NEW YORK - New York City schools have been temporarily blocked from enforcing a vaccine mandate for its teachers and other workers by a federal appeals judge days before it was to take effect.

The mandate for the the nation’s largest school system was set to go into effect Monday.

But late Friday, a judge for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals granted a temporary injunction and referred the case to a three-judge panel an an expedited basis.

Department of Education spokesperson Danielle Filson said officials are seeking a speedy resolution by the circuit court next week.

PHOENIX — Arizona on Saturday reported 2,916 additional confirmed COVID-19 cases and 69 more deaths as the pace of virus deaths nearly doubled over the past two weeks.

The additional cases and deaths increased the state’s pandemic totals to 1,081,790 cases and 19,806 deaths, according to the state’s coronavirus dashboard.

The dashboard also reported that 1,834 COVID-19 patients occupied inpatient hospital beds as of Friday, a level below the current surge’s peak of 2,103 on Sept. 12.

The state’s seven-day rolling average of daily deaths rose from 26.9 on Sept. 9 to 51.1 on Thursday, while the rolling average of daily new cases dropped from 2,649.3 to 2,467.1 during the same period, according to Johns Hopkins University data.

Deaths are considered a trailing metric in the pandemic, with increases in the number of deaths usually trailing those of cases and hospitalizations.