Browsed by
Category: Health

Moral failure: India is what happens when rich people do nothing

Moral failure: India is what happens when rich people do nothing

Vidya Krishnan writes: India’s experience of the pandemic will be defined by this enormous second wave. But the chamber of horrors the country now finds itself in was not caused by any one man [Prime Minister Narendra Modi], or any single government. It is the greatest moral failure of our generation. India may be classified as a developing or middle-income country, and by international standards, it does not spend enough on the health of its people. Yet this masks many…

Read More Read More

‘This is a catastrophe.’ In India, illness is everywhere

‘This is a catastrophe.’ In India, illness is everywhere

Jeffrey Gettleman reports: Crematories are so full of bodies, it’s as if a war just happened. Fires burn around the clock. Many places are holding mass cremations, dozens at a time, and at night, in certain areas of New Delhi, the sky glows. Sickness and death are everywhere. Dozens of houses in my neighborhood have sick people. One of my colleagues is sick. One of my son’s teachers is sick. The neighbor two doors down, to the right of us:…

Read More Read More

India’s Covid crisis is the world’s crisis

India’s Covid crisis is the world’s crisis

Yasmeen Serhan writes: India considered itself to be “in the endgame” of the pandemic just a few weeks ago. Now it is the global epicenter. The country recently surpassed the devastating milestone of more than 345,000 new COVID-19 cases in a single day, the biggest total recorded globally since the pandemic began. What is taking place in India isn’t so much a wave as it is a wall: Charts showing the country’s infection rate and death toll, which has also…

Read More Read More

Michigan’s Covid wards are filling up with younger patients

Michigan’s Covid wards are filling up with younger patients

The New York Times reports: At Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, in one of America’s worst coronavirus hot spots, entire units are still filled with Covid-19 patients. People weak with the virus still struggle to sit up in bed. And the phone still rings with pleas to transfer patients on the verge of death to units with higher-tech equipment. But unlike previous surges, it now is younger and middle-aged adults — not their parents and grandparents — who are taking up…

Read More Read More

Millions of Americans are skipping their second doses of Covid vaccines

Millions of Americans are skipping their second doses of Covid vaccines

The New York Times reports: Millions of Americans are not getting the second doses of their Covid-19 vaccines, and their ranks are growing. More than five million people, or nearly 8 percent of those who got a first shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, have missed their second doses, according to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That is more than double the rate among people who got inoculated in the first several…

Read More Read More

One billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, but mostly in wealthy countries

One billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, but mostly in wealthy countries

Forbes reports: The Associated Press reported last week that 87% of doses had been administered in rich countries, with 1 in 4 people in wealthy nations having received a jab, versus 1 in more than 500 in impoverished countries. According to the New York Times‘ vaccination tracker, only 0.2% of doses have been dispensed in low-income countries. Up to 60 of those nations might not receive any additional supply of the vaccine until June. Conversely, the supply of available shots…

Read More Read More

As Covid-19 devastates India, deaths go undercounted

As Covid-19 devastates India, deaths go undercounted

The New York Times reports: India’s coronavirus second wave is rapidly sliding into a devastating crisis, with hospitals unbearably full, oxygen supplies running low, desperate people dying in line waiting to see doctors — and mounting evidence that the actual death toll is far higher than officially reported. Each day, the government reports more than 300,000 new infections, a world record, and India is now seeing more new infections than any other country by far, almost half of all new…

Read More Read More

Malaria vaccine hailed as potential breakthrough

Malaria vaccine hailed as potential breakthrough

BBC News reports: A malaria vaccine has proved to be 77% effective in early trials and could be a major breakthrough against the disease, says the University of Oxford team behind it. Malaria kills more than 400,000 people a year, mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa. But despite many vaccines being trialled over the years, this is the first to meet the required target. The researchers say this vaccine could have a major public health impact. When trialled in 450 children…

Read More Read More

If the apocalypse had an image, it would be of India’s hospitals overwhelmed by the pandemic

If the apocalypse had an image, it would be of India’s hospitals overwhelmed by the pandemic

