“BA.3.2 is a newer SARS-CoV-2 variant that public health officials are watching closely because it has a large number of spike protein mutations, which may help it partially evade immunity from prior infection or vaccination,” said Madad.

Most Americans wanted the U.S. government to focus in 2026 on domestic issues, such as health care and high costs, rather than foreign policy issues, an AP-NORC poll conducted last month found. Meanwhile, polling conducted in the immediate aftermath of the military operation that captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro suggested that many Americans are unconvinced that the U.S. should step in to take control of the country.

Foreign policy and drug trade weren’t high priorities for many Americans Heading into the new year, Americans were less likely to want the government to focus on foreign policy than they had been in recent years.

In the alert, the CDC explained that a variant of the Neisseria meningitidis serogroup Y has reported 140 cases in 2024 so far. Although meningitis typically affects infants and young adults, this strand is targeting adults between the ages of 30 to 60 years old. People who are at a higher risk of getting this type of meningitis are Black and African Americans or someone who has HIV.

In addition, the state of Virginia is currently dealing with a statewide outbreak from the meningococcal disease type Y. Since June 2022, "there have been 35 confirmed cases of meningococcal disease associated with this outbreak, including 6 deaths," according to the Virginia Department of Health.

Studies have shown that everything from brushing your teeth to climbing the stairs can reveal signs of early dementia. And now, it seems that how you take your dinner could indicate whether or not you've got a condition called frontotemporal dementia. The uncommon subtype of dementia affects about one in every 20 dementia patients, Dementia UK says.

“Frontotemporal dementia is associated with a wide variety of abnormal eating behaviors such as hyperphagia, fixations on one kind of food, even ingestion of inanimate objects,” a paper on the topic reads. Those with the condition may refuse to eat anything other than one food

Health officials are alerting doctors to be on the lookout for certain types of rare, serious meningococcal infections that are on the rise in the United States.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a new health alert that these infections, which are caused by a certain strain of Neisseria meningitidis bacteria, may present with unusual symptoms. In the cases identified so far this year, about 1 in 6 people have died, a higher fatality rate than they typically see with meningococcal infections.

A research group, led by Wei Fuwen, an academician from the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Hu Yibo, a research fellow from the same institute, published a research paper on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The study discloses the mystery of the rare fur coloration of panda Qizai, the world’s only brown-and-white panda bred in captivity, an extremely rare subspecies found in the Qinling area.

According to the thesis, gene mutation of base deletion that occurs in the pigmentation related gene Bace2 may probably result in the rare color of the giant panda.

Four children born with HIV were able to live virus-free for more than a year after their HIV medication was paused, according to results of a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The results of the P1115 study were announced on Wednesday at the 2024 Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI), in Denver, Colorado.

HIV hides inside the body, meaning their HIV eventually returned. However, the fact that they were able to live for more than one year medication-free and without detectable virus is offering scientists fresh hope that eventually, there may be a way to achieve long-term remission among children born with HIV.

Norovirus, aka the “stomach flu,” is on the rise in the U.S. New data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that more than 12% of tests for norovirus came back positive the week of Feb. 17 — up from from 11.5% the week before. Experts say that's a concern given that norovirus is highly contagious. According to the CDC, it causes more than 19 million illnesses, mostly in young children, annually in the country, and leads to 465,000 emergency department visits. Lowering your risk for getting norovirus is important, especially if you are in one of the vulnerable populations for this illness.

Single-use plastics In the 1950s, plastic producers came up with an idea to ensure a continually growing market for their products: disposability. “They knew if they focused on single-use [plastics] people would buy and buy and buy,” said Davis Allen, investigative researcher at the CCI and the report’s lead author.

Recycling campaigns The industry has long known that plastics recycling is not economically or practically viable, the report shows. An internal 1986 report from the trade association the Vinyl Institute noted that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of”.

When authorities announced the seizure of 1.4 metric tons of liquid heroin in Oregon last week, it made national headlines and left many wondering: What is liquid heroin?

Heroin in its natural form is found in the seed pod of opium poppy plants in parts of Asia, Mexico and Colombia, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The drug is most commonly used in the U.S. by ingesting it as a powder, which can be white, brown or black.

The Biden administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on four Israeli men it accused of being involved in settler violence in the West Bank, signaling growing U.S. displeasure with the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

President Joe Biden issued an executive order on Thursday that aims to punish ill-behaved Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, where Palestinians envisage a future state.

Some members of the Palestinian American community who received an invite to meet U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday declined the invitation over their frustration with Washington's policy toward the conflict and crisis in Gaza.

A U.S. State Department spokesperson on Thursday told reporters Blinken met with a "number of leaders" from the Palestinian American community, without specifying how many attended.

Four people in Washington state have tested positive this month for a rare fungal infection that can be deadly. It's the state's first known outbreak of the fungus, called Candida auris, according to Seattle and King County health officials, though one locally acquired case was detected there in July. The cluster comes as Candida auris continues to spread in the U.S.: Case numbers have risen every year since 2016. The pathogen is resistant to some common antifungal medications, and it tends to infect people with weakened immune systems. It's often detected among hospital patients who use catheters, breathing tubes or feeding tubes.

Poison control centers across the US say they are seeing a steep increase in calls related to semaglutide, an injected medication used for diabetes and weight loss, with some people reporting symptoms related to accidental overdoses. Some have even needed to be hospitalized for severe nausea, vomiting and stomach pain, but their cases seem to have resolved after they were given intravenous fluids and medications to control nausea.

A listeria outbreak across the United States that's resulted in at least one death has prompted a recall of fresh peaches, plums and nectarines sold in 2022 and 2023. The HMC Group Marketing Inc, which does business as HMC Farms, is voluntarily recalling peaches, plums and nectarines sold in retail stores between May 1 and Nov. 15, 2022 and between May 1 and Nov. 15, 2023, the company announced Nov. 17 in a notice shared on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website.

The Maryland team last year performed the world’s first transplant of a heart from a genetically altered pig into another dying man. David Bennett survived two months before that heart failed, for reasons that aren’t completely clear although signs of a pig virus later were found inside the organ. Lessons from that first experiment led to changes, including better virus testing, before the second attempt.

“Mr. Faucette's last wish was for us to make the most of what we have learned from our experience,” Dr. Bartley Griffith, the surgeon who led the transplant at the University of Maryland Medical Center, said in a statement. Attempts at animal-to-human organ transplants — called xenotransplants — have failed for decades, as people’s immune systems immediately destroyed the foreign tissue. Now scientists are trying again using pigs genetically modified to make their organs more humanlike.

However benevolent their goals, Western governments have ruined the public’s trust with their attempts at narrative control

In the past week, stories in the media have been warning about the latest Covid-19 variant, the latest in a long list. It doesn’t seem like people are listening anymore.

Bacterial infections picked up on the battlefield are showing up in European hospitals, the US CDC reported

Wounded Ukrainian soldiers and fleeing civilians are carrying new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to Western Europe, according to a recent paper by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Even before the conflict, scientists warned of Ukraine’s inability to monitor and restrict the spread of these infections.

While speaking at a Thursday news conference for Gov. Ron DeSantis in Jacksonville, Florida, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, that state's surgeon general, advised people to steer clear of the updated booster vaccine for COVID-19. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not yet approved the new vaccine — which is reportedly designed to protect against the BA.2.86 omicron subvariant.

The brown eyes of a 6-month-old boy turned a deep indigo blue after he was given the antiviral favipiravir to treat COVID-19. This case is unusual, but it's not the first time doctors have reported a patient's eyes changing color after they prescribed favipiravir for COVID-19. So what could be causing this bizarre effect?

A sliver of what makes sharks so intriguing comes with their ability to regrow teeth. And while a group of Japanese researchers aren’t claiming that we should be trying to be the most shark-like possible, they’d like for us to maybe, someday, share that same ability. Following up on a 2021 study (published in Scientific Reports) that showed how medicine targeting the protein synthesized by the USAG-1 gene could impact the number of teeth grown in animals, the team has turned its attention to humans. They’ve announced a 2024 clinical trial of the medicine, which they in turn hope to have ready for general use in 2030.

A highly mutated COVID-19 variant is raising the alarm among scientists, even though only two dozen cases have been reported worldwide. BA.2.86, a new variant nicknamed "Pirola," carries more than 30 mutations. This is the largest leap in viral evolution since Omicron, which caused a massive wave of cases when it first emerged in 2021.

According to a new risk assessment by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), BA.2.86 may be more likely to cause breakthrough infections in people who were previously infected or vaccinated, compared to other circulating variants.

Overdose deaths reached record levels in the United States in recent years, and a new report shows that counterfeit pills are involved in a growing share of those deaths. The US Drug Enforcement Administration issued a public safety alert about a sharp increase of fake prescription pills laced with fentanyl and methamphetamine about two years ago. According to the agency, more than 9.5 million counterfeit pills were seized in 2021, more than the prior two years combined.

Health officials in Virginia have announced the state is experiencing an outbreak of rare, but serious meningococcal disease. Twenty-seven cases have been identified since June 2022, which is three times higher than the expected number of cases during this period, according to the Virginia Department of Health. Of those cases, five people have died from complications due to the disease.

A hospital in Indiana where a staff member recently tested positive for tuberculosis has notified around 500 patients that they may have been exposed to the illness. Clark Memorial Health in Jeffersonville told Fox News Digital on Thursday that it sent out hundreds of letters to those possibly affected following the confirmed case.

She got into a new family clinic, and doctors again suspected hemorrhoids. But this time, she met someone who made a huge difference in Spill’s search for a diagnosis. “(The nurse) said to me, ‘I just want to say one thing: If you don’t find your answer here, keep searching. Keep going. You know your body best,’” Spill says. “That is something that has stuck with me from that day.”

Experts who have been monitoring the strange and potentially life-threatening sensitivity, known as alpha-gal syndrome, say the number of people affected just keeps rising. New data from the CDC released in July 2023 indicate that as many as 450,000 people have developed the condition since 2010 — but few clinicians are familiar with alpha-gal syndrome and even fewer know how to diagnose it.

Public health officials around the world say they're keeping an eye on a new COVID-19 variant that has surfaced in four countries. Called BA.2.86, aka Pirola, the variant has a lot of mutations that make it distinctly different from previous strains of the virus. On Wednesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this new lineage may be even more adept than previous variants at infecting people who already had COVID-19 or have been vaccinated. It's not yet clear whether BA.2.86 might cause more severe illness than older variants.

A rare, flesh-eating bacteria has killed eight people on the US east coast, prompting warnings from authorities over swimming in the sea and eating shellfish. Five of the deaths from the vibrio vulnificus bacteria occurred in Florida. The other three fatalities took place in Long Island, New York and Connecticut. Health officials warned people with open wounds to stay out of the water to avoid being infected. The two people who died in Connecticut are understood to have been swimming in Long Island Sound, a tidal estuary of the Atlantic Ocean.

While numbers remain low, COVID-19 cases are slightly on the rise in central Ohio and across the nation. Officials with the Ohio Department of Health said they don't believe a major surge is coming anytime soon, and no new COVID variants have been detected among recently reported cases.

TikToker Brian Karr (@moldfinders) posts content about cleaning mold, finding hidden mold, and how mold can affect your health. One of his videos zeros in on the myth that bleach is the ultimate cleaning product and warns against using it to clean mold. He explains that mold contains mycotoxins, which are naturally occurring chemicals. It’s smart to avoid mixing chemicals, in general, and when mycotoxins are combined with the chemicals in bleach, they can become toxic.

(Reuters) - U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that it was tracking a new, highly mutated lineage of the virus that causes COVID-19. The lineage is named BA.2.86, and has been detected in the United States, Denmark and Israel, the CDC said in a post on messaging platform X.

At least three people have died in Connecticut and New York after contracting a rare flesh-eating bacteria that can be found in warm, brackish waters or raw shellfish, officials confirmed Wednesday.

Doctors in New York have managed to keep a brain-dead man in a state of sort of suspended animation for more than a month after removing his kidneys and replacing them with one from a pig. A ventilator has kept 57-year-old Maurice Miller's heart beating and other organs functioning while the pig kidney produces urine and other normal byproducts.

Genetically engineered pig kidneys are nearing the point where they could provide a government-approved, sustainable supply of organs for sick humans awaiting a transplant, a pair of new studies argue. A lightly modified pig kidney has continued to function more than a month in a brain-dead human donor kept alive on a ventilator, according to an ongoing study conducted at NYU Langone Health in New York City.

Nacha Cattan Wed, August 16, 2023 at 11:39 AM EDT·2 min read (Bloomberg) -- Doctors transplanted a pig’s kidney into a brain-dead man’s body where it continued to function normally, moving the field closer to the possibility of using animal tissue and organs to fight human disease.

30 Erin Prater Wed, August 16, 2023 at 5:19 AM EDT·4 min read Getty Images If you’re wondering if you should be steering clear of your dog when you’re sick with COVID, the answer is yes. Just as COVID-19 can spread from person to person, it can also spread from people to animals, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Animals can spread the virus to people as well, in a process known as zoonotic transmission—though this likely occurs only rarely.

