Federal officials are extending the requirement for masks on planes and public transportation through mid-April while taking steps that could lead to lifting the rule.

As President Joe Biden urges more federal spending on public transportation, transit agencies decimated by COVID-19 are struggling to figure out how to win back passengers.

(AP Photo/Andy Wong)BEIJING — Officials in the northwestern China region of Xinjiang say they believe they have contained the country’s latest coronavirus outbreak. It was the second consecutive day in which newly confirmed cases emerged entirely among such people. — Belgium and Czech Republic top Europe’s highest number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 citizens, ahead of hotbeds France and Spain. ___MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota health officials are warning against traditional Halloween festivities amid the recent rise in coronavirus cases statewide. Italy has nearly 590,000 confirmed coronavirus cases and nearly 38,000 deaths, the second highest in Europe after Britain.

FILE - In this April 7, 2020, file photo, some people wear masks while using the New York City subway system during the coronavirus pandemic in New York. Previously, an iPhone user wearing a mask would have to wait a few seconds as face recognition software tried to identify them before they eventually could enter a passcode. Also, Apple Pay Express Transit, introduced last year, allows riders on some bus and subway lines to pay with their iPhone or Apple Watch without having to wake the device. Bus and subway use in New York and other cities plunged during the height of the pandemic. The authority has said in recent weeks that more than 90% are wearing some form of face covering.

But experts say those steps solve only part of the problem, and transit officials are studying more advanced methods that might someday automatically disinfect transit systems around the clock. The Moscow Metro and a public bus company in Shanghai have experimented with germ-killing ultraviolet light. All that cleaning does cut the threat of catching the virus, experts say, but the benefits are limited. New York's subway system normally serves more than 5 million riders a day, but ridership plunged more than 90 percent at the height of the pandemic. But I think this is the best of what weve got.Warren called far-UVC a great innovation but added that the logistical challenges of installing it across a century-old subway system are formidable.