Capacity

French medics protest hospital crisis, deepened by COVID PARIS (AP) — Health workers protested Tuesday around France to demand more hiring and better salaries in public hospitals, after years of cost cuts that left medics submerged when the COVID-19 pandemic hit and are now forcing emergency rooms to cut services. AP NEWS

Nine unions and collectives organized a day of protest, including a demonstration outside the Health Ministry in Paris and in dozens of other towns and cities, to call the government’s attention to growing concerns about staff shortages.

Efforts to make protective medical gear in US falling flat UNIVERSITY CITY, Mo. (AP) — When the coronavirus pandemic first hit the U.S., sales of window coverings at Halcyon Shades quickly went dark. So the suburban St. Louis business did what hundreds of other small manufacturers did: It pivoted to make protective supplies, with help from an $870,000 government grant. AP NEWS

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WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday formally began allowing Americans who had ordered free coronavirus tests this winter to request a second round of four tests per household, through the same U.S. Postal Service program that President Biden unveiled in January.

The move, which Mr. Biden had promised last week during his State of the Union address, followed a crush of interest in the program when it debuted in January. At the time, case rates had skyrocketed because of the Omicron variant and tens of millions of households scrambled to obtain the free tests.