Health

BEIJING (AP) — Some Chinese universities say they will allow students to finish the semester from home in hopes of reducing the potential for a bigger COVID-19 outbreak during the January Lunar New Year travel rush.

TORONTO — A baby screams in the distance as a security guard stands watch over the waiting room at the emergency department of Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children. Parents cuddle their sick kids while others rock their little ones in strollers.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand on Tuesday passed into law a unique plan to phase out tobacco smoking by imposing a lifetime ban on young people buying cigarettes.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — An effort to ban most abortions in Iowa was blocked Monday by a state judge who upheld a court decision made three years ago.

VANCOUVER — BC Children’s Hospital has approved double-bunking patients in single-occupancy rooms as it tries to cope with an influx of patients with respiratory illnesses.

OTTAWA — The New Democrats are ready to withdraw from their confidence-and-supply agreement they signed with the Liberals if there is no federal action to address the health-care crisis, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said Monday.

HALIFAX — Nova Scotia's health unions say long-standing staffing shortages in emergency rooms are a key reason two hospital managers last week warned that some patients may be "dying" from long wait times.

CVS and Walgreens have agreed to pay state and local governments a combined total of more than $10 billion to settle lawsuits over the toll of opioids and now want to know by Dec. 31 whether states are accepting the deals.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.

Amgen is spending more than $26 billion to dive deeper into rare disease treatments with a deal for drugmaker Horizon Therapeutics. The biotech drug developer said Monday that it will pay $116.