Yeah, this seems to be a thing a lot of news headlines do. So annoying

Maybe bc I’m not a native speaker but I don’t get it. Is a comma equivalent to an ‘and’? This is how I read it anyway.

And it is indeed super common in headlines. Maybe to keep word count lower?

You only use a comma when listing 3 or more items. Milk, eggs, and cheese. Saying "milk, cheese" is lazy and just reeks of a writer who thinks they're too good for the rules.

Maybe to keep word count lower?

This is it, even though it's completely unnecessary.