Florida health officials sent a warning about a rise in cases of dengue fever, issuing a new alert after two local cases in Broward County. The two cases in the South Florida county, which includes Fort Lauderdale, brings to 10 the number of locally acquired cases this year, the Florida Department of Health said in a new surveillance report. Eight cases have been confirmed in Miami-Dade County, also under alert for the virus.

Rates of colorectal cancer have been increasing in young people over the past few years — and have gotten a lot of attention in the process. But disturbing new research finds that rising cancer rates in young people aren't limited to colorectal cancer.

Florida health officials are issuing a warning about dengue as the virus continues to increase in South Florida. Four cases of locally acquired dengue were reported in Miami-Dade County and for the first time in Broward County, during the week ending Aug. 5, according to a report from Florida Health.

COVID-19 hospitalizations are continuing to increase in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For the week ending Aug. 5, COVID hospitalizations increased 14.3% from 9,026 to 10,320 weekly hospitalizations, data from the federal health agency updated Monday shows. While the percentage jump is in the double digits, the absolute numbers are still quite low. Weekly hospitalizations during the omicron wave peaked at 150,674 in January 2022.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A new COVID vaccine is due out next month, but health experts and analysts say it is likely to be coolly received even as hospitalizations from "Eris", a variant of the Omicron form of the coronavirus, rise around the country. Some public health experts hope that Americans will welcome the new shot as they would a flu jab. But demand for the vaccine has dropped sharply since 2021 when it first became available and more than 240 million people in the U.S., or 73% of the population, received at least one shot.

When Maira Gutiérrez was diagnosed with Chagas disease in 1997, neither she nor her primary care physician had even heard of the malady. She discovered her illness only by chance, after participating in a Red Cross blood drive organized by her employer, Universal Studios. (Universal Studios is owned by Comcast, the same parent company as NBC News.)

A Florida deputy who was exposed to suspected fentanyl during a traffic stop this week told another officer he felt dizzy, his heart was racing and later couldn’t feel his legs, body camera footage released Friday by the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office showed. Deputy Nick Huzior said he began to feel lightheaded after he tested a white powdery substance that later tested presumptive positive for fentanyl found inside a suspect’s car pulled over in Bunnell on Thursday afternoon. Huzior had been wearing gloves.

New research has found "forever chemicals" in the lining of period underwear, the wrappers of tampons and in other menstruation products. Forever chemicals, or PFAS, are man-made compounds that can potentially accumulate in the body over time and take years to break down in nature. PFAS, which stands for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, have been implicated in a number of serious health effects, including some cancers, high blood pressure, disruption of the endocrine system and developmental problems in children.

Ah, kale. Once a golden child among leafy greens — a 2011 talking point for Gwyneth and Ellen, a 2012 “Dish of the Year” star for Bon Appétit, and the 2014 fashion focus of a Beyoncé video — kale has since had increasing detractors alongside its defenders. Now a pilot study has found toxic “forever chemicals” in kale samples — especially organic ones — though its authors present this as a critique of chemical pervasiveness, not an anti-kale attack.

The World Health Organization states that we'll likely see an uptick in COVID-19 cases thanks to this bad boy, also called EG.5. Find out what you need to know about the COVID EG.5 variant, including symptoms, severity, whether or not it's more transmissible, and how to protect yourself.

As rates of sexually transmitted infections continue to skyrocket across the United States, a growing number of physicians are prescribing a commonly used antibiotic as a way to prevent chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis infections in gay and bisexual men and transgender women. Doxycycline is a class of medications traditionally used to treat bacterial STIs after someone has been infected. Yet recent research suggests that one 200mg dose of the drug can be effective in preventing such infections among men who have sex with men if taken within 72 hours after unprotected sex.

Antimicrobial resistance happens when germs, such as bacteria and fungi, develop the ability to defeat the medications that have been engineered to destroy them. Bacteria can sometimes develop this ability when certain antibiotics are being overused.

Once a hallmark sign of many COVID-19 cases — sometimes more reliable than even flu-like symptoms at sniffing out people infected by the virus early in the pandemic — was the sudden loss of smell and taste. But growing research suggests this symptom has become far less common, with only a small fraction of new patients reporting it last year. The findings come from analysis of a sweeping dataset of medical records gathered by the National Institutes of Health for COVID-19 researchers from around the country.

The EG.5 variant now makes up the largest proportion of new COVID-19 infections nationwide, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated, as multiple parts of the country have been reporting their first upticks of the virus in months.

New data shows COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are on the rise. At the same time, a new COVID-19 booster to combat current variants of the virus could be approved by the end of this month. Fall is approaching, and so is the next respiratory virus season. Experts predict another wave of COVID-19 come fall and winter.

868 Lena H. Sun and Lenny Bernstein, (c) 2023, The Washington Post Fri, August 4, 2023 at 11:43 AM EDT·6 min read U.S. health officials are racing to control an outbreak of tuberculosis linked to contaminated bone graft material that has killed one person and infected at least four others - the second outbreak of the rare disease in two years.

Routinely drinking alcohol — as little as one drink a day — is associated with an increase in blood pressure readings, even in adults without hypertension, according to new research analysis.

In early 2019, Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey and his new girlfriend, Nadine Arslanian, were riding high. He had avoided a federal bribery conviction after his trial ended with a hung jury, and the couple had begun traveling the world.

Menendez proposed to Arslanian that October in India with a grand gesture, singing “Never Enough” from “The Greatest Showman” outside the Taj Mahal. They married a year later in a small ceremony in the Queens borough of New York City and were showered with gifts from a dozen influential friends, including the head of one of New Jersey’s largest health care systems and a lawyer who would later become the U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey. ++++plus++++ Hana began operating a startup company, IS EG Halal, in New Jersey in 2019, and it soon became the sole entity authorized to certify that any halal food product imported into Egypt from anywhere in the world had been prepared according to Islamic law. It was an unlikely development, given that Hana, a U.S. citizen born in Egypt, has said in court papers that he had no prior experience in the halal industry.

Parts of the country are seeing an uptick, and hospitalizations are rising nationwide.

Dr. Bob Wachter was an expert who diligently practiced what he preached. For three years, the prominent University of California at San Francisco physician advocated masking and vaccination for those who, like him, wanted to avoid the coronavirus, as well as the mysterious, long-lasting symptoms known as long COVID.

Capitalising on strong demand for its obesity therapies, Novo Nordisk's (NOVOb.CO) growing appetite for deals has fuelled a bet on a U.S. gene-editing company called Life Edit Therapeutics.

The Danish drugmaker's collaboration with Durham, North Carolina-based Life Edit Therapeutics - owned by ElevateBio, a cell and gene therapy company in Waltham - is focused on up to seven programs for rare genetic disorders as well as cardiometabolic diseases.

Germany's BioNTech (22UAy.DE) said it was on track to introduce a COVID-19 shot by the early fall in the northern hemisphere that is adapted to currently dominant virus variants in line with recommendations by the World Health Organization.

BioNTech was targeting regulatory approval by the end of the summer to allow for a seasonal vaccination campaign to start in early autumn, CEO and co-founder Ugur Sahin told shareholders at the biotech firm's annual general meeting on Thursday.

Some of the world’s biggest drugmakers are laying legal groundwork to fight the U.S. plan to negotiate drug prices for its Medicare health coverage, including the argument that a ban against speaking about these talks violates constitutional rights, according to six industry sources.

The Biden Administration’s signature drug pricing reform, part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), aims to save $25 billion through price negotiations by 2031 for Americans who pay more for medicines than any other country. The pharmaceutical industry says the law, passed last year, will result in a loss of profits that will force them to pull back on developing groundbreaking new treatments.

Many people don't know about respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV. And in many ways, that makes sense. It largely goes unnoticed because in most cases, it results in a common cold, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But Anand Budi, a longtime pediatrician and chief medical officer for Meritus Health, is seeing worrisome trends with the virus. Budi said he's diagnosing more cases of RSV locally, and people are getting sicker from it, and their hospitalizations to treat it are getting longer.

Doctors are warning of a dangerous fungal illness rapidly spreading across the country, especially affecting those living or visiting the California and Arizona areas.

"This is a fungus," said Perkins, a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who led the anthrax bioterrorism investigation. "Most causes of pneumonia are caused by bacteria. This is a fungus that lives in the soil and is breathed in dusty situations, whether it's a dust storm or around construction or excavation."

An executive with the drug firm previously said that the company was creating more potent strains of the virus in a laboratory

In a statement posted on its website, Pfizer said that it “has not conducted gain of function or directed evolution research,” referring to the practice of amplifying a virus’ ability to infect humans and the process of selecting ‘desirable’ traits of a virus to reproduce, respectively.

The National Institutes of Health failed to provide adequate oversight of an American organization that funded controversial research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, according to a new government report that is sure to raise new questions about the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Republicans seized on the findings, with Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — a skeptic of virtually every aspect of the official coronavirus narrative — charging that the NIH “failed to conduct adequate oversight.”

If these sound familiar, it's time to call your doctor. While long COVID affects everyone differently, there is a new study that reveals four major types of symptoms.

Interestingly, results also indicated which long COVID symptoms were most prevalent: The heart, kidney and circulatory system subtype affected most people (34%) followed by respiratory, anxiety and sleep issues (33%). Musculoskeletal and nervous system issues and digestive problems were much less prevalent, according to researchers. Another finding worth noting: Two-thirds of the people affected by respiratory issues, sleep disorders, anxiety and chest pain were women.

Nearly 3,000 more Britons are dying than average on a weekly basis, and it’s not Covid-19 that’s responsible

Speaking before the House of Commons on Tuesday, Conservative MP Esther McVey skewered Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty for blaming the spike in non-Covid excess deaths on “patients not getting statins or blood pressure medicines during the pandemic,” pointing out that the monthly figures for statin prescriptions had remained constant. “Where is the evidence? And if there isn’t one, what is causing these excess deaths?” she asked, demanding the minister “commit to an urgent and thorough investigation of the matter.”

The only vaccine against HIV still being tested in late-stage clinical trials has proved ineffective, its manufacturer announced Wednesday, another disappointment in a field long beset by failure.

An ongoing study called PrEPVacc in Eastern and Southern Africa is evaluating a combination of experimental HIV vaccines and preventive drugs. Scientists have made headway in developing powerful antibodies that can neutralize the virus. And they are testing new vaccine technologies, including mRNA, against HIV.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed Friday it is now tracking a new COVID-19 variant of concern around the U.S. known as XBB, which has grown to make up an estimated 3.1% of new infections nationwide.

The strain's prevalence has grown furthest so far in the Northeast, according to the agency's weekly estimates. More than 5% of infections in the regions spanning New Jersey through Maine are linked to XBB, in this week's "Nowcast" from the CDC.

The United States on Thursday issued sanctions against an international oil smuggling network it accused of supporting Hezbollah and Iran's Quds Force, as Washington seeks to increase pressure on Tehran.

The latest U.S. move against Iranian oil smuggling comes as efforts to revive Iran's 2015 nuclear deal have stalled and ties between the Islamic Republic and the West are increasingly strained as Iranians keep up anti-government protests.

“Some think that America is an untouchable power, but if we look at the events of this day [November 4], it turns out that no, it is completely vulnerable,” Khamenei said, referring to the 1979 US embassy takeover, which was carried out by a Muslim student movement. ............................................................. Yet, according to Khamenei, this was not the event that triggered the decades-long rivalry between Washington and Tehran. The turning point in relations between the two nations had come almost three decades earlier when the US, together with the UK, orchestrated a coup that overthrew the government of the Iranian prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, the supreme leader said.

The US and its British allies sought to control Iran’s oil reserves, and that is why they turned against Mosaddegh, who was not an advocate of Islamic rule, Khamenei argued.

People with severely weakened immune systems, such as those infected with HIV, can experience severe symptoms and even die from a monkeypox infection, according to a U.S. study released on Wednesday.

The study looked at cases of 57 U.S. patients hospitalized with severe monkeypox complications. Almost all (83%) had severely weakened immune systems, most often because of infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Many of those patients were not being treated for the virus that causes AIDS.

The death toll from a foot bridge collapse in India rose to 134 on Monday, including many children, as police detained nine people as part of a criminal investigation into one of the deadliest accidents in the country in the past decade.

CCTV footage from just before the collapse showed a group of young men taking photos while others tried to rock the suspension bridge from side to side, before they tumbled into the river below as the cables holding it together gave way.

The UN health watchdog says the number of infections is rising globally

The number of people infected with tuberculosis (TB) has increased globally for the first time in nearly two decades, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

As the US midterm elections approach, the Kremlin will know that the Republican Party has a chance of winning control of Congress.

Earlier this month, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy warned that Republicans will not write a "blank cheque" for Ukraine if they win back the House majority.

Officials say 82 more injured, with many being treated for cardiac arrest, after surge in Itaewon nightlife quarter of South Korean capital

An estimated 100,000 people, many in costume, gathered in Itaewon on Saturday night as the lifting of social distancing, mask mandates and other anti-Covid measures cleared the way for the first Halloween party in three years.

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The Dive with Jackson Hinkle is an American perspective on news & politics which airs daily.

