The U.S. is the latest country to announce new travel restrictions because of a new variant of the coronavirus that is spreading in Britain and elsewhere.

Despite warnings from public health experts to stay home, over 1.19 million travelers passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints Wednesday — the highest one-day total since the crisis took hold in mid-March.

Millions of Americans are traveling ahead of Christmas and New Year’s, despite pleas from public health experts that they stay home to avoid fueling the raging coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 320,000 nationwide.

More than 100,991 Illinois residents have gotten an initial dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, leading the nation, Gov. J.B. Pritzker announced Wednesday.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech said the additional doses will bring their total current commitment to 200 million doses for the U.S. That should be enough to vaccinate 100 million people with the two-shot regimen.

Just days before Christmas, a trio of high-profile doctors, including U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams, made a plea for people to follow public health measures designed to stop the spread of COVID-19, even as two vaccines are being distributed across the U.S.

Nearly a half-dozen large parties have been shut down by city officials in three weeks, even as Chicago remains under a stay-at-home advisory designed to prevent people from contracting COVID-19.

Experts say employers can require employees to take safety measures, including vaccination, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you would get fired if you refuse.

Final mortality data for this year will not be available for months. But preliminary numbers suggest that the United States is on track to see more than 3.2 million deaths this year, or at least 400,000 more than in 2019.

On the first day of winter, Cook County officials touted the benefits of spending time in nature, encouraging people to discover the nearly 70,000 acres of forest preserves this season — safely.

The advisory urging Chicagoans at stay home in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19 has been extended for 21 days, expiring the day before the first Chicago Public Schools students are set to go back to in-person class.

Reports from Britain and South Africa of new coronavirus strains that seem to spread more easily are causing alarm, but virus experts say it’s unclear if that’s the case or whether they pose any concern for vaccines or cause more severe disease. 

The president-elect took a dose of Pfizer vaccine Monday at a hospital not far from his Delaware home, hours after his wife, Jill Biden, did the same. The injections came the same day that a second vaccine, produced by Moderna, will start arriving in states.

As Illinois reaches another grim milestone in the number of COVID-19 cases, December is on pace to become the state’s deadliest month, an analysis of public health data shows. 

Much-needed doses are set to arrive Monday after the Food and Drug Administration authorized an emergency rollout of the vaccine developed by Moderna Inc. and the National Institutes of Health.

The panel members are leaning toward putting “essential workers” next up because people like bus drivers, grocery store clerks and others who perform vital jobs that can’t be done from home are the ones getting infected most often.