SURGE

With a majority of the U.S. is seeing a COVID-19 surge, the Biden administration is reinstating its free testing program, allowing Americans to order four more at-home COVID tests per household. The surge comes as less than 16% of U.S. adults have gotten the bivalent booster released this fall. Nancy Cordes has the details.

Cases are increasing across the country with the virus now present in 31 different provinces.

We’ve reached the Omicron peak in the Houston area. The hope is we will move past it soon.

Justice, who is vaccinated and boosted, said in a news release that while he was “surprised” he tested positive, the GOP governor was “thankful to the Lord above that I’ve been vaccinated, I’ve been boosted, and that I have an incredible support system, especially my loving family.”

Few of the city's older residents have been fully inoculated, leaving them highly vulnerable as the city battles an outbreak of the new variant.

The Omicron peak is predicted to be later this month.

Darrell Pile with SETRAC is concerned that this current surge will surpass all of those prior.

A leading health expert said the largely more mild symptoms reported by vaccinated people against the coronavirus proves the inoculation is the best way to protect yourself from being seriously sick or dying from the disease and that a surge in case numbers should no longer be the central metric by which to measaure the pandemic."For two years, infections always preceded hospitalizations which preceded deaths, so you could look at infections and...

Two young volunteers dressed in long sleeves, jeans and face masks dig into the steep side of stream bank reeking of sewage that flows from a shopping center in the central Mexico town of Cuautla

The island says it is easing Covid restrictions, and will allow vaccinated travellers from 11 countries.

South Africa will this weekend receive 2.2 million Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine doses donated by the United States to add to the 5.6 million doses it received from the U.S. in July

The COVID surge has cost hospitals more than $2 billion in the last two months.

India’s experience with the delta variant offers a preview for other countries as they grapple with it for the first time.

No other state is seeing hospitalizations at or above 90 percent of the state's prior peak.

Officials are worried hospitals will be overwhelmed if the COVID surge gets any worse.

Homeland Security secretary on surge in migration at Southwest U.S. border The U.S. is on pace to see more migrants at the Southwest border than at any time in the past 20 years - fueling what some are calling a humanitarian crisis. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas joined "CBS This Morning" to discuss the surge, and the Biden administration's plans for handling it.

House Republicans blame Biden for surge in migrant children at the border The Biden administration is scrambling to deal with a growing number of migrant children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. CBS News immigration reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez joined CBSN with a look at why House Republicans are blaming the administration for the surge.

“We’re past, we think, we’re past the surge that could have come from Christmas and New Year’s,” he said. “I say that with some trepidation, because there’s always the possibility we could see an upsurge from that. But I think with one incubation period past New Year’s Day (or) New Year’s Eve, our numbers look like good news.”

Earthquakes are now a daily occurrence in Oklahoma, but it was three quakes in November, 2011, near the town of Prague that caught everyone's attention. One was magnitude 5.6 - the largest in Oklahoma's history. It toppled a spire at St. Gregory's University and severely damaged 14 houses. Bill Whitaker has more.

U.S. sees surge of human smugglers, migrants from Caribbean In the past two years, the number of human smuggling cases in Puerto Rico has tripled. Miles Doran reports.