Government pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions put the planet on track for an average 2.8 degrees Celsius temperature rise this century, after "woefully inadequate" progress to curb warming, a United Nations report said.

Representatives from around the world will meet from Nov. 6-18 at the COP27 climate talks in Egypt to try to agree pledges to limit warming to below 2C above pre-industrial levels and ideally to 1.5C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

BHP Group (BHP.AX) is teaming up with steelmaker ArcelorMittal (MT.LU) and two others to test a new technology to reduce carbon emissions in steel making at two plants in Belgium and North America.

The trials, at ArcelorMittal's Gent steel blast furnace in Belgium and another plant in North America, also involve Japan's Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Engineering (MHIENG), which developed the carbon capture technology, and Mitsubishi Development Pty, another supplier of steel-making coal.

Shorter winters in Maine’s woodlands have created a huge problem for the state’s iconic moose, in the form of tiny blood-sucking ticks that thrive in warmer weather and which last year killed nearly 90% of Maine moose calves.

4 minute readOctober 28, 20224:56 PM EDTLast Updated 13 min ago As Maine’s winters shorten, tiny ticks threaten state’s mighty moose By Lauren Owens Lambert PITTSTON ACADEMY GRANT, Maine, Oct 28 (Reuters) - Shorter winters in Maine’s woodlands have created a huge problem for the state’s iconic moose, in the form of tiny blood-sucking ticks that thrive in warmer weather and which last year killed nearly 90% of Maine moose calves. Now the northern New England state is studying a counter-intuitive solution to the climate-driven problem: can Maine help its moose population by allowing big game hunters to kill more rather than less of them each autumn?

In what is believed to be a world first, China's commerical capital of Shanghai this week introduced a new type of COVID-19 vaccine that is inhaled rather than administered via injection.

Chinese regulators approved the vaccine, produced by Chinese pharmaceutical firm CanSino Biologics (6185.HK), for use as a booster in September.

Japan has detected its first outbreaks of bird flu for the season in 2022, with a "highly pathogenic" strain identified at a poultry farm on the main island of Honshu, while the other outbreak was found on the northern island of Hokkaido.

About 170,000 egg-laying chickens are being exterminated at a farm in Kurashiki city, Okayama Prefecture, the agriculture ministry said on its website on Friday. It also established restricted zones up to 10 km (6.2 miles) from the site.

Dutch health authorities were overseeing the cull of around 44,000 turkeys on a farm in the south of the country after the detection of a highly infectious strain of bird flu, the government said on Saturday.

The farm is in the town of Hedel, 50 km southeast of Utrecht. A transport ban was imposed on ten additional nearby farms, the Agriculture Ministry said in a statement.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an enormous agglomeration of plastic waste floating in the world's largest ocean, but it's not the only one and now scientists are trying to work out how to clean them up.

When the clean-up first started, so much solid waste sat on top of the water that it had to be removed by hand; women volunteers waded into the polluted waters with little to no protective gear before dredging could begin. "They needed to dig deep to get things out, wearing nothing but gloves for protection," Penaflor recalls. "I decided to work with them and could only last half a day. I couldn't stop itching and I couldn't get rid of the stench."

The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rochelle Walensky, tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday night and is experiencing mild symptoms, the CDC said in a statement on Saturday. A spokesperson said Walensky was not at the White House late this week and did not meet with any senior U.S. officials before testing positive.

Pfizer Inc expects to roughly quadruple the price of its COVID-19 vaccine to about $110 to $130 per dose after the United States government's current purchase program expires, Pfizer executive Angela Lukin said on Thursday.

Lukin said she expects the vaccine - currently provided for free to all by the government - will be made available at no cost to people who have private insurance or government paid insurance.

Photographer Phillip Buehler captured the last stages of life of a New Jersey mall in a sad and insightful set of images showing how shopping has shifted from the physical to the digital. His work is being showcased at an exhibition entitled Malls of America, now on display at Footnote in Gowanus, Brooklyn, until 18 November

The project will teach officers how to combat crime in the virtual world

“Criminals are already starting to exploit the Metaverse,” Interpol warned in Thursday's statement. The organization cooperates with the World Economic Forum, Meta and Microsoft in preparing to tackle crime in the newly emerging spaces. Interpol says that as the number of Metaverse users grows, so too will the list of possible crimes, which will potentially include violations such as data theft, money laundering, financial fraud, counterfeiting, ransomware, phishing and even sexual assault and harassment.

Hair-straightening products may significantly increase the risk of developing uterine cancer among those who use them frequently, a large study published on Monday suggests.

"However, it is important to put this information into context. Uterine cancer is a relatively rare type of cancer," she added. Still, uterine cancer is the most common gynecologic cancer in the United States, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with rates rising, particularly among Black women.

Lauren Nichols, a 34-year-old logistics expert for the U.S. Department of Transportation in Boston, has been suffering from impaired thinking and focus, fatigue, seizures, headache and pain since her COVID-19 infection in the spring of 2020.

The Supreme Court of Ohio has indefinitely suspended a state judge who it said brushed off court closures at the start of the pandemic, issuing arrest warrants for defendants who did not appear and praising those “brave enough” to defy an order suspending courthouse operations.

Consumption in the US may have hit an all-time high, federal data shows

Cannabis use has reached an all-time high in the US, with a 2021 Gallup poll showing 49% of American adults had tried it in their lifetimes, and that number is only expected to grow. Around 43% of men and 42% of women between 19 and 30 have used it in the past 12 months. In Vermont, which has long allowed medical cannabis use but just legalized it for recreational use this month, there are more users than abstainers under 30.

The lab team behind the mutant variant was accused of “playing with fire”

Scientists at Boston University claim to have created a new variant of Covid-19 with an 80% mortality rate, by combining the highly-transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus with the original Wuhan strain. The research, which echoes experiments thought to have created the virus in the first place, has caused outrage.

A new subvariant of the novel-coronavirus called XBB dramatically announced itself earlier this week, in Singapore. New COVID-19 cases more than doubled in a day, from 4,700 on Monday to 11,700 on Tuesday—and XBB is almost certainly why. The same subvariant just appeared in Hong Kong, too.

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned economics professor, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development. Professor Sachs serves as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and is a University Professor, Columbia's highest academic rank.

It's the first case of monkeypox, a rare but potentially serious virus, in the United States this year, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. Two U.S. cases were reported last year; nine cases have been identified in the United Kingdom this month. It has also been diagnosed in recent days in Spain and Portugal.

The man with the virus in Massachusetts had recently traveled from Canada, officials said, noting in a statement, "The case poses no risk to the public, and the individual is hospitalized and in good condition." Dr. Paul Biddinger, chief preparedness and continuity officer at Mass General Brigham, said local officials are not aware of any cases in Canada, which is not an area where monkeypox is known to be endemic.

The COVID-19 subvariant estimated by New York state health officials to be substantially more contagious than the first descendant of the potent omicron strain now accounts for up to 79.5% of all virus circulating in the region that encompasses the Empire State, according to new CDC data released Tuesday.

The new rules will not come into force immediately, as the government has yet to inform all citizens of the change, and create a national database to opt out. The new rules will only apply to those 16 and older, and the organs will be taken only from patients who died in an intensive care unit and were confirmed deceased by two doctors, according to AFP.

At least one person confirmed to have COVID-19 has died in North Korea and hundreds of thousands have shown fever symptoms, state media said on Friday, offering hints at the potentially dire scale of country's first confirmed outbreak of the pandemic.

About 187,800 people are being treated in isolation after a fever of unidentified origin has "explosively spread nationwide" since late April, the official KCNA news agency reported.

Drug overdoses in the United States were deadlier than ever in 2021, according to provisional data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 108,000 people died of drug overdoses in 2021, and about two-thirds of those deaths involved fentanyl or another synthetic opioid. Overdose deaths have been on the rise for years in the US, but surged amid the Covid-19 pandemic: Annual deaths were nearly 50% higher in 2021 than in 2019, CDC data shows.

The experimental transplant, using the heart of a genetically modified pig, had been the first of its kind

Leaders from several Western nations denounced Lavrov, who had been asked how Russia could be pursuing its stated goal of "denazifying" Ukraine when President Volodymyr Zelenskiy himself is a Jew. Zelenskiy, whose country is a parliamentary democracy, accused Russia of having forgotten the lessons of World War Two.

The Russian foreign ministry said in a statement that Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid's comments were "anti-historical" and "explain to a large extent why the current Israeli government supports the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv". Moscow reiterated Lavrov's point that Zelenskiy's Jewish origins did not preclude Ukraine being run by neo-Nazis. "Antisemitism in everyday life and in politics is not stopped and is on the contrary nurtured (in Ukraine)," it said in a statement.

The top Republican in the U.S. Senate said on Tuesday he would keep the chamber's filibuster rules in place "at all costs" if he were the leader of the chamber's majority. "Absolutely," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters when asked about the issue.

Democrats have been trying to alter the rules so they could pass legislation with a simple majority, and some have renewed calls for filibuster changes to make it easier for the party to codify abortion rights.

The four main parties to negotiations on an intellectual property waiver for COVID-19 vaccines have prepared an "outcome document" for approval by the broader membership, the WTO said on Tuesday, with its chief hoping for a final deal by June.

Investigations are under way into an outbreak of acute hepatitis cases in children reported to the World Health Organization

On 5 April, the UK reported an unexpected and significant increase in cases of severe, acute hepatitis of unknown origin in young, previously healthy children, all under the age of 10.

Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday, the latest White House official to test positive for the virus. Harris is not exhibiting symptoms and has not been a close contact to President Joe Biden or first lady Jill Biden, said Kirsten Allen, press secretary to the vice president, in a statement.

"She has exhibited no symptoms, will isolate and continue to work from the vice president’s residence," Allen said in the statement. "She will follow CDC guidelines and the advice of her physicians."

But in a court filing and in text messages obtained by CNN, new pieces of evidence have emerged in recent days fleshing out the degree of their involvement with the Trump White House in strategy sessions, at least one of which included discussions about encouraging Trump’s supporters to march to the Capitol on Jan. 6, despite warnings of potential violence. Some continued to push to try to keep Trump in office even after a mob of his supporters attacked the complex.

“In our private chat with only Members, several are saying the only way to save our Republic is for Trump to call for Marshall law,” Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., wrote to Meadows on Jan. 17, 2021, misspelling the word “martial.” The revelations underscore how integrated Trump’s most fervent allies in Congress were into the effort to overturn the election on several fronts, including a scheme to appoint pro-Trump electors from states won by Biden

The longer Ukraine's army fends off the invading Russians, the more it absorbs the advantages of Western weaponry and training — exactly the transformation President Vladimir Putin wanted to prevent by invading in the first place.

“It will be true to say that the United States now leads the effort in ensuring this transition of Ukraine to Western-style weapons, in arranging training for Ukrainian soldiers,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said, adding, “and I only regret that it didn’t happen a month or two months ago from the very beginning of the war.”

This neighborhood and the adjoining South of Market (SoMa) district have become ground zero in an opioid overdose crisis that is killing thousands of California residents, including many experiencing homelessness. In the past two years, more than 1,300 people have died of overdoses in San Francisco, a rise driven by the emergence of fentanyl, a super-potent synthetic opioid that’s 50 times stronger than heroin. Nearly half of those deaths have occurred in these two hard-hit neighborhoods alone.

Taiwan is developing missiles that can attack enemy air bases and bring down cruise missiles, and drones that can target their firing locations, according to a report by the military-owned body making the weapons.

Taiwan last year approved T$240 billion ($8.20 billion) in extra military spending over the next five years as tensions with China, which claims the island as its own territory, have hit a new high and Chinese military planes have repeatedly flown through Taiwan's air defence identification zone.

Antiretroviral therapy has made HIV a manageable condition, but it does not eliminate the virus from the body—and most regimens are expensive and require a pill every day, for the rest of the patient's life.

Cases of hepatitis of unknown origin, first detected in UK children, have now been recorded in four more European countries and the US, the EU health agency said on Tuesday. On Friday the World Health Organization said it was monitoring 84 cases of severe acute hepatitis that were reported in Britain since April 5 and said it expected more cases in coming days.

The Biden administration will no longer enforce a U.S. mask mandate on public transportation, after a federal judge in Florida ruled that the directive was unlawful, overturning a key White House effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

"Face masks have been like boarding passes for nearly two years — you couldn't fly without one. But, as of today, masks are optional in airports and onboard aircraft, effective immediately."

The storm was expected to dump another few inches of snow in Pennsylvania, Vermont and New York as it tapered off on Tuesday afternoon after producing 6 to 12 inches (15-30 cm) of snow and winds of more than 50 miles per hour overnight and during the morning, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

The storm left more than 190,000 homes and businesses in New York state and another 47,000 in Pennsylvania without power as of Tuesday afternoon. Another 32,000 power company customers in Maine and Vermont were also without electricity, Poweroutage.us reported.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained more than 5,000 Ukrainians at U.S. land, sea and air borders in March, according to new data released Monday.

President Biden has previously said the U.S. will welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainians and others fleeing the war with Russia.

