The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has changed in just the past month with a variant, vaccine and an increase in cases.

New Year’s Eve revelers who were at crowded places Thursday night should assume they were exposed to the coronavirus, a Nevada health official said. These places include the Las Vegas Strip.

COVID-19 upended just about everything in 2020. KUNR’s Lucia Starbuck talks to Brian Labus, an epidemiologist with Nevada’s COVID-19 medical advisory team, to learn more about the past 10 months in Nevada and what is expected for the start of the new year.

The iconic New Year’s Eve ball dropped at midnight in an eerily empty Times Square and was livestreamed into homes across the nation. The usually packed New York City block was mostly barren because tourists and locals were encouraged to celebrate safely at home because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nevada on Monday logged fewer than 1,000 coronavirus cases over a single day for the first time in nearly two months, but the head of the state’s COVID-19 response said the holidays may be clouding the numbers.

Clark County’s homeless communities have largely been spared by the coronavirus. Few have died, and officials say the positivity rate is on par with the general public’s.

Amid the alarming revelation that the latest coronavirus variant has reached Karachi, Dr Atta-ur-Rehman stressed that vaccine would have to be developed at local level to fight the pandemic, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Thursday.

As the world makes significant progress in the fight against COVID-19, a new strain of the virus is now emerging.