12-year-old girl walking to store

As of Dec. 6, about 226,000 people had shared in the nearly $1.5 billion that FEMA has spent on funeral costs that occurred after Jan. 20, 2020, the date of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the U.S. With the nation’s coronavirus death toll topping 800,000, it’s clear that many families who are eligible for reimbursement have yet to take advantage of the funeral benefit.

A new variant of COVID-19 has stemmed in South Africa. To date, the delta variant remains by far the most transmissible form of COVID; it accounts for more than 99% of sequences shared with the world’s biggest public database.