Unstoppable Russian blob slowly eating its way down from Izium, Bodies on the street are so passé—Ukraine has flashier war crimes in mind, There won’t be a UN investigation or anything at all, it’s just daily “Jello on the wall”, I FOUND THE PREGNANT YOUNG LADY FROM MARIUPOL

Website is not updated every day. Please bookmark it, or write jacob@dreizinreport.com to sign up for my mailing list, so you can be alerted when I make a new post. If you email me, please immediately add my address to your trusted contacts list. I’ve already had “new subscribers” reach out to say they haven’t received my emails.

The United States has no formal relations with Chinese-claimed Taiwan, but is its most important international backer and arms supplier. Taiwan has been heartened by the continued U.S. support offered by the Biden administration, which has repeatedly talked of its "rock-solid" commitment to the democratically governed island. That has strained already poor Sino-U.S. relations.

The visit follows an announcement last week that U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi would visit Taiwan. However, Pelosi's trip was postponed after she tested positive for COVID-19. In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian denounced the visit on Thursday, saying “China is firmly opposed to any form of official exchanges between the U.S. and Taiwan.”

China's financial hub Shanghai reported over 27,000 coronavirus cases on Thursday, a new high, a day after President Xi Jinping said that the country must continue with its strict "dynamic COVID clearance" policy and pandemic control measures. Shanghai is battling China's worst COVID-19 outbreak since the virus first emerged in Wuhan in late 2019, with its 25 million residents remaining largely under lockdown, though restrictions were partially eased in some areas this week.

The United States on Wednesday renewed the COVID-19 public health emergency, allowing millions of Americans to keep getting free tests, vaccines and treatments for at least three more months.

This could be the last time HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra extends it, policy experts have said. "We've all had access to coverage and we've been able to tap into the availability of COVID-19 testing, treatments, and vaccines, largely at no cost during the public health emergency, but not all of these items will continue to be free when the public health emergency ends," said Dr. Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the Kaiser Family Foundation's Medicare policy program.

Cases are rising again in 28 states as BA.2 continues to spread rapidly

“Despite a reduction in SARS-CoV-2 testing observed since the beginning of 2022 in many Member States, the COVID-19 pandemic continues with intense transmission and high levels of death primarily among unvaccinated at-risk populations,” the WHO warned in its update.

The last Ukrainian soldiers defending Mariupol said they were “running out of ammunition” on Monday and expected to be killed or taken prisoner very soon by Russian forces surrounding the city. Writing on Facebook, the 36th brigade said its 47-day defence of Mariupol was coming to a tragic conclusion.

“We were bombed from airplanes and shot at by artillery and tanks. We have been doing everything possible and impossible. But any resource has the potential to run out,” it said.

The U.S. State Department on Monday ordered non-emergency U.S. government workers to leave the consulate in Shanghai due to a surge in COVID-19 cases and China's measures to control the virus.

On Friday, the State Department announced that non-emergency personnel could voluntarily leave the consulate. It is not clear why the departure of those workers has become mandatory.

Speaking at a televised news conference after talks with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko, Putin compared Ukrainian allegations that Russian servicemen executed civilians in Bucha to what he said was the staging by the West of a chemical weapons attack in Syria aimed at incriminating Bashar al-Assad. "It's the same kind of fake in Bucha," Putin said.

Top U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials on Wednesday said the agency is aiming to decide by June whether to change the design of COVID-19 vaccines in order to combat future variants, even if it does not have all the necessary information to measure their effectiveness.

On Wednesday, the NIH sent a letter to members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce that acknowledged two facts. One was that EcoHealth Alliance, a New York City–based nonprofit that partners with far-flung laboratories to research and prevent the outbreak of emerging diseases, did indeed enhance a bat coronavirus to become potentially more infectious to humans, which the NIH letter described as an “unexpected result” of the research it funded that was carried out in partnership with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The second was that EcoHealth Alliance violated the terms of its grant conditions stipulating that it had to report if its research increased the viral growth of a pathogen by tenfold.

In its letter Wednesday, NIH included that missing progress report, which was dated August 2021. That report described a “limited experiment,” as the NIH letter phrased it, in which laboratory mice infected with an altered virus became “sicker than those infected with” a naturally occurring one. The letter did not mention the phrase “gain-of-function research” that has become so central to the bitter clashes over COVID-19’s origins. That type of controversial research—the manipulation of pathogens with the aim of making them more infectious in order to gauge their risk to humans—has divided the virology community. A review system established in 2017 requires federal agencies to particularly scrutinize any research proposals that involve enhancing a pathogen’s infectiousness to humans.

Establishment media outlets suddenly are reporting the Biden family influence-peddling enterprise 18 months after the election. And now, with attention on COVID-19 receding, a legacy magazine is alerting its readers to the long-available evidence of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s efforts to undermine the theory that the pandemic originated in a lab in Wuhan, China.

The NIH, Vanity Fair noted, had issued a $3.7 million grant to Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance. The nonprofit then issued the Wuhan Institute of Virology nearly $600,000 in sub-awards before the NIH, under President Trump, suspended the grant in July 2020 due its possible connection to the pandemic and the apparent violation of an Obama-era moratorium on gain-of-function research.

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden announced an initiative called “test to treat,” which would allow people to visit hundreds of qualified pharmacy-based clinics, community health centers and long-term care facilities across the country to get tested for the coronavirus and, if positive, receive antiviral medication on the spot. Here are some of the most common questions about the new antiviral pills and how the new program works.

Antiviral medications have been around since the 1960s in the form of pills, intravenous solutions, ointments and even eye drops. They exist for only a handful of viruses, including HIV, the herpes simplex viruses, hepatitis B and C viruses, influenza A and B, and now the coronavirus.

BEIJING (AP) — China on Friday ordered a lockdown of the 9 million residents of the northeastern city of Changchun amid a new spike in COVID-19 cases in the area. Residents are required to remain home and undergo three rounds of mass testing, while non-essential businesses have been closed and transport links suspended. China reported another 397 cases of local transmission nationwide on Friday, 98 of them in Jilin province that surrounds Changchun.

Just two cases were detected within the city itself, although authorities have repeatedly pledged to lock down any community where one or more cases are found under China’s “zero tolerance” approach to the pandemic.

Feb 15 (Reuters) - Oxford University scientists said on Tuesday they would evaluate the effects of new coronavirus variants on pregnant women and newborns, as well as COVID-19 vaccination effects on complications during pregnancy and after birth.

Novak Djokovic is prepared to miss the French Open and Wimbledon if COVID-19 vaccination becomes mandatory at the Grand Slams but he is not against inoculation, the world number one tennis player said.

The host-pathogen determinants of Ebola virus (EBOV) persistence and disease recrudescence in immune-privileged organs, including any association with standard-of-care monoclonal antibody–based treatments, remain to be elucidated. In new work, Liu et al. report frequent EBOV persistence in the brain ventricular system of nonhuman primates that survived acute disease after monoclonal antibody–based treatment.

WASHINGTON, Feb 10 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday said mask requirements for children would likely to start to fall away given federal plans to begin vaccinating children under the age of 5, but said it was probably premature to drop COVID mask requirements entirely.

French President Emmanuel Macron refused a Kremlin request that he take a Russian COVID-19 test when he arrived to see President Vladimir Putin this week, to prevent Russia getting hold of Macron's DNA, two

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron in Moscow, Russia February 7, 2022. Sputnik/Kremlin via REUTERS

Luc Montagnier, Who Identified Virus Behind AIDS, Dies at 89

French scientist shared 2008 Nobel Prize for isolating HIV ‘The globalization of culture has globalized our parasites’ by ByDavid Henry @Bloomberg

video : The Michigan health department on Wednesday reported 7,527 new confirmed COVID-19 cases and 330 new deaths over a two-day period. That's an average of 3,763 new cases per day. Of the 330 new deaths, 239 were identified in a vital records review.

In an upcoming book, the Microsoft co-founder says that better vaccines and “pathogen surveillance” can stop the next outbreak

Microsoft co-founder and vaccine advocate Bill Gates has written a book outlining “the lessons we can learn” from Covid-19, claiming that, by investing in healthcare, vaccines, and “global pathogen surveillance,” another pandemic like Covid-19 can be prevented.

Despite lawsuit filed against Dr Robert Karas by four inmates, local officials have praised him for a ‘job well done’

According to the lawsuit, Karas told the inmates that the prescribed drugs “consisted of mere ‘vitamins’, ‘antibiotics’ and/or ‘steroids.’” The CDC, as well as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have put out advisories warning against using ivermectin for Covid-19, though it is a cause celebre for some rightwing figures and anti-vaxxers.

Large parts of the world are opening up, but Hong Kong is still pursuing ‘dynamic zero’ despite rising cases and a public running out of patience

“You have tried for two years, and failed. When will you stop holding the citizen of this once Asia’s city hostage? When does the goalpost stop moving further and further away every time we get closer? When do we say enough is enough Carrie Lam?”

All remaining Covid restrictions in England - including the legal rule to self-isolate - could end later this month, Boris Johnson has said.

Under the current rules, anyone who tests positive must self-isolate for at least five days. The current restrictions are due to expire on 24 March. But Mr Johnson told MPs he expected the last domestic rules would end early as long as the positive trends in the data continued.

The European Union is pushing for a global deal aimed at preventing new pandemics that could include a ban on wildlife markets and incentives for countries to report new viruses or variants, an EU official told Reuters. International negotiators will meet for the first time on Wednesday to prepare talks for a potential treaty, said the official, who is not authorised to speak to media and so declined to be named.

The discovery of the Omicron variant in white-tailed deer in New York has raised concerns that the species, numbering 30 million in the United States, could become hosts of a new coronavirus strain, a lead researcher said on Tuesday.

“Circulation of the virus in an animal population always raises the possibility of getting back to humans, but more importantly it provides more opportunities for the virus to evolve into novel variants,” said Suresh Kuchipudi, a Penn State veterinary microbiologist. "When the virus completely mutates, then it can escape the protection of the current vaccine. So we'd have to change the vaccine again," Kuchipudi said.

Chinese scientists say they have developed a new coronavirus test that is as accurate as a PCR lab test but gives results within four minutes. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests are widely considered the most accurate and sensitive for detecting the virus that causes COVID-19, but they usually take several hours. During the surge of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, many labs were unable to keep up with heavy testing demand, resulting in long delays. Researchers from Fudan University in Shanghai say they have a solution.

CBS News Scientists say they've developed a COVID test that works in 4 minutes CBSNews Tue, February 8, 2022, 3:36 PM·2 min read Chinese scientists say they have developed a new coronavirus test that is as accurate as a PCR lab test but gives results within four minutes. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests are widely considered the most accurate and sensitive for detecting the virus that causes COVID-19, but they usually take several hours. During the surge of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, many labs were unable to keep up with heavy testing demand, resulting in long delays. Researchers from Fudan University in Shanghai say they have a solution. In a peer-reviewed article published Monday in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, the team said their sensor — which uses microelectronics to analyze genetic material from swabs — is quick and accurate at spotting SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

We’re entering our third year of Covid, and America’s nurses — who we celebrated as heroes during the early days of lockdown — are now leaving the bedside. The pandemic arrived with many people having great hope for reform on many fronts, including the nursing industry, but much of that optimism seems to have faded.

In the Opinion Video above, nurses set the record straight about the root cause of the nursing crisis: chronic understaffing by profit-driven hospitals that predates the pandemic. “I could no longer work in critical care under the conditions I was being forced to work under with poor staffing,” explains one nurse, “and that’s when I left.

Jan 26 (Reuters) - The world's first medical trial authorised to deliberately expose participants to the coronavirus is seeking more volunteers as it steps up efforts to help develop better vaccines.

ts first phase, still ongoing, has focused on finding out how much of the virus is needed to trigger an infection while the second will aim to determine the immune response needed to ward one off, the university said in a statement on Tuesday.

Fully vaccinated people who catch Covid, as well as those who had the disease prior to the jabs, get rewarded with the best immune responses, a new study has found.

As a result, the scientists concluded that “additional antigen exposure from natural infection substantially boosts the quantity, quality, and breadth” of immune response to the disease, “regardless of whether it occurs before or after vaccination.” “In either case, you will get a really, really robust immune response – amazingly high,” co-senior author Fikadu Tafesse, who is an assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology in the OHSU School of Medicine, said.

While scientists have established Omicron developed from a strain that circulated in mid-2020, they have been seeking an explanation for the lack of an intermediate version of Omicron within humans, raising the potential that it evolved within an animal.

The discovery could “pose new challenges in the prevention and control of the epidemic,” as the risk of new Covid strains circulating within the animal kingdom creates added uncertainty in the fight against the virus.

What are the odds of catching COVID-19 after a night at the movie theater? How about an afternoon at the gym, unmasked? Or an early morning jog in a neighborhood park? It’s well known that certain places and activities carry varying risks of coronavirus exposure, but a new study takes away much of the guesswork, offering clear estimates instead.

“With good ventilation, the concentration of virus particles in the air will be lower and they will leave your home faster than with poor ventilation,” the agency says. But researchers concluded that many indoor facilities, businesses, schools, houses of worship — the buildings where we spend our daily lives — are not adequately designed or equipped to handle the pandemic.