Rana Ayyub writes: Increasingly, people are dying in plain sight. On Friday, Delhi’s leading Gangaram Hospital issued an SOS that it only had enough oxygen left for two hours and that 25 patients had already lost their lives in the hospital due to oxygen shortages. Videos show people stealing oxygen cylinders for their relatives. One devastating video from the BBC shows a woman trying to help her dying brother regain consciousness. “Bajali, why don’t you wake up?” she cries. As…

Read More Read More

Covid hospitalizations tumble among U.S. senior citizens

Covid hospitalizations tumble among U.S. senior citizens

The Associated Press reports: COVID-19 hospitalizations among older Americans have plunged more than 70% since the start of the year, and deaths among them appear to have tumbled as well, dramatic evidence the vaccination campaign is working. Now the trick is to get more of the nation’s younger people to roll up their sleeves. The drop-off in severe cases among Americans 65 and older is especially encouraging because senior citizens have accounted for about 8 out of 10 deaths from…

Read More Read More

No safer from Covid indoors at 6 feet or 60 feet, MIT researchers say

No safer from Covid indoors at 6 feet or 60 feet, MIT researchers say

CNBC reports: The risk of being exposed to Covid-19 indoors is as great at 60 feet as it is at 6 feet — even when wearing a mask, according to a new study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers who challenge social distancing guidelines adopted across the world. MIT professors Martin Z. Bazant, who teaches chemical engineering and applied mathematics, and John W.M. Bush, who teaches applied mathematics, developed a method of calculating exposure risk to Covid-19 in an indoor…

Read More Read More

Unvaccinated worker set off outbreak at U.S. nursing home where most residents were immunized

Unvaccinated worker set off outbreak at U.S. nursing home where most residents were immunized

The New York Times reports: An unvaccinated health care worker set off a Covid-19 outbreak at a nursing home in Kentucky where the vast majority of residents had been vaccinated, leading to dozens of infections, including 22 cases among residents and employees who were already fully vaccinated, a new study reported Wednesday. Most of those who were infected with the coronavirus despite being vaccinated did not develop symptoms or require hospitalization, but one vaccinated individual, who was a resident of…

Read More Read More

India’s massive Covid surge puzzles scientists

India’s massive Covid surge puzzles scientists

Nature reports: The pandemic is sweeping through India at a pace that has staggered scientists. Daily case numbers have exploded since early March: the government reported 273,810 new infections nationally on 18 April. High numbers in India have also helped drive global cases to a daily high of 854,855 in the past week, almost breaking a record set in January. Just months earlier, antibody data had suggested that many people in cities such as Delhi and Chennai had already been…

Read More Read More

How India allowed the virus to overwhelm it

How India allowed the virus to overwhelm it

Ramanan Laxminarayan writes: A lethal, fast-paced second wave of the coronavirus pandemic has brought India’s health care systems to the verge of collapse and is putting millions of lives and livelihoods at risk. On Sunday and Monday, the country recorded more than 270,000 and 259,000 cases, respectively, of Covid-19, a staggering increase from about 11,000 cases per day in the second week of February. Reported coronavirus infections shot up from about 20,000 per day in mid-March to more than 200,000…

Read More Read More

Sleeping too little in middle age may increase dementia risk, study finds

Sleeping too little in middle age may increase dementia risk, study finds

The New York Times reports: Could getting too little sleep increase your chances of developing dementia? For years, researchers have pondered this and other questions about how sleep relates to cognitive decline. Answers have been elusive because it is hard to know if insufficient sleep is a symptom of the brain changes that underlie dementia — or if it can actually help cause those changes. Now, a large new study reports some of the most persuasive findings yet to suggest…

Read More Read More

Canada ski resort linked to largest outbreak of P1 Covid variant outside Brazil

Canada ski resort linked to largest outbreak of P1 Covid variant outside Brazil

The Guardian reports: For ski resorts, spring normally marks a final chance for visitors to carve sun-drenched runs before the season ends. But at Canada’s most famous ski resort, the gondolas have stopped, and the slopes are eerily quiet. The Whistler Blackcomb ski resort was shut down by provincial authorities at the end of March after they realised that P1, the highly infectious coronavirus variant traced back to Brazil, was spreading rapidly throughout the community. As provinces across Canada break…

Read More Read More