Measles cases in the U.S. are at their highest in more than three decades. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the U.S. has 1,288 cases since the beginning of the year. That's higher than 2019, when there 1,274 cases driven by 22 outbreaks over 12 months. Eighteen states have seen outbreaks this year. Experts fear the U.S. may lose its status as having eliminated measles. There are also large outbreaks of the vaccine-preventable disease in Mexico and Canada.

A new variant of COVID-19 is circulating in parts of the world and may be driving an increase in cases in the eastern Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and western Pacific regions. The World Health Organization said Wednesday the new variant called NB.1.8.1 is increasing globally and in mid-May had reached nearly 11% of sequenced samples. Current vaccines are expected to remain effective and there's nothing to suggest that the disease associated with the variant is more severe. Airport screening in the United States has detected the new variant in international travelers arriving in California, Washington state, Virginia and New York.

Public health officials say a day care facility in a Texas county that's part of the measles outbreak has multiple cases, including children too young to be fully vaccinated. West Texas is in the middle of a still-growing measles outbreak with 505 cases as of Tuesday and the state expanding the number of counties in the outbreak area this week to 10. The highly contagious virus began to spread in late January. Three people who were unvaccinated have died from measles-related illnesses this year, including two elementary school-aged children in Texas. Lubbock Public Health director Katherine Wells says day care there had seven cases as of Friday.

Texas health officials say the number of people with measles has increased to 146 in rural West Texas outbreak that led this week to the death of a school-aged child who was not vaccinated. The Texas Department of State Health Services said Friday that the number of cases in the outbreak had increased by 22 since Tuesday. Health officials said cases span over nine counties and 20 patients have been hospitalized.

Five years after the virus that causes COVID emerged in China it still holds some mysteries. The disease has killed an estimated 20 million people globally, according to the World Health Organization, and thousands are still dying every year. But scientists still aren't clear where it came from, and they are still trying to understand what causes long-term symptoms called long COVID. And while vaccines have helped dramatically reduce severe disease and death from COVID, the virus mutates so quickly researchers have struggled to find a vaccine that stops the spread.