An anti-vax Czech folk singer has died after she deliberately contracted COVID-19 to obtain a health pass that would have allowed her to visit the sauna and theatre, her family said.

Proof of vaccination or a recent infection is required to access cultural and sports facilities as well as for travel and for visiting bars and restaurants in the EU member state, which is facing a soaring COVID count.

Speaking during an interview, Maria Van Kerkhove, the technical lead at the World Health Organization (WHO), warned that the world was facing a “tsunami of Covid infections” due to the joint spread of Delta and Omicron.

In an article published on Tuesday in the Spanish daily El Pais, Van Kerkhove raised concerns that vaccination alone would not be enough to control the spread of the two highly transmissible variants of the Covid virus. “I think we are facing a tsunami of infections in the world, both Delta and Omicron,” Van Kerkhove stated.

The combination of the Delta and Omicron Covid variants, which may result from a person contracting both at the same time, could create a new, more dangerous strain, Moderna’s chief medical officer Paul Burton has warned.

Talking to the House of Commons Technologies and Science Committee members on Tuesday, Burton said that simultaneously contracting the two variants “certainly gives an opportunity for the two viruses to, what we call, recombinate,” which means that they could begin to “share genes and to swap genes over.” The danger of this happening is particularly high in immunocompromised people, Burton said. When asked if the combination of the two strains could lead to worse Covid-19 symptoms than usual, Burton said that “it certainly could.”

A woman in Israel caught influenza and Covid simultaneously The first case of a potentially dangerous combination of Covid-19 and the flu has been discovered in a young, pregnant, unvaccinated woman in Israel.

“She was diagnosed with the flu and coronavirus as soon as she arrived. Both tests came back positive, even after we checked again,” the head of the hospital’s gynecology department, Professor Arnon Vizhnitser said, as quoted by newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, which was the first to report on the double infection case.

An unvaccinated 42-year-old fitness fanatic who regularly climbed mountains and competed in the ironman has died of COVID-19, his family said. John Eyers, a construction expert and bodybuilding competitor from the seaside town of Southport, England, died last week, one month after catching the virus.

Before he was put onto a ventilator, he told his doctors he wished he had been vaccinated, she added.

A new coronavirus mutation known as the lambda variant that is thought to have increased resistance to vaccines has appeared in the United States.

The lambda variant has since spread to eight countries in South America and 41 countries around the world, according to global science initiative GISAID.

The World Health Organization has revealed that it has placed a new Covid-19 strain first discovered in Russia on its online list of variants for monitoring. It joins a selection of eleven other unnamed coronavirus mutations.

The strain was first detected in January this year, but it has only now been deemed severe enough to be listed. https://on.rt.com/bc09

https://www.wired.com/story/the-teeny-tiny-scientific-screwup-that-helped-covid-kill/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

All pandemic long, scientists brawled over how the virus spreads. Droplets! No, aerosols! At the heart of the fight was a teensy error with huge consequences.

Mother’s Day is Sunday. How are moms coping during the pandemic? Tiffany Cross and her panel discuss the unique challenges mothers have been facing during the pandemic, and how to support moms during this challenging time.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Many Americans are still struggling to return to work after the coronavirus pandemic and last week's lower-than-expected jobs numbers were a reflection of that, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said on Sunday.

U.S. job growth unexpectedly slowed last month, likely restrained by shortages of workers and raw materials. Nonfarm payrolls increased by only 266,000 jobs, well below the nearly 1 million jobs economists expected and a sharp contrast to steady increases in growth from January to March.

In 17 on-the-record interviews with Woodward over seven volatile months—an utterly vivid window into Trump’s mind—the president provides a self-portrait that is part denial and part combative interchange mixed with surprising moments of doubt as he glimpses the perils in the presidency and what he calls the “dynamite behind every door.” At key decision points, Rage shows how Trump’s responses to the crises of 2020 were rooted in the instincts, habits and style he developed during his first three years as president.

Revisiting the earliest days of the Trump presidency, Rage reveals how Secretary of Defense James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats struggled to keep the country safe as the president dismantled any semblance of collegial national security decision making.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Coronavirus infections are rising exponentially in Germany, an expert at the Robert Koch Institute for infectious diseases said on Tuesday, putting at risk plans to lift the lockdown and revive the economy.

The number of cases per 100,000 reported on Tuesday was 83.7, up from 68 a week ago, and the RKI has said that metric could reach 200 by the middle of next month.

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India’s main opposition Congress party on Tuesday hit out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government for exporting nearly twice the number of coronavirus vaccine doses than immunisations conducted at home, despite a surge in infections.

India, the world's biggest vaccine maker, has gifted or sold here 59 million locally produced doses compared with 33 million doses given to its own people since its inoculation campaign began in mid-January.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Kremlin said on Tuesday that pressure on some countries to refuse to buy Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 was at unprecedented levels but had no chance of succeeding.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the remarks when asked to comment on a U.S. government report which appeared to show that the United States had tried to dissuade Brazil from buying Sputnik V.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted on Tuesday to advance President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, clearing the way for the measure to be considered on Wednesday, when it is expected to pass.

The House voted 219-210 along party lines to advance the measure to a final debate and vote. No Republicans voted yes, and just one Democrat voted no. The bill’s expected approval on Wednesday will enable the Democratic president to sign the legislation into law later this week.

Britain has not blocked the export of COVID-19 vaccines, a UK government spokesman said on Tuesday.

“The UK government has not blocked the export of a single COVID-19 vaccine. Any references to a UK export ban or any restrictions on vaccines are completely false,” the spokesman said.

The White House said on Tuesday that the government will distribute around 18.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines this week, fewer than last week because no new doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine are ready to be sent out.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a news briefing that the U.S. government plans to distribute 15.8 million doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccine to states, tribes and territories, along with 2.7 million doses going to pharmacies.

BLACKBURN, England (Reuters) - After a year that has shaken Britain’s National Health Service to its core, women working at a hospital in the East Lancashire NHS Trust in England’s north-west talk about what the coronavirus crisis has meant to them.

“I knew that I couldn’t shield myself and every day the thought that you could be taking home (coronavirus), it was very difficult,” the 43-year-old said. “Going home every day, it was like my prayer in the car outside, ‘please Lord get rid of all the germs in me and then I will step into the house’.”

California health officials set new rules on Friday that would allow Disneyland and other theme parks, stadiums and outdoor entertainment venues to reopen as early as April 1, after a closure of nearly a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

But the return of Mickey Mouse to the “Happiest Place on Earth” and live spectators to the California ball parks of America’s favorite pastime still come with major caveats.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York City’s cinemas re-opened on Friday after nearly a year of closure due to the coronavirus pandemic, an encouraging sign for the city’s residents that life in the Big Apple may start to normalize again.

Movie houses opened to 25% capacity, with no more than 50 people per screen, following New York state guidelines released in February by Governor Andrew Cuomo.

U.S. drugmaker Merck & Co Inc said on Saturday the experimental antiviral drug molnupiravir it is developing with Ridgeback Bio showed a quicker reduction in infectious virus in its phase 2a study among participants with early COVID-19.

“The secondary objective findings in this study, of a quicker decrease in infectious virus among individuals with early COVID-19 treated with molnupiravir, are promising,” said William Fischer, Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, in a statement from the companies.

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australia will ramp up its COVID-19 immunisation drive with more shots to be rolled out from next week, federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said on Tuesday, after a second shipment of the vaccine reached the country overnight.

About 166,000 doses of the vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and Germany’s BioNtech arrived late Monday, authorities said, as the country entered the second day of a nationwide inoculation programme.

SEOUL (Reuters) - The first of three expert panels in South Korea reviewing a COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech gave its recommendation on Tuesday for the government to approve the vaccine.

The national pharmaceutical panel is planning to make its recommendation on Friday, the same day that South Korea will begin its immunisation drive. But, the government will wait for a third panel, which has not said when it will reach its conclusion, before deciding whether to grant approval.

If you lose heat when you lose power, as much of Texas did recently, a winter power outage can be especially dangerous. Here are some tips for you on staying warm in a house with no heat.

First, a word on how not to heat your house. You can die if you create toxic fumes in an enclosed space, so:

Essential Reads

Stay informed with this curated guide to the global outbreak. For official U.S. guidelines and health updates, visit cdc.gov.

A team of scientists has discovered a dramatic change in the purpose of sleep, which takes place when humans reach roughly two-and-a-half years of age, switching from rapid growth to a permanent damage-control function.

Before this milestone, the brain grows very rapidly, making use of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep to build and strengthen synapses, the connections between neurons in our brains, as babies learn at an extraordinary rate.

The coronavirus pandemic can only be considered beaten once everyone in the world has been immunized against Covid-19, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel said, after she'd met with the G7 leaders at a virtual summit on Friday.

Speaking to reporters, Merkel said she had stressed in her remarks to the group that the "pandemic is not over until all people in the world have been vaccinated," adding: "Everyone must participate."

A bubonic plague outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo has seen several dozen people succumb to the long-feared disease, which caused Europe’s Black Death pandemic in the 14th century.

Multiple cases of the plague were identified in the Biringi area of Ituri Province in northeastern DR Congo between November 15 and December 13, Anne Laudisoit of New York-based NGO, Ecohealth Alliance, told AFP. At least 520 people have become ill and “more than 31” of them have died, Ituri Health Minister Patrick Karamura told the outlet.

New Zealand started its official rollout of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine on Saturday, while Australia finalised plans to begin inoculations on Monday, a new phase in tackling the virus that both countries have kept largely contained.

A small group of medical professionals were injected on Friday in Auckland ahead of the wider rollout which was officially starting with border staff and so-called Managed Isolation and Quarantine (MIQ) workers on Saturday, officials said.

PORTAGE, Mich. (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday secured a commitment from Pfizer Inc to double the COVID-19 vaccine it churns out in the coming weeks, putting his goal to fill the country’s inoculation stockpile by summer in sight.

The drugmaker’s chief executive, Albert Bourla, used a visit by the U.S. president to the company’s largest manufacturing facility to announce that he expects to more than double the around 5 million doses per week the company currently provides to the U.S. government.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia on Saturday approved a third coronavirus vaccine for domestic use, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said on state TV, though large-scale clinical trials of the shot, labelled CoviVac and produced by the Chumakov Centre, have yet to begin.

Russia has already approved two COVID-19 vaccines, including the Sputnik V shot, developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute, following a similar approach of granting approval before seeing any late-stage trial results.

US pharma giant Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech have kicked off an international study into the safety and effectiveness of their coronavirus vaccine in pregnant women, with 4,000 volunteers from nine countries taking part.

Healthy pregnant women in the US have already received their first shots of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab as part of the research, the companies announced on Thursday. They'll soon be joined by fellow test subjects in Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mozambique, South Africa, the UK and Spain.

The White House has been reaching out to social media companies including Facebook, Twitter and Alphabet Inc’s Google about clamping down on COVID misinformation and getting their help to stop it from going viral, a senior administration official said.

President Joe Biden, who has raced to curb the pandemic since taking office, has made inoculating Americans one of his top priorities and called the move “a wartime effort.” But tackling public fear about taking the vaccine has emerged as a major impediment for the administration.

The U.S. bill would be introduced at a time when Australia is in a pitched battle with Facebook. The social media giant blocked news feeds and other pages - including those of charities, and health and emergency services - as part of a dispute over a proposed law that would require it and Google to pay news outlets whose links drive traffic to their platforms, or agree on a price through arbitration.

Buck, who was named the ranking member this month, told Reuters on Thursday the panel would bring out a series of antitrust bills and the first one in the coming weeks would allow smaller news organizations to negotiate collectively with Facebook and Alphabet’s Google.

With their own government unable to provide them with Covid-19 vaccines, a number of American diplomats based in Moscow have reportedly asked their hosts to allow them be inoculated with Moscow's own pioneering Sputnik V formula.

That's according to The Washington Post, citing documents obtained by the newspaper, which revealed that the US’ representatives around the world have complained about the way their superiors have decided to distribute vaccines.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - Scientists will meet on Thursday to advise South Africa’s government on its next steps after a study suggested the dominant local coronavirus variant may reduce antibody protection from Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine by two-thirds.

The laboratory study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, dealt a new blow to the country hardest-hit by the pandemic on the African continent.

PARIS (Reuters) - Health authorities in some European countries are facing resistance to AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine after side-effects led hospital staff and other front-line workers to call in sick, putting extra strain on already-stretched services.

Such symptoms, as reported in clinical trials for the AstraZeneca shot, can include a high temperature or headache and are a normal sign that the body is generating an immune response. They usually fade within a day or so.

U.S. workplace safety regulators have announced more than $4 million in penalties on more than 300 employers they say put workers at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic.

But about two-thirds of these employers aren’t paying up. Only 108 companies had paid a total of about $897,000 in fines as of last week to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) since the pandemic hit the United States last year.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - The Vatican has told employees that they may risk losing their jobs if they refuse to get a COVID-19 vaccination without legitimate health reasons.

A decree by Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, effectively the governor of Vatican City, said getting a vaccine was “the responsible choice” because of the risk of harming other people.

