A man died Wednesday night after being beaten with a pair of pliers in a drug store parking lot in the Florida Keys, according to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office.

As the remaining vaccine mandates for medical workers get to set be implemented this week in 25 mostly conservative states, it is once again becoming clear how widespread the use of religious exemptions is in the U.S. as a workaround to complying with such requirements.

After a punishing fall that left hospital struggling, some Midwestern states are seeing a decline in new coronavirus cases. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)After a punishing fall that left hospitals struggling, some Midwestern states are seeing a decline in new coronavirus cases. With winter weather driving people indoors, where the virus spreads more easily, there’s no guarantee the improving dynamic can be maintained, doctors and public health officials say. In Iowa, for example, the number of new virus cases reported daily has declined over the past two weeks from nearly 1,800 to about 1,250. In Orange County, health officials said they plan to send large tents to four hospitals to help handle their patient caseloads.

– As Dr. Shane Wilson makes the rounds at the tiny, 25-bed hospital in rural northeastern Missouri, many of his movements are familiar in an age of coronavirus. Scotland County Hospital’s doctors already are making difficult, often heartbreaking decisions about who they can take in. The hospital’s chief nursing officer, Elizabeth Guffey, said nurses are working up to 24 extra hours each week. Glen Cowell wasn’t so sure about the virus until it knocked him to his knees. “If you don’t have any one of those three, you’re really hamstrung,” he said, noting that many hospitals face shortages in all three areas.