State Health Commissioner Dr. Kris Box and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lindsay Weaver host a virtual media briefing to provide updates on COVID-19 and it impact on Indiana.

State health officials are encouraging eligible Hoosiers to get a third shot of the COVID-19 vaccine. This additional dose is different from the booster shots recently announced by the Biden administration.

State Health Commissioner Dr. Kris Box and Indiana Department of Health Chief Medical Officer Dr. Lindsey Weaver shut down misinformation Friday that an antibiotic to treat animals could be used against COVID-19.

Many Hoosier K-12 schools have stopped reporting COVID-19 data to the state, as required.

A few top Holcomb administration officials have left state government in recent months. That's fairly common as an administration transitions from a first term to a second, as Holcomb's did.

Indiana health officials have counted about 62,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines being tossed out in recent months as the number of people seeking the shots has fallen drastically.

The state is in the midst of another COVID-19 surge. The delta variant of the virus has contributed to a more than 400 percent increase in the average number of new cases per day over the last month. In that same time, however, average new tests have only gone by up less than 200 percent.

As Indiana state health officials ramped up COVID-19 vaccination efforts this year, resources were diverted away from testing individuals for the virus. But within the past several weeks, the number of tests administered and the demand for tests has increased.

The data included name, address, email, date of birth and demographic information collected during contact tracing.

The Indiana Department of Health reported more than 2,000 new COVID-19 cases Friday. That comes as cases – and hospitalizations – have continued to grow in the last several weeks.