Investors used to brush off Amin Jadavji’s pitch to buy Elevate Farms’ vertical growing technology and produce stacks of leafy greens indoors with artificial light.

“They would say, ‘This is great, but it sounds like a science experiment,’” said Jadavji, CEO of Toronto-based Elevate. Now, indoor farms are positioning themselves as one of the solutions to pandemic-induced disruptions to the harvesting, shipping, and sale of food.

LONDON (Reuters) - Tens of millions of workers in developed economies will have to retrain for secure careers in post-COVID labour markets reshaped by the pandemic and the remote working revolution, a report by consultancy McKinsey said on Thursday.

The analysis by MGI, McKinsey’s economics research arm, concluded the pandemic’s biggest impacts will be concentrated in four work areas: leisure and travel venues; on-site customer interaction such as in retail and hospitality; computer-based office work; and production and warehousing.

New research has found that a mutation in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, present in variants from the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil, can make the virus up to eight times more infectious than the original.

The new research into the D614G mutation on the spike protein in SARS-CoV-2, present in all the latest variants currently plaguing healthcare systems the world over, was led by researchers at New York University, the New York Genome Center, and Mount Sinai.

U.S. President Joe Biden pushed for the first major legislative achievement of his term on Friday, turning to a bipartisan group of local officials for help on his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan.

Biden invited a set of mayors and governors to the Oval Office and described what he said was a need to give those officials more help supporting millions of unemployed workers and reopening schools.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday issued new guidance for U.S. schools to reopen, recommending universal mask-wearing and physical distancing as key COVID-19 mitigation strategies to get children back in the classroom quickly.

The guidelines here, which also emphasize the need for facility-cleaning, personal hygiene and contact tracing, are intended to give school districts a road map to bring the nation's 55 million public school students back to classrooms without sparking COVID-19 outbreaks.

Merck & Co Inc said on Wednesday it was in talks with governments and companies to potentially help with manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines that have been already authorized.

“Beyond our own candidates, we are actively involved in discussions with governments, public health agencies, and other industry colleagues to identify the areas of pandemic response where we can play a role, including potential support for production of authorized vaccines,” a company spokesman said.

Authorities in Australia stepped up contact tracing and called for people in the city of Melbourne to come forward for coronavirus testing on Thursday as the number of infections in a cluster linked to a quarantine hotel rose to 11.

More than 22,500 tests were done in the previous 24 hours in Australia’s second most populous city and authorities scrambled to contain the spread of a highly transmissible variant of the virus from workers at a Holiday Inn.

The coronavirus variant first found in the British region of Kent is likely to sweep around the world and the battle with the virus is going to go on for at least a decade, the head of the UK’s genetic surveillance programme said.

The Kent variant has “swept the country” and “it’s going to sweep the world, in all probability,” Sharon Peacock, director of the Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium, told the BBC.

BioNTech, the German firm which together with Pfizer created one of the COVID-19 vaccines, says they have used the same technology to create a vaccine which delayed the onset and reduced the severity of multiple sclerosis (MS) in mice.

Clinical trials published in Science showed that not only was the progression of the disease halted, but some lost motor function was recovered in the mice.

Health officials around the world gave their backing to the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID-19, after a study showing it had little effect against mild disease caused by the variant now spreading quickly in South Africa rang global alarm.

The prospect that new virus variants could evolve the ability to elude vaccines is one of the main risks hanging over the global strategy to emerge from the pandemic by rolling out vaccines this year.

The United States reported a 25% drop in new cases of COVID-19 to about 825,000 last week, the biggest fall since the pandemic started, although health officials said they were worried new variants of the virus could slow or reverse this progress.

New cases of the virus have now fallen for four weeks in a row to the lowest level since early November, according to a Reuters analysis of state and county reports. The steepest drop was in California, where cases in the week ended Feb. 7 fell 48%. Only Oregon, Puerto Rico, Arkansas and Vermont saw cases rise. (Open tmsnrt.rs/2WTOZDR in an external browser to see a state-by-state graphic.)

South Korean Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun on Tuesday called on restaurant and other business owners in the greater Seoul area to cooperate with social distancing rules to head off a spread of COVID-19 during the Lunar New Year holiday.

The country has been trying clamp down the number of infections by imposing strident social distancing measures, including a ban on indoor restaurant dining after 9 p.m.

China reported no new locally transmitted mainland COVID-19 case for the first time in nearly two months, official data showed on Monday, adding to signs that it has managed to stamp out the latest wave of the disease.

The total number of COVID-19 cases rose slightly to 14 on Feb. 7 from 12 a day earlier, the National Health Commission said in a statement, but all were imported infections from overseas. Seven of the cases were in Shanghai, the rest in the southeastern Guangdong province.

France reported a fall in new COVID-19 infections on Sunday for the fourth successive day.

Health ministry data showed there had been 19,175 new confirmed COVID-19 infections in the past 24 hours compared with 20,586 the previous day.

South Africa will put on hold use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 shot in its vaccination programme, after data showed it gave minimal protection against mild-to-moderate infection caused by the country’s dominant coronavirus variant.

Health Minister Zweli Mkhize said on Sunday that the government would await advice from scientists on how best to proceed, after a trial showed the AstraZeneca vaccine did not significantly reduce the risk of mild or moderate COVID-19 from the 501Y.V2 variant that caused a second wave of infections starting late last year.

A COVID-19 booster in the autumn and then annual vaccinations are very probable, Britain’s vaccine deployment minister said on Sunday as countries race to administer injections in the face of new variants.

Britain has already injected over 12 million first doses of COVID-19 vaccines and is on track to meet a target to vaccinate everyone in the top most vulnerable groups by mid-February.

Scientists are sounding the alarm about potential damage to male fertility caused by the coronavirus which threatens to wreak havoc on humanity long after the pandemic has abated.

Researchers from the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan are calling for more urgent research into the long-term consequences of Covid-19 infection on male fertility, amid mounting evidence of decreased sperm mobility, lower sperm counts and testicular damage.

U.S. pharmaceutical distributors are talking to federal officials about increasing the number of companies shipping coronavirus vaccines as part of the Biden administration’s push to speed up inoculations, according to an industry executive and three people familiar with the matter.

President Joe Biden has called the initial phase of the vaccination campaign a “dismal failure” and with vaccinations in the United States at around 1 million per day, the new administration wants to expand and improve the program.

Europe’s fight to secure COVID-19 vaccine supplies intensified on Thursday when the European Union warned drug companies such as AstraZeneca that it would use all legal means or even block exports unless they agreed to deliver shots as promised.

The EU, whose member states are far behind Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States in rolling out vaccines, is scrambling to get supplies just as the West’s biggest drugmakers slow deliveries to the bloc due to production problems.

The patient alarms ping constantly in the COVID-19 ward at a hospital in Oklahoma City, signaling to pulmonologist Dr. Syed Naqvi and the rest of the ICU team that yet another person needs help.

The sheer volume is exhausting, Naqvi said, but the emotional toll is even more draining, given that each time he puts a patient on a ventilator he knows there is little chance that person will recover.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, citing an improvement in the state’s coronavirus metrics, on Friday allowed New York City’s restaurants to resume limited indoor dining, reflecting a restriction-easing trend taking hold in the country.

The thousands of New York City restaurants that have been surviving on takeout business and makeshift outdoor pavilions since mid-December may reopen their indoor dining areas at 25% of capacity on Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14, Cuomo said.

BioNTech, the German firm which together with Pfizer created one of the COVID-19 vaccines, says they have used the same technology to create a vaccine which delayed the onset and reduced the severity of multiple sclerosis (MS) in mice.

Clinical trials published in Science showed that not only was the progression of the disease halted, but some lost motor function was recovered in the mice.

After developing and rolling out COVID-19 vaccines at record speed, drugmakers are already facing variants of the rapidly-evolving coronavirus that may render them ineffective, a challenge that will require months of research and a massive financial investment, according to disease experts.

Executives from Moderna Inc and Pfizer Inc and partner BioNTech SE are considering new versions of their vaccines to respond to the most concerning variants identified so far. That is just one piece of the work needed to stay ahead of the virus, nearly a dozen experts told Reuters.

Poorer countries face a best-case scenario of a 6-8 month lag behind richer nations in getting access to COVID-19 vaccines to protect their populations against the pandemic disease, the philanthropist Bill Gates said on Wednesday.

In an interview with Reuters, Gates called the rollout of the first COVID-19 shots a “super hard allocation problem” that was putting pressure on global institutions, governments and drugmakers.

The city of Moscow eased some COVID-19 restrictions on Wednesday, including the overnight closure of bars, restaurants and night clubs, Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.

Businesses would no longer have to restrict the number of employees working from the office, Sobyanin wrote on his personal blog.

Scientists at Siberia’s Vector Center have photographed the British Covid-19 strain for the first time, after isolating it from a patient in December. The variant was first announced by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson last month.

According to Rospotrebnadzor, the country’s health watchdog, the photo was taken under a microscope as part of an ongoing study into coronavirus, “including its structural features and manifestations in cell cultures.”

Drugmaker Merck & Co said on Monday it would stop development of its two COVID-19 vaccines and focus pandemic research on treatments, with initial data on an experimental oral antiviral expected by the end of March.

Merck was late to join the race to develop a vaccine to protect against the coronavirus, which has so far killed more than 2 million people and continues to surge in many parts of the world including the United States.

Drugstore chain CVS Health Corp said on Monday it has completed administering the first round of COVID-19 vaccination at about 8,000 U.S. nursing facilities.

Administration of second doses was underway and expected to be completed within four weeks, the company said.

Moderna Inc said on Monday its COVID-19 vaccine produced virus-neutralizing antibodies in laboratory tests against new coronavirus variants found in the UK and South Africa.

A two-dose regimen of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine is expected to be protective against emerging strains detected to date, the company said.

For thousands of years Llamas have played an important role in Andean life and culture. These relatives of camels have been used for transport, food, clothing, even companionship. Current scientific research suggests that antibodies found in llama’s blood could offer a defense against COVID-19.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUXnwKMboJ0

Chicago teachers will vote on Saturday on a resolution to not return to classrooms next week, claiming the third largest school system in the United States lacks an adequate plan to safely re-open schools amid the pandemic.

Some 10,000 educators are scheduled to report to work at their schools on Monday to prepare for those classes. On Friday, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) CEO Janice Jackson said if those educators do not show up for work, it would constitute an illegal strike by the Chicago Teachers Union.

Between 150 and 200 National Guard deployed to Washington, D.C., to provide security for President Joe Biden’s inauguration have tested positive for the coronavirus, a U.S. official said on Friday.

The U.S. government imposed unprecedented security measures in the city following the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, including fences topped with razor wire and checkpoints manned by National Guard.

Between 150 and 200 National Guard deployed to Washington, D.C., to provide security for President Joe Biden’s inauguration have tested positive for the coronavirus, a U.S. official said on Friday.

The U.S. government imposed unprecedented security measures in the city following the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump, including fences topped with razor wire and checkpoints manned by National Guard.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Friday the new English variant of COVID-19 may be associated with a higher level of mortality although he said evidence showed that both vaccines being used in the country are effective against it.

Johnson said that the impact of the new variant, which is already known to be more transmissable, was putting the health service under “intense pressure”.

In early February, 57 people arrived at a Nebraska military base, among the first Americans evacuated from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the new coronavirus outbreak. U.S. health officials knew very little then about the mysterious new virus, and the quarantined group offered an early opportunity to size up the threat.

The federal government sought help from a team at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, including Dr. James Lawler, an experienced infectious disease specialist. Lawler told Reuters he immediately asked the world-renowned U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for permission to test the quarantined group, deeming it crucial to know whether people without symptoms were infected and could spread the deadly pathogen.

Jerry Shapiro, a 78-year-old pharmacist from Los Angeles, is at the top of the list of Californians now eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, but more than a month after the state began inoculations, he has yet to receive one.

Shapiro said he has spent hours calling multiple health agencies and making fruitless computer searches, an experience familiar to many people across the United States, as the days-old administration of President Joe Biden races to bring the country’s slow, chaotic vaccine rollout up to speed.

A fire has broken out at a production facility belonging to the world’s largest vaccine producer, the Serum Institute of India (SII). The company’s management has said Covid vaccine production hasn’t been impacted, however.

Executive Director Suresh Jadhav confirmed the facility in question is used for the production of a BCG vaccine – an inoculation used primarily against tuberculosis.

India will give millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine to South Asian countries in the next few weeks, government sources said on Thursday, drawing praise from its neighbours and pushing back against China’s dominating presence in the region.

Free shipments of AstraZeneca’s vaccine manufactured by the Serum Institute of India, the world’s biggest producer of vaccines, have begun arriving in the Maldives, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Nepal.

At Milton Keynes University Hospital in England, it’s a battle between life and death. For those most ill, death is gaining the upper hand.

The latest COVID-19 wave has hit the hospital northwest of London with even more force than the first: younger patients fill its wards and fewer of the sickest people respond to treatment.

