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Las Vegas valley hospitals are bracing for the full impact of the Christmas and New Year’s holidays from COVID-19, and one hospital has already issued a disaster declaration because of an influx of patients.

The 51³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ School of Public Health announced Wednesday it received a $1.7 million state grant to continue providing COVID-19 contact tracing.

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The response to the COVID-19 pandemic has changed in just the past month with a variant, vaccine and an increase in cases.

New Year’s Eve revelers who were at crowded places Thursday night should assume they were exposed to the coronavirus, a Nevada health official said. These places include the Las Vegas Strip.

COVID-19 upended just about everything in 2020. KUNR’s Lucia Starbuck talks to Brian Labus, an epidemiologist with Nevada’s COVID-19 medical advisory team, to learn more about the past 10 months in Nevada and what is expected for the start of the new year.

The iconic New Year’s Eve ball dropped at midnight in an eerily empty Times Square and was livestreamed into homes across the nation. The usually packed New York City block was mostly barren because tourists and locals were encouraged to celebrate safely at home because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nevada on Monday logged fewer than 1,000 coronavirus cases over a single day for the first time in nearly two months, but the head of the state’s COVID-19 response said the holidays may be clouding the numbers.