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Category: Health

Five key milestones in the Covid-19 pandemic that we’re anticipating in 2021

Five key milestones in the Covid-19 pandemic that we’re anticipating in 2021

STAT reports: On the first day of fall, STAT published its best guesses of 30 moments to come in the pandemic that could mark a change in its course or serve as a time to reflect on how Covid-19 had reshaped our lives. In reality, some of the turning points have turned out better than they could have. Schools, particularly for younger children, seem to be safer than initially feared, although many students continue to be stuck with virtual classes….

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Britain takes a gamble with Covid-19 vaccines, upping the stakes for the rest of us

Britain takes a gamble with Covid-19 vaccines, upping the stakes for the rest of us

STAT reports: In an extraordinary time, British health authorities are taking extraordinary measures to beat back Covid-19. But some experts say that, in doing so, they are also taking a serious gamble. In recent days, the British have said they will stretch out the interval between the administration of the two doses required for Covid-19 vaccines already in use — potentially to as long as three months, instead of the recommended three or four weeks. And they have said they…

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What the San Francisco Bay Area can teach us about fighting a pandemic

What the San Francisco Bay Area can teach us about fighting a pandemic

Jay Caspian Kang writes: On March 10th, the day before Tom Hanks announced that he had tested positive for Covid-19, I drove my three-year-old daughter to her day care in Berkeley, California. The drive took us up College Avenue, where white-haired professors huddled at sidewalk café tables; we passed the fraternity houses where students gathered on the lawns. Just a few blocks from my daughter’s school, there’s a coffee shop with a clientele split equally between students and senior citizens….

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Leading health officials reject Trump’s false claim that the Covid death toll is exaggerated

Leading health officials reject Trump’s false claim that the Covid death toll is exaggerated

CNN reports: US Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams on Sunday said he has “no reason to doubt” the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid-19 death toll, contradicting President Donald Trump’s claim that the agency has “exaggerated” its numbers. “From a public health perspective, I have no reason to doubt those numbers,” Adams told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked about Trump’s claim. “And I think people need to be very aware that it’s not…

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Palestinians excluded from Israeli Covid vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers

Palestinians excluded from Israeli Covid vaccine rollout as jabs go to settlers

The Observer reports: Israel is celebrating an impressive, record-setting vaccination drive, having given initial jabs of coronavirus shots to more than a 10th of the population. But Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza can only watch and wait. As the world ramps up what is already on track to become a highly unequal vaccination push – with people in richer nations first to be inoculated – the situation in Israel and the Palestinian territories provides a stark example…

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Covid-19 pandemic drives new cases of polio in Afghanistan

Covid-19 pandemic drives new cases of polio in Afghanistan

By Ruchi Kumar When Saidgul was around 6 months old this past March, his parents decided to take him to Herat, a city about 80 miles from their hometown in Shindand District in Herat Province in western Afghanistan. The road between the two towns is partially unpaved and can be treacherous, infested with Taliban checkpoints. In Herat, they hoped to get Saidgul vaccinated against polio, since clinics in their district had shut down without warning due to the Covid-19 pandemic….

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With limited surveillance of Covid-19 variant, it’s déjà vu all over again

With limited surveillance of Covid-19 variant, it’s déjà vu all over again

Helen Branswell writes: As health officials in the United States announced a second and possibly a third person infected with a new, more transmissible strain of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, infectious diseases experts are feeling a sense of déjà vu all over again. A little less than a year ago, the early response to the coronavirus crisis was stifled by an inability to scale up testing to detect the virus and curb its spread. Now, once again, it’s unclear how prevalent…

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Covid-19 vaccine’s slow rollout could portend more problems

Covid-19 vaccine’s slow rollout could portend more problems

The Wall Street Journal reports: Three weeks into the most ambitious vaccination campaign in modern U.S. history, far fewer people than expected are being immunized against Covid-19, as the process moves slower than officials had projected and has been beset by confusion and disorganization in many states. As a result, the federal government came nowhere close to vaccinating 20 million people by the end of 2020, as it had promised. Of the more than 12 million doses of vaccines from…