President Joe Biden will sign 10 executive orders on Thursday to fight the coronavirus pandemic, including directing that disaster funds be used to help reopen schools and requiring that people wear masks on planes and buses, officials said.

Biden, a Democrat who took over from Republican President Donald Trump on Wednesday, has promised a fierce fight against the pandemic that killed 400,000 people in the United States under Trump’s watch.

The Ohio Health Department has announced that nearly 900 doses of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, meant to be distributed to eight long-term care facilities, were compromised after not being stored properly.

“The company was exploring a transfer of the doses to another provider when it was discovered that they had failed to appropriately monitor temperatures in their refrigerator and freezer,” the ODH announced on Wednesday.

From the Lincoln Memorial to the Empire State building, landmarks across the United States will be illuminated on Tuesday evening as part of a ceremony led by President-elect Joe Biden to honor the 400,000 Americans who have died from COVID-19.

The commemoration comes just hours before President Donald Trump leaves the White House and hands over a country in crisis. The ceremony, spearheaded by Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, will be the federal government’s first nod to the staggering death toll from the pandemic.

Moderna Inc said on Tuesday it had received a report from California’s health department that several people at a center in San Diego were treated for possible allergic reactions to its COVID-19 vaccine from a particular batch.

The company’s comments come after California’s top epidemiologist on Sunday issued a statement recommending providers pause vaccination from lot no. 41L20A due to possible allergic reactions that are under investigation.

The U.S. coronavirus death toll topped 400,000 here on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally, as the country hardest hit by the pandemic struggled to meet the demand for vaccines to stem the spread of infection.

States including Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, South Carolina and Vermont have shown signs of vaccine supply strain and are asking for more doses of both approved vaccines, one from Pfizer-BioNTech and the other from Moderna.

As top tennis stars descended on Melbourne for the upcoming grand slam, many Australians questioned the decision to host the tournament when thousands of citizens are stranded overseas due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Australia has halved the number of people who can return to the country each week as positive coronavirus cases in hotel quarantine rise, prompting airline Emirates to indefinitely suspend flights to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

The world is on the brink of “catastrophic moral failure” in sharing COVID-19 vaccines, the head of the World Health Organization said on Monday, urging countries and manufacturers to spread doses more fairly around the world.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the prospects for equitable distribution were at “serious risk” just as its COVAX vaccine-sharing scheme aimed to start distributing inoculations next month.

For some in Meissen the caskets piling up in the eastern German city’s sole crematorium are a tragic reminder of what happens when the coronavirus is not taken seriously. For others it is simply nature’s way.

Meissen, along with other places across old East Germany that are generally poorer, older and more supportive of a far-right opposed to lockdown, are the worst hit by the pandemic in the country, complicating Chancellor Angela Merkel’s efforts to bring it under control.

Britain reported its lowest number of daily new coronavirus infections since the start of the year on Saturday, adding to signs that a national lockdown is slowing the spread of a more infectious variant of the disease.

However the effect of the recent surge in cases remains clear in the death toll, which was the third-highest on record. Health experts have warned it has further to rise.

Cities, towns and villages across France were practically empty on Saturday as residents stayed home and businesses shut to observe a nationwide curfew intended to help stem the spread of coronavirus, especially a more infectious variant.

The virus has killed 70,000 people in France, the seventh highest toll in the world, and the government is particularly worried by the more transmissible variant first detected in Britain, which now accounts for about 1% of new cases.

The build-up to next month’s Australian Open was thrown into disarray on Saturday when 47 players were forced into two weeks of strict hotel quarantine after coronavirus infections were reported on two chartered flights carrying them to Melbourne.

Two dozen players and their staff landed from Los Angeles to go into quarantine after an aircrew member and a passenger, who was not a player, tested positive for COVID-19.

Britain will ban arrivals from South American countries and Portugal because of concerns over a new Brazilian variant of the coronavirus, transport minister Grant Shapps said on Thursday.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson expressed concern about the Brazilian variant on Wednesday and Britain is already trying to contain a UK variant behind a surge in cases at the end of last year.

Germany surpassed 2 million coronavirus infections and the death toll from the pandemic reached almost 45,000, experts said on Friday, a day after Chancellor Angela Merkel demanded “very fast action” to curb the deadly virus.

Europe’s biggest economy and most populous country managed the pandemic better than neighbours last spring. But it has seen a sharp rise in cases and deaths recently and daily per capita mortality has often exceeded the U.S. rate since mid-December.

People across the world are generally likely to say yes to getting a COVID-19 vaccine, but would be more distrustful of shots made in China or Russia than those developed in Germany or the United States, an international poll showed on Friday.

The survey, conducted by the polling company YouGov and shared exclusively with Reuters, found Britons and Danes were the most willing to take the COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available to them, while the French and Poles were more likely to be hesitant.

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell 10.3% in 2020, the largest drop in emissions in the post-World War II era, as the coronavirus crippled the economy, according to a report released Tuesday by the Rhodium Group.

The economic fallout from the uncontrolled spread of COVID-19 - especially in big emitting sectors like transportation, power and industry - resulted in a sharper emissions drop than the 2009 recession, when emissions slid 6.3%.

Ontario is considering “next steps” to limit the spread of COVID-19, Premier Doug Ford said on Twitter on Monday, amid calls to put Canada’s most populous province under more stringent lockdown as the pandemic overwhelms its hospitals.

Yet the daily number of COVID-19 cases has spiked above 3,500 on average over the past seven days, government data showed. That is straining Ontario’s hospitals, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC) reported on Monday the modeling would show Ontario’s intensive care units would be filled beyond capacity by mid-February.

Sweden has registered 17,395 new coronavirus cases since Friday, taking the total above 500,000 cases since the start of the pandemic, as hospitals struggled to cope with a rampant second wave of the virus, Health Agency statistics showed on Tuesday.

The statistics showed that Dec. 17 was the deadliest day since the start of the pandemic with 116 deaths, surpassing a previous peak of 115 daily deaths set in April.

British authorities have had to set up a temporary morgues in some areas after local hospital mortuaries ran out of space due to a surge in deaths caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Surrey, to the south of London, the county’s hospital mortuaries have reached their 600 capacity, meaning local authorities have had to start using a temporary morgue.

Worldwide coronavirus cases surpassed 90 million on Monday, according to Reuters tally, as nations around the globe scramble to procure vaccines and continue to extend or reinstate lockdowns to fight new coronavirus variants.

Europe, which became the first region to report 25 million cases last week, remains the worst-affected area in the world, followed by North and Latin Americas with 22.4 million and 16.3 million cases respectively.

Mainland China saw its biggest daily increase in COVID-19 cases in more than five months, the country’s national health authority said on Monday, as new infections in Hebei province surrounding Beijing continued to rise.

Hebei accounted for 82 of the 85 new local infections reported on Jan. 10, the National Health Commission (NHC) said in a statement, with Liaoning Province also reporting two new cases and Beijing reporting one new case. The country also saw 18 new imported infections from overseas.

Texas will allocate about half of its latest COVID-19 vaccine supplies to just 28 healthcare sites, officials said on Sunday, aiming to speed distribution amid rising infections and hospitalizations.

The state’s positivity rate, or percent of cases testing positive, was 19.2% on Saturday, up nearly 6 percentage points in the past four weeks. New infections rose by nearly 19,000 and more than 13,000 people were hospitalized, up 4,000 in the past four weeks.

President-elect Joe Biden may speed up distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to U.S. states, a spokesman said on Friday, in an effort to jump-start the slow roll-out of inoculations that have made little impact on the pandemic one week into the new year.

“The President-elect believes we must accelerate distribution of the vaccine while continuing to ensure the Americans who need it most get it as soon as possible,” TJ Ducklo, a spokesman for Biden’s transition, told Reuters.

China will provide COVID-19 vaccines free of charge once they become available to general public, government authorities said on Saturday.

China in late December approved its first vaccine for general public use. Three vaccines had already been given to limited groups at high risk of infection, including medical workers, through an emergency-use program.

The United Kingdom recorded its highest daily death toll on Friday since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as London declared a major incident, warning that its hospitals were at risk of being overwhelmed.

Britain has the world’s fifth-highest official death toll from COVID-19 at nearly 80,000, and the 1,325 deaths reported within 28 days of a positive test on Friday surpassed the previous daily record from last April.

A middle-aged doctor from Florida has passed away two weeks after receiving his first dose of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine, succumbing to a rare blood disorder. The CDC and local officials have opened a probe into his death.

Local health officials said on Friday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Florida Health Department and the Miami-Dade medical examiner’s office were investigating the exact cause of Michael’s death, which was linked to a rare condition that affects the body’s ability to clot blood.

U.S. health officials sought to speed up the sluggish pace of COVID-19 vaccinations on Thursday, as the coronavirus claimed over 4,000 American lives for a second straight day and employment data showed the pandemic further stifling the job market.

That number falls far short of the 20 million vaccinations the U.S. government had vowed to administer by the end of 2020 as the pandemic raged largely unchecked with ever-increasing record numbers of infections, hospitalizations and deaths.

Pfizer Inc and BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine appeared to work against a key mutation in the highly transmissible new variants of the coronavirus discovered in Britain and South Africa, according to a laboratory study conducted by the U.S. drugmaker.

The first results of tests on the variants offer a glimmer of hope while more studies are carried out as Britain and other countries try to tame the more infectious variants which authorities believe are driving a surge in infections that could overwhelm healthcare systems.

The boss of biotech company Moderna has claimed that the “nightmare” worst-case scenario in which a Covid-19 vaccine will only offer protection against illness for a few months is not something we need to worry about anymore.

“The antibody decay generated by the vaccine in humans goes down very slowly... We believe there will be protection potentially for a couple of years,” said Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel at an online event on Thursday.

Chinese-developed COVID-19 vaccine CoronaVac showed at least 78-percent effectiveness in final-stage clinical trials in Brazil, officials announced Thursday, saying they would apply for emergency approval from the Brazilian regulatory agency to begin a vaccination campaign.

Turkey, which also helped carry out Phase 3 tests of CoronaVac, said last month the vaccine had shown effectiveness of 91.25 percent in its trials.

Treating critically ill COVID-19 patients with Roche’s Actemra or Sanofi’s Kevzara arthritis drugs significantly improves survival rates and reduces the amount of time patients need intensive care, study results showed on Thursday.

The findings, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, showed that the immunosuppressive drugs - Actemra, also known as tocilizumab, and Kevzara, also known as sarilumab - reduced death rates by 8.5 percentage points among patients hospitalised and severely ill with the pandemic disease.

As the events that unfolded in Washington on Wednesday captured the nation’s attention, the raging coronavirus pandemic claimed its highest U.S. death toll yet, killing more than 4,000 people in a single day, according to a Reuters tally.

As thousands of mostly unmasked supporters of President Donald Trump laid siege to the U.S. Capitol building, daily reported cases of the novel coronavirus soared again past the 250,000 mark, taking the total case tally to 21.2 million.

Coronavirus cases in Europe surpassed 25 million on Thursday, according to a Reuters tally, with several countries reinstating or extending lockdowns as a resurgence in the pandemic threatens to overwhelm health services.

Europe has recorded at least 25,016,506 cases and 559,863 deaths since the start of the pandemic, recently reporting over a million new cases about every four days.

Talk-show host Larry King, one of the most famous interviewers in US television history, is battling coronavirus in a Los Angeles hospital, where he's listed in stable condition and undergoing oxygen therapy.

King, 87, is reportedly being treated in isolation, so his estranged wife and other family members aren't allowed to visit him. But RT has learned that his condition isn't severe enough to require use of a ventilator.

U.S. Senator Mitt Romney on Friday urged the U.S. government to immediately enlist veterinarians, combat medics and others in an all-out national campaign to administer coronavirus vaccinations and slow a surging rise in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths.

The Utah Republican, who ran unsuccessfully for president as his party’s nominee in 2012, called for greater action as the Trump administration fell far short of its goal of vaccinating 20 million Americans with a first of two required doses by the end of 2020.

BioNTech is working flat out with partner Pfizer to boost production of their COVID-19 vaccine, its founders said, warning there would be gaps in supply until other vaccines were rolled out.

The German biotech startup has led the vaccine race but its shot has been slow to arrive in the European Union because of relatively late approval from the bloc’s health regulator and the small size of the order placed by Brussels.

U.S. coronavirus cases crossed the 20 million mark on Friday as officials seek to speed up vaccinations and a more infectious variant surfaces in Colorado, California and Florida.

The United States has seen a spike in number of daily COVID-19 fatalities since Thanksgiving with 78,000 lives lost in December. A total of 345,000 have died of COVID-19, or one out of every 950 U.S. residents, since the virus first emerged in China late in 2019. (Graphic: tmsnrt.rs/34pvUyi)

The number of deaths in the Netherlands increased at the highest rate since World War Two this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Dutch national statistics office (CBS) said on Tuesday.

Around 9,000 people more than normal died during the first wave of the COVID-19 infections between early March and early May, the CBS said, while more than 6,000 extra fatalities have been reported since the start of the second wave mid-September.

U.S. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris received a COVID-19 vaccination live on television on Tuesday, as the incoming Biden administration seeks to boost confidence in the inoculation even while warning it will be months before it is available to all.

