzek said during this week's department board meeting. (Wheatley, 1/11)

You may be asked to wear a mask the next time you visit a New Hampshire hospital or health care facility. The New Hampshire Hospital Association said Wednesday the change comes as hospitals are nearly full due to an increase in respiratory illnesses among patients and staff, including flu, COVID-19, and RSV. It did not identify which hospitals have resumed mask requirements or are considering it. (Timmins, 1/10)

Scientists with the University of South Florida in Tampa want to learn more about how the coronavirus spreads between humans and wildlife. They’re involved in a national study funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. (Colombini, 1/10)

House Republicans want to explore tighter inspection and safety requirements for infectious disease work done in foreign labs, following a two-day grilling of former top health official Anthony Fauci. (Owermohle, 1/10)

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday promised to “bring a reckoning” to former White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci if DeSantis is elected to the White House. “We cannot allow Anthony Fauci to escape accountability,” DeSantis wrote in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “I am the only candidate who will bring a reckoning for what tyrants like Fauci did to our country during COVID.” (Suter, 1/10)

The University of Oxford said on Thursday it had begun human testing of an experimental vaccine against the brain-swelling Nipah virus that led to outbreaks in India's Kerala state and other parts of Asia. There is no vaccine yet for the deadly virus. Nipah was first identified about 25 years ago in Malaysia and has led to outbreaks in Bangladesh, India and Singapore. The first participants in the Oxford trial received doses of the vaccine over the last week. (1/10)

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently prequalified the novel oral poliovirus vaccine type 2 (nOPV2), the first time the group has ever prequalified a vaccine that is being used under the emergency use listing, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) announced yesterday. Rollout of the new vaccine began in March 2021, and nearly 1 billion doses have already been administered across 35 countries. WHO prequalification, though, paves the way for more countries to receive the vaccine, which has played a key role in stemming outbreaks involving type 2 variant poliovirus (cVDPV2). (Schnirring, 1/10)