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The U.K. was the first country to approve a Covid-19 vaccine; it has now become the first to approve an at-home treatment for Covid. On Thursday, the medicines regulator, MHRA, green-lit the antiviral drug molnupiravir, produced by Ridgeback Biotherapeutics and Merck & Co. and shown in trials to halve the risk of hospitalization or death in those with mild to moderate disease. (Therese Raphael, 11/4)

The American public is understandably interested in how a pandemic that has killed nearly 750,000 people in this country and almost 5 million worldwide — with few signs of slowing down — emerged. But the U.S. intelligence community has now concluded that the precise sequence of events by which SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, entered the human population may never be known. Is there any point to continuing an increasingly fractious debate on the origin of Covid-19, or should we now focus on applying the lessons already learned, and think about the future? (John P. Moore, 11/5)

For many of the most vulnerable people in our society, the pandemic has not let up. More than 186,000 residents and staff members of nursing homes and long-term-care facilities have already died of Covid-19. In March, the Covid Tracking Project estimated that nearly 1 in 10 people who lived in nursing homes in the United States had died of the virus. And a report released by the Kaiser Family Foundation in early October showed that during July and August of 2021, the number of Covid deaths inside nursing homes had started to rise again, reaching its highest level since February. (Jay Caspian Kang, 11/4)

This week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services agreed to Emergent BioSolution’s request to end our 9-year pandemic manufacturing partnership that began after the 2009 H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic. We did not come to this decision easily. Emergent was founded to help respond to and prepare for public health threats. And even though we’re ending this manufacturing partnership with the government, our Bayview facility will continue producing COVID-19 vaccines and treatments for our private sector partners, and we will continue to supply the U.S. government with other needed medical countermeasures. (Robert Kramer, 11/4)

It took me four months to write this sentence. I wanted to capture my feelings as a doctor in training who has been bludgeoned by the Covid-19 pandemic the last year and a half. But I’ve been too burned out to write about burnout. (Sudhakar Nuti, 11/5)

Now that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended the coronavirus vaccine for 5-to-11-year-olds, public health officials will soon face the challenge of overcoming vaccine hesitancy in parents. (Leana S. Wen, 11/4)

It’s great news that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week cleared the way for children ages 5 to 11 to receive the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine against COVID-19, after the FDA authorized it last week. It’s also good news that neither the state of California nor Los Angeles schools will require them to get it — yet. (11/4)