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Airline workers battle mask resistance with scant government backup

Airline workers battle mask resistance with scant government backup

The Washington Post reports: As the man returned from the lavatory with a mask dangling from one ear, a flight attendant asked him to put it on properly. “Why? Is something going on that I should know about?” the passenger asked, before grabbing the mask and ripping the string. “Damn it, I guess I can’t wear it now.” Other passengers have verbally abused and taunted flight attendants trying to enforce airline mask requirements, treating the potentially lifesaving act as a…

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Once a model, California now struggles to tame Covid-19

Once a model, California now struggles to tame Covid-19

The Associated Press reports: Ambulances waited hours for openings to offload coronavirus patients. Overflow patients were moved to hospital hallways and gift shops, even a cafeteria. Refrigerated trucks were on standby, ready to store the dead. For months, California did many of the right things to avoid a catastrophic surge from the pandemic. But by the time Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Dec. 15 that 5,000 body bags were being distributed, it was clear that the nation’s most populous state…

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Virus numbers are surging. Why is New York’s vaccine rollout sluggish?

Virus numbers are surging. Why is New York’s vaccine rollout sluggish?

The New York Times reports: As the final hours ticked away in a harrowing year, New York City on Thursday once again found itself in a worrying position in the pandemic: Hospitalizations were climbing for the fourth consecutive month, the positive test rate in some areas had doubled and vaccinations that were supposed to bring normalcy had gotten off to a slow start. Across the city, where the positive test rate over a seven-day average reached 8.87, the virus continued…

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Trump administration falls far short of vaccination goals as new virus variant looms

Trump administration falls far short of vaccination goals as new virus variant looms

The Washington Post reports: Logistical problems at the heart of the federal government’s faltering rollout of coronavirus vaccines came into sharper view Thursday as the Trump administration fell vastly short of its goal of delivering an initial shot to 20 million people by the end of December. On the final day of a bleak year, only about 2.8 million people had received the shot, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — the first of two doses needed…

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The mutated coronavirus variant is a ticking time bomb

The mutated coronavirus variant is a ticking time bomb

Zeynep Tufekci writes: A new variant of the coronavirus is spreading across the globe. It was first identified in the United Kingdom, where it is rapidly spreading, and has been found in multiple countries. Viruses mutate all the time, often with no impact, but this one appears to be more transmissible than other variants—meaning it spreads more easily. Barely one day after officials announced that America’s first case of the variant had been found in the United States, in a…

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Trump’s failure to rise to the Covid challenge

Trump’s failure to rise to the Covid challenge

The New York Times reports: It was a warm summer Wednesday, Election Day was looming and President Trump was even angrier than usual at the relentless focus on the coronavirus pandemic. “You’re killing me! This whole thing is! We’ve got all the damn cases,” Mr. Trump yelled at Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, during a gathering of top aides in the Oval Office on Aug. 19. “I want to do what Mexico does. They don’t give you a…

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The worst idea of 2020: Natural herd immunity

The worst idea of 2020: Natural herd immunity

Brian Resnick writes: It’s year-end-list season. Usually, the Vox science team has some fun and compiles a year-end list of bad ideas in health and science that ought to die with the end of the year. In the past, we’ve targeted homeopathic medicine, declared it was time to end the relevance of the fatally flawed Stanford Prison Experiment, and dispelled myths about climate change. This year, though, we have only one target for intellectual demolition. With the end of 2020,…

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How getting vaccinated will and won’t change my behavior

How getting vaccinated will and won’t change my behavior

Dhruv Khullar writes: Beyond the dread that I feel for my patients, my work as a physician on the coronavirus wards has instilled in me two related fears. The first fear, which surges each time I learn about another of the nearly two thousand health-care workers who have died of Covid-19, is that I will get infected and fall seriously ill. A second, deeper and more persistent, fear is that I will pass the virus to my family. It’s because…

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