Connecticut will no longer allow a religious exemption from childhood immunization requirements for schools, colleges, and daycare facilities, becoming the sixth state to end that policy. The legislation was signed into law Wednesday by Gov. Ned Lamont, hours after the Democratic-controlled Senate passed the bill late Tuesday night. More than 2,000 opponents had rallied outside the state Capitol building, arguing the legislation unfairly infringes on their religious liberties and parental rights. “Proud to sign this bill into law to protect as many of our school children as possible from infectious diseases as we can,” Lamont said in a tweet, announcing he had signed the contentious bill. Shortly afterward, two groups opposing the legislation — We The Patriots USA, Inc.

About 150 Israelis who recently arrived on flights from India and Mexico refused to undergo a second test for the coronavirus, Channel 12 News reported on Tuesday evening. The initial coronavirus test upon Ben-Gurion Airport is mandatory but the second test is not and passengers cannot be legally forced to be tested again. However, since 55 passengers on the two flights already tested positive for the virus, including ten who were fully vaccinated, the second test is vital to thwart the spread of the Indian variant in Israel. India is currently experiencing a catastrophic surge of infections and there is fear of the new Indian variant spreading in Israel. To date, eight cases have been identified in the country.

A young child from southwestern Minnesota has died of COVID-19 complications, according to the state Department of Health. Marshall Public Schools Superintendent Jeremy Williams says the child, who died Sunday, was a first grader at Park Side Elementary. While coronavirus deaths in children are rare, they can occur in otherwise healthy children, health officials said. “Since the start of the pandemic, three Minnesota children under age 18 have died due to COVID-19,” the health department said. Gov. Tim Walz released a statement Monday in response to the death, calling it “heartbreaking.” Walz’s office said the child didn’t have underlying health conditions.

A child who traveled to Hawaii with his vaccinated parents has died after contracting COVID-19. The Hawaii Department of Health said Tuesday the boy is under 11 and had a known underlying condition. It was the first coronavirus-related death of a child in that age range in Hawaii. There have been 479 reported deaths linked to COVID-19 in the state. Department of Health spokesman Brooks Baehr said the child began to show symptoms shortly after arriving in the state and was taken to a hospital, where he later died. The child’s parents were fully vaccinated and were tested for COVID-19 before traveling to Hawaii. “I can confirm that both parents had been tested and both had tested negative,” Baehr said.

Since the beginning of the week, Dr. Siddharth Tara, a postgraduate medical student at New Delhi’s government-run Hindu Rao Hospital, has had a fever and persistent headache. He took a COVID-19 test, but the results have been delayed as the country’s health system implodes. His hospital, overburdened and understaffed, wants him to keep working until the testing laboratory confirms he has COVID-19. On Tuesday, India reported 323,144 new infections for a total of more than 17.6 million cases, behind only the United States. India’s Health Ministry also reported another 2,771 deaths in the past 24 hours, with 115 Indians succumbing to the disease every hour. Experts say those figures are likely an undercount. “I am not able to breathe. In fact, I’m more symptomatic than my patients.

Vice President Kamala Harris told United Nations members on Monday that now is the time for global leaders to begin putting the serious work into how they will respond to the next global pandemic. The virtual address, Harris’ second to a U.N. body since her inauguration, comes as the United States makes progress on vaccinating the public and much of the world struggles to acquire vaccines. “At the same time that the world works to get through this pandemic, we also know that we must prepare for the next,” Harris said. The speech was co-hosted by U.N. permanent representatives of Argentina, Japan, Norway and South Africa. The Biden administration will mark its first 100 days in office this week.

India’s surge in coronavirus infections, growing at the fastest pace in the world, has left families and patients pleading for oxygen outside hospitals, the relatives weeping in the street as their loved ones die while waiting for treatment. Delhi has been cremating so many bodies of COVID-19 victims that authorities are getting requests to start cutting down trees in city parks for kindling, as a record surge of illness is collapsing India’s tattered health care system. Outside graveyards in cities like Delhi, which currently has the highest daily cases, ambulance after ambulance waits in line to cremate the dead. Burial grounds are running out of space in many cities as glowing funeral pyres blaze through the night.

Simone Ravera rolls up her trousers, slips off her shoes and socks, then gingerly steps into the chilly waters of the Baltic Sea. The 50-year-old rheumatology nurse is slowly finding her feet again after being struck down with COVID-19 last fall, seemingly recovering and then relapsing with severe fatigue and “brain fog” four months later. “The symptoms were almost as bad as at the beginning,” Ravera said. Close to despair, she found a clinic that specializes in treating people with what have been called post-COVID-19, or long-term COVID-19, symptoms. Located in Heiligendamm, a north German seaside spa popular since the late 18th century, the clinic specializes in helping people with lung diseases such as asthma, chronic bronchitis and cancer.

Indian authorities scrambled Saturday to get oxygen tanks to hospitals where COVID-19 patients were suffocating amid the world’s worst coronavirus surge, as the government came under increasing criticism for what doctors said was its negligence in the face of a foreseeable public health disaster. For the third day in a row, India set a global daily record of new infections. The 346,786 confirmed cases over the past day brought India’s total to more than 16 million, behind only the United States. The Health Ministry reported another 2,624 deaths in the past 24 hours, pushing India’s COVID-19 fatalities to 189,544. Experts say even those figures are likely an undercount.

Israel’s unique “melting pot” population, lending it a wide demographic diversity, was the ultimate factor in Pfizer’s decision to choose Israel as the “test nation” for its coronavirus vaccines, Yisrael Hayom revealed on Wednesday. In the course of about 30 phone conversations between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla in January, Netanyahu tried to persuade Bourla that Israel would be the ideal “test nation” for its new coronavirus vaccines. Bourla was initially considering using Estonia as a test case nation but Netanyahu, along with former US Ambassador to the US Ron Dermer (who was replaced by Gilad Erdan in January), convinced Bourla that Israel was the better choice.