“I want to encourage everyone to get the vaccine - it is relatively painless ... it is safe ... it’s literally about saving lives. I trust the scientists.”

The United Kingdom recorded 210 COVID-19 deaths on Saturday, down from 570 the day before, while cases rose 1,968 to 34,693, the government said, citing partial data.

The latest R number is estimated at 1.1 to 1.3, the government said. The United Kingdom has recorded a death toll of 70,405, defined as those dying within 28 days of a positive test. Under that measure, it has the world’s sixth largest toll, after the United States, Brazil, India, Mexico and India.

Health officials in Ontario said on Saturday that two confirmed cases of the new coronavirus variant first detected in the United Kingdom have appeared in the Canadian province.

The cases, identified in a couple in southern Ontario with no known travel history, exposure or high-risk contact, came as the province went into a lockdown on Saturday.

U.S. retail sales rose 3% during this year’s expanded holiday shopping season from Oct. 11 to Dec. 24, a report by Mastercard Inc said on Saturday, powered by a pandemic-driven shift toward online shopping.

U.S. ecommerce sales jumped 49% in this year’s holiday shopping season, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse report, underscoring the COVID-19 pandemic’s role in transforming customers’ shopping habits.

President Donald Trump spent Christmas Day golfing at his West Palm Beach club while millions of Americans faced the risk of losing jobless benefits on Saturday and the threat of a partial government shutdown next week if he refuses to sign a $2.3 trillion coronavirus aid and spending package.

Trump, who had not objected to the terms prior to the votes in the House of Representatives and the Senate, complained that the package was too full of money for special interests and foreign aid, and said the $600 in direct payments to most Americans was too small, demanding that the amount be increased to $2,000.

On June 5, researchers at the University of Oxford quietly made a change to a late-stage clinical trial of their COVID-19 vaccine. In an amendment noted in a document marked CONFIDENTIAL, they said they were adding a new group of participants.

The adjustment might seem minor in a large-scale study. But it masked a mistake that would have potentially far-reaching consequences: Many of the United Kingdom trial subjects had inadvertently been given only about a half dose of the vaccine. The new volunteers would now receive the correct dose. The trial continued.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the epidemiologist revered almost religiously as a hero by mainstream media outlets and Democrat politicians, has admitted that he lied to Americans to manipulate their acceptance of a new Covid-19 vaccine.

When pressed on the moving target in a New York Times interview, Fauci said he purposely revised his estimates gradually. The newspaper, which posted the article on Thursday, said Fauci changed his answers partly based on “science” and partly on his hunch “that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.”

The cooperation deal with Russia’s Sputnik V can make vaccination easier for everybody, AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot told RT. He argued the world needs many vaccine options because no company can tackle Covid-19 alone.

Soriot said studies on the effects of the combination of AstraZeneca/Oxford and Sputnik V vaccine components could help doctors and nurses by making “their lives simpler” when administering the doses of different drugs.

The excessive use of antibiotics during the Covid-19 pandemic could be fueling a spike in a highly drug-resistant STI – “super gonorrhea” – the World Health Organization has warned amid a recent uptick in the disease.

The over-reliance on the medications risks unleashing a new wave of antibiotic-resistant infections, such as “super gonorrhea” – a more hardy and drug-resilient version of the sexually-transmitted infection (STI) – a World Health Organization spokesperson told the Sun.

As California grapples with staggering levels of unemployment benefit fraud — $2 billion or more by one estimate — lawmakers and security experts say the state let its guard down well before the COVID-19 pandemic began in March, failing to keep up with what other states have done to flag bogus claims.

Now, faced with what officials describe as the largest fraud scheme against taxpayers in state history, the state Employment Development Department is scrambling to fix past mistakes as prosecutors, government auditors and legislators say their early warnings about vulnerabilities in the unemployment benefit system went unheeded.

Earlier this month, Johnson & Johnson abruptly called for an end to enrollment in its coronavirus vaccine trial and told scientists from six Latin American countries to wrap up their work within 48 hours, two researchers told Reuters.

The drugmaker said that a surge in coronavirus cases in the areas it was testing would give it enough data to vet the vaccine.

The U.S. government and two of the nation’s largest pharmacy chains kick off a nationwide campaign to vaccinate nursing home residents against COVID-19 on Monday, a week after the first vaccines authorized in the country began being administered to healthcare workers.

The United States has two authorized vaccines against the virus, one developed by Pfizer Inc and German partner BioNTech SE that was cleared for use on Dec. 11 and one by Moderna Inc that was approved on Friday.

The Vatican told Roman Catholics on Monday that it was morally acceptable to use COVID-19 vaccines even if their production employed cell lines drawn from tissues of aborted foetuses.

Both the Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc vaccines have some connection to cell lines that originated with tissue from abortions in the last century, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which issued a separate note to American Catholics last week.

An advisory panel on Sunday recommended U.S. frontline essential workers and people 75 and older should be next in line to get inoculated as the distribution of Moderna Inc’s vaccine, the second approved coronavirus vaccine, began across the country.

About 200 million people including non-frontline workers such as those in media, finance, energy and IT and communication industries, persons in the 65-74 age group, and those aged 16-64 years with high-risk conditions should be in the ensuing round, the panel recommended.

With mass vaccinations against Covid-19 already having started in Russia this month, the head of its consumer health watchdog believes that the worst could be over in just a few months — though not all officials are optimistic.

The short and seemingly upbeat comment from the health watchdog boss, Anna Popova, came on Saturday during a TV program called ‘Dangerous virus. Year one’ on Russia’s channel 1.

South Africa has identified a new variant of the coronavirus that is driving a second wave of infections, the health minister said on Friday, days after Britain said it had also found a new variant of the virus boosting cases.

South African health authorities said the new variant seemed to spread faster than the previous iteration, but that it was too early to tell its severity and whether current vaccines would work against it.

A new study by Yale University has found that critical Covid-19 patients disproportionately possess so-called ‘autoantibodies’ that weaponize their immune systems against them, making their condition far worse.

Researchers used an advanced screening technique on 170 hospitalized patients to detect “autoantibodies” that inflict collateral damage on the patient by attacking their own organs and immune system as opposed to targeting the virus.

Daily U.S. deaths from COVID-19 surpassed 3,000 for the third time in a week as the country expanded its vaccination program and the U.S. Congress progressed toward approving financial relief for the pandemic-stricken country.

Doctors can administer South Korean pharmaceutical maker Celltrion Inc’s candidate COVID-19 antibody treatment to patients with life-threatening conditions, health authorities said on Tuesday.

Celltrion is conducting second- and third-phase clinical trials for CT-P59, and plans to seek emergency-use approval for the treatment before year-end, a company spokesman said.

Moderna Inc said on Monday it was informed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) certain documents related to pre-submission talks of its COVID-19 vaccine candidate were unlawfully accessed in a cyberattack on the medicines regulator.

The EMA, which assesses medicines and vaccines for the European Union, said earlier this month that it had been targeted in a cyberattack, which also gave hackers access to documents related to the development of the Pfizer Inc and BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

The world is now dealing with a different type of SARS-CoV-2 than the one that emerged in China almost a year ago, with mutations creating at least seven strains of the virus so far.

As the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 swept across the world and killed more than 1.5 million in the past year, it has mutated into several major groups, or strains, as it adapted to its human hosts. Mapping and understanding those changes to the virus is crucial to developing strategies to combat the COVID-19 disease it causes.

U.S. health authorities, shipping services and hospitals stood ready on Friday to immediately launch a mass-inoculation campaign of unparalleled dimension, as federal regulators granted emergency approval to the first COVID-19 vaccine in the United States.

Last-minute preparations for the vaccine rollout came as the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus pandemic approached 300,000 to date, capping weeks of ominously surging infections and hospitalizations that have strained healthcare systems to their limits.

Hundreds of shoppers pack a wet market on a December weekday morning in the Chinese city of Wuhan, jostling to buy fresh vegetables and live fish, frogs and turtles.

Almost a year since the city reported the world’s first cases of COVID-19 in one of its handful of vast wet markets, and even as several other countries remain firmly in the grip of the subsequent pandemic, life in Wuhan has largely returned to normal.

Nine months after the U.S. government declared a state of emergency to fight the coronavirus pandemic, daily deaths and new infections are breaking records, hospital capacity is more stretched than ever, and debate over the economic response has devolved into a battle over who deserves help and who doesn’t.

New COVID-19 cases are mounting at a rate of a million a week, and deaths have reached new peaks approaching 3,000 daily. Meanwhile, the economic recovery seems to be hitting stall speed. U.S. payrolls grew by only 245,000 jobs in November, scant progress given that net job losses since February still total around 10 million.

The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

The Pandemic Heroes Who Gave us the Gift of Time and Gift of Information

Individual U.S. states scrambled on Sunday to impose lockdowns to stem coronavirus spikes amid a lack of national leadership on how to curb infections until vaccines are widely available in the spring.

Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, expressed frustration on Sunday over the mixed messages coming from the Trump administration that are reflected in some Americans’ perception about masks, social distancing and superspreader events.

Argentina has approved an extraordinary levy on large personal wealth. The measure is meant to raise some $3.6 billion to fund recovery after the Covid-19 pandemic. Critics say it’s not an option for the stagnant economy.

The so-called “millionaires’ tax” was approved in the Senate late on Friday in a 42 to 26 vote. The measure targets Argentinian citizens with declared personal wealth of over 200 million pesos ($2.5 million). It will apply a progressive tax rate of at least 2 percent on their total fortunes, including assets they may hold outside the country.

Following a week-long search, the 18-year-old was found dead. Incredibly, his friend and companion survived. According to the region’s investigative committee, the temperature in this area at night is around -50°C, and the car’s radiator was broken. The two teenagers started driving from Yakutsk to Magadan on November 28 and were not found until December 5. The only road between these cities is the Kolyma Highway, most commonly known as the Road of Bones. The route was built using forced Gulag labor, and construction caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of prisoners, according to different sources.

The head of the Russian company that will launch the mass production of the world's first registered Covid-19 vaccine has said that the formula is effective and safe – in fact, he's so sure that he's already had his first shot.

On Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin ordered the government to start a “large-scale” vaccination campaign across the country. There are currently two Russian-made vaccines, Sputnik V and EpiVacCorona, which have been registered with the state drug regulator.

Promising Chinese candidate vaccines containing adjuvants provided by US and UK firms have delivered positive trial data, demonstrating their safety and efficacy against Covid-19.

On Friday, China’s biopharmaceuticals firm Clover claimed data from human trials showed their two candidate vaccines triggered a “strong immune response” against Covid-19.

DUKE RESEARCHERS TESTED SEVERAL TYPES OF FACE COVERINGS, AND THERE WERE SOME OBVIOUS WINNERS AND LOSERS.

At this point in the coronavirus pandemic, chances are high you're donning a face covering every time you go out in public. But it's hard to know whether the kind you're using to shield your nose and mouth is doing enough to slow the spread of COVID-19. Now, there's some new research out there designed to help you see which masks work and which ones don't. Professors at Duke University designed a test that counts the amount of respiratory droplets (where coronavirus particles live) that escape from different face coverings whenever the wearer speaks.

THE GLOBAL HEALTH AGENCY'S MASK GUIDELINES HAVE BEEN UPDATED WITH SOME STRICTER RULES TO FOLLOW.

In the update that was published on Dec. 1, the WHO carefully outlined that the use of face masks is superior to the use of face shields because the latter won't block the wearer's exhaled droplets and can't stop them from inhaling droplets either.

As the U.S. continues to report record-breaking COVID numbers, medical experts are trying desperately to appeal to Americans to stay away from high-risk locations and adhere to coronavirus precautions. Some areas, like Los Angeles, have even implemented new stay-at-home orders in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus. However, CNN's chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, MD, says not everything has to shut down because the majority of COVID transmission happens in just five places.

Gupta feels that we would see a drop in COVID cases if "we actually started to employ mask mandates and talk about those five locations." Keep reading to find out which places Gupta has concerns about, and to make sure you're staying safe, This Type of Face Mask Isn't Protecting You From COVID, WHO Warns.

The promise of COVID-19 vaccines is “phenomenal” and “potentially game-changing”, World Health Organization European director Hans Kluge said on Thursday, a day after Britain became the first Western country to approve a shot.

Britain approved Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine, developed with Germany’s BioNTech, outpacing the world in the race to begin the most crucial mass inoculation programme in history.

Facebook Inc on Thursday said it would remove false claims about COVID-19 vaccines that have been debunked by public health experts, following a similar announcement by Alphabet Inc’s YouTube in October.

The move expands Facebook’s current rules against falsehoods and conspiracy theories about the pandemic. The social media company says it takes down coronavirus misinformation that poses a risk of “imminent” harm, while labeling and reducing distribution of other false claims that fail to reach that threshold.

The mayor of Los Angeles warned on Wednesday the city was nearing “a devastating tipping point” and ordered residents to stay in their homes and avoid social gatherings in new lockdown measures to rein in a surge in COVID-19 infections.

His order here limits nearly all social gatherings of people from more than a single household, mirroring a directive by county health officials last week, but exempