Browsed by
Category: Health

Biden proposes a science-led New Deal to end pandemic suffering

Biden proposes a science-led New Deal to end pandemic suffering

Science reports: After announcing a $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” on Thursday to “change the course of the pandemic,” President-elect Joe Biden on Friday provided more details on how his administration will address what he called the “dismal failure” of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, safely reopen schools by March, and ramp up surveillance to track where SARS-CoV-2 is moving and how it’s mutating. “The more people we vaccinate and the faster we do it, the sooner we can put this…

Read More Read More

The coronavirus is evolving before our eyes

The coronavirus is evolving before our eyes

James Hamblin writes: In the final, darkest days of the deadliest year in U.S. history, the world received ominous news of a mutation in the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Scientists in the U.K. had identified a form of the virus that was spreading rapidly throughout the nation. Then, on January 4, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a lockdown that began almost immediately and will last until at least the middle of February. “It’s been both frustrating and alarming to see the speed…

Read More Read More

Trump’s Warp Speed leaders waited months to approve vaccine distribution plans

Trump’s Warp Speed leaders waited months to approve vaccine distribution plans

The Wall Street Journal reports: Operation Warp Speed leaders waited more than two months to approve a plan to distribute and administer Covid-19 vaccines proposed by U.S. health officials, administration officials said, leaving states with little time to implement a mass-vaccination campaign amid a coronavirus surge. State and local officials had been clamoring for months for help preparing for the largest vaccination program in U.S. history when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published a playbook in September to…

Read More Read More

The Covid-19 death toll is even worse than it looks

The Covid-19 death toll is even worse than it looks

The Wall Street Journal reports: The recorded death count from the Covid-19 pandemic as of Thursday is nearing 2 million. The true extent is far worse. More than 2.8 million people have lost their lives due to the pandemic, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from 59 countries and jurisdictions. This tally offers the most comprehensive view yet of the pandemic’s global impact. Deaths in these places last year surged more than 12% above average levels. Less…

Read More Read More

Biden’s Covid-19 team reconsiders pandemic plan in light of more infectious coronavirus variants

Biden’s Covid-19 team reconsiders pandemic plan in light of more infectious coronavirus variants

STAT reports: President-elect Biden will address growing concerns about new, more transmissible coronavirus variants as he lays out his plans to speed up the sluggish U.S. vaccine rollout in a press conference this week, two of his top Covid-19 advisers confirmed to STAT. Biden was briefed on the variant that first appeared in the United Kingdom, known as B.1.1.7, soon after his Covid-19 advisory board convened an emergency meeting on Christmas Eve to discuss the new strains and the threat…

Read More Read More

Some Covid survivors haunted by loss of smell and taste

Some Covid survivors haunted by loss of smell and taste

The New York Times reports: Until March, when everything started tasting like cardboard, Katherine Hansen had such a keen sense of smell that she could recreate almost any restaurant dish at home without the recipe, just by recalling the scents and flavors. Then the coronavirus arrived. One of Ms. Hansen’s first symptoms was a loss of smell, and then of taste. Ms. Hansen still cannot taste food, and says she can’t even tolerate chewing it. Now she lives mostly on…

Read More Read More

Most patients hospitalized for Covid-19 still have symptoms six months later, China study finds

Most patients hospitalized for Covid-19 still have symptoms six months later, China study finds

STAT reports: Three-quarters of Covid-19 patients still have at least one symptom six months after first falling ill, researchers who followed hospital patients in China reported Friday. The new findings suggest symptoms linger longer and in a higher proportion of patients than previously thought. The largest and longest analysis to date of post-Covid recovery also warns that some patients’ antibody levels fell sharply, raising concern that while waiting for a return to full health, they could be reinfected with the…

Read More Read More

U.S. is blind to contagious new coronavirus variant, scientists warn

U.S. is blind to contagious new coronavirus variant, scientists warn

Carl Zimmer reports: With no robust system to identify genetic variations of the coronavirus, experts warn that the United States is woefully ill-equipped to track a dangerous new mutant, leaving health officials blind as they try to combat the grave threat. The variant, which is now surging in Britain and burdening its hospitals with new cases, is rare for now in the United States. But it has the potential to explode in the next few weeks, putting new pressures on…

Read More Read More

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….

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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….

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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….

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More

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…

Read More Read More