This is the WFHB Local News for Monday, January 25th, 2021.

Later in the program, we have the latest segment of A Few Minutes with the Mayor - where WFHB listeners pose questions to Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton on community issues.

Also coming up, five people and one unborn child were killed in a shooting on Adams Street in Indianapolis. Police arrested a minor in relation to the largest shooting the city has seen in over a decade. More on that in today’s headlines.

But first, your local news brief:

Nationwide and statewide, new Covid-19 cases have declined for a number of weeks now. However, public health experts caution that new, more transmissible, strains of the virus could reverse the recent declines in the coming months.

Monroe County is averaging 50 new positive cases of Covid-19 per day. That according to the Indiana State Department of Health. Although experts consider the department’s statistics to likely represent an undercount, Monroe County has seen over 9,400 cases of Covid-19, since testing began.

Indiana University reports that over 4,200 individuals have tested positive on its Bloomington Campus alone–meaning that the university is responsible for more than 45 percent of the county’s total cases. The campus’s numbers haven’t budged much, since students went home early at end of the fall semester.

It’s unclear to what degree the university contributed to community Covid spread within the county. Just shy of 115 Monroe County residents are known to have died because of complications arising from Covid-19. At this point, Indiana University has not released statistics about its Covid deaths.

The State of Indiana released new data on Covid Spread in its schools today. As of now, over 24,000 students have tested positive, while almost 11,000 teachers and staff have tested positive at well. The state department of health does not release statistics related the numbers of students, faculty, and staff who have died because of Covid-19.

Locally, Bloomington South High School has recorded about 65 cases. Bloomington High School North has recorded about 30. Because the country and the state’s contact tracing efforts cannot keep up with community spread, it’s unclear how many of the cases in the state’s school were actually contracted in the schools themselves

Surrounding Counties, including Brown, Green, Owen, Lawrence, Jackson, and Morgan all have positivity rates at about 20 to 25 percent. Monroe County’s test positivity is half that, at about 10 percent.

Under the Trump administration’s leadership, the United States did not have unified pandemic response policies. This is changing under the new Biden Administration’s Covid response plan. The administration plans on changing the federal guidelines, so that more people will be eligible to get the vaccine.

Indiana residents 70-years-old and older are now eligible to sign up for a Covid-19 vaccine. It also plans to mobilize the National Guard and utilize the Federal Emergency Management Agency to aid with the vaccination effort. In a notable shift away from Trump’s policies, the Biden Administration will also issue a mask wearing mandate for all individuals on federal property.

Public health experts expect the highly contagious British strain of the Covid-19 virus, to become the dominant strain across the U.S. by the month of March. As people around the world are experiencing mask and distancing fatigue, experts recommend doubling down on safety precautions by reducing time indoors with people who are not in your, so-called, “bubble,” and by wearing two masks if you have to go into an public indoor space.

COVID-19 Joint Press Conference 

Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton reported pharmaceutical companies Moderna and Pfizer pledged to locally deliver about 90 thousand dose...