As countries and health organizations transition out of a state of emergency, health officials are emphasizing a cautious approach to ensure people are still getting vaccinated and taking preventive measures.

In a statement following passage of the allocations, Barbara Buckley, executive director of the Legal Aid Center of Southern Nevada, called them a "transformational package of funding for children's mental health services."

The number of new COVID-19 cases reported on average each day is on the rise from last week. As of Monday, 828 new cases were reported on average each day over the last two weeks.

Increasing cases of COVID-19 in Nevada have continued to break records. In this edition of COVID in Context, we unpack the science of Omicron's spread and take a look at what's behind school staff shortages.

This week, states across the nation began announcing their first cases of the Omicron variant, the latest COVID-19 to be designated a "variant of concern" by the World Health Organization.

A medida que la variante altamente transmisible Delta se ha propaga en los EE.UU, Nevada y, en particular, el Condado Clark, se ha convertido rápidamente en un epicentro de la última oleada del virus.

As the highly transmissible Delta variant has taken hold across the United States, Nevada, and, in particular, Clark County, has quickly emerged as an epicenter of the latest surge of the virus.

More than a year into the pandemic, the victory we long for has been delayed as the vaccination effort races against the variants' spread. This uncertain moment, however, offers an opportunity for Nevada: To reflect, to learn and to heal.

The last year laid bare Nevada's chronic underfunding of public health systems, a lack of investment in aging state infrastructure, including its unemployment system and continued economic overreliance on the tourism industry. It also saw resilience in the face of despair.

Public gatherings in Washoe County will once again be limited to 50 people starting next week after Nevada's COVID-19 Mitigation and Management Task Force voted in an emergency meeting on Thursday to approve the county's plan to stem the rising tide of coronavirus cases.

Researchers with UNR's School of Medicine and the Nevada State Public Health Lab are studying what they have described as a "likely" case of COVID-19 reinfection in a Washoe County resident.

The stories often begin the same way: A family party, a holiday hangout or dinner at a friend's house, the kind of once-innocuous gatherings no one would have batted an eye about attending six months ago.

State officials have released a roadmap for Nevada's long-term response to the coronavirus pandemic that will eventually see its current crisis management operation stand down in favor of a more normalized approach with the ability to rapidly expand to respond to new outbreaks.

Members of the Interim Finance Committee — a group of lawmakers that oversees spending and grants between legislative sessions — met on Monday to officially approve more than $118.5 million dollars in federal grants to help fund the response to COVID-19, including a sizable $96 million for contact tracing and expanded laboratory testing.

Jim Murren, who helms the private-sector task force charged with assisting the state's coronavirus response, envisions a near future in which 30,000 people a day will be tested in-state for COVID-19.

At a press conference in Carson City on Thursday alongside state health lab director Mark Pandori, Sisolak fielded repeated questions about the timing of a reopening. It comes as President Donald Trump released broad principles for the decision about when to ease business restrictions and just two weeks before Sisolak's school and business shutdown orders are set to end.

Though the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory has enough resources to continue testing at current levels, its capacity remains well below the level needed to conduct widespread disease surveillance to keep the spread of the novel coronavirus under control as governments begin easing restrictions on citizens, lab director Dr. Mark Pandori said Wednesday on a call with reporters.

With the deployment of Point of Care Machines and an expansion of recent efforts to manufacture collection kits to use in testing for COVID-19, The Nevada Independent once again talked with the director of the Nevada State Public Health Lab, Dr. Mark Pandori, to learn where the state is with its various testing efforts. Pandori covered the lab's preparedness and safety, the arrival of new rapid testing machines, the continued efforts to manufacture collection kits and serology testing in the state.

With the number of coronavirus cases in the Silver State on the rise, The Nevada Independent will be keeping you up to date on the latest here.

As coronavirus takes hold in Nevada and across the globe, the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory housed at the University of Nevada, Reno is taking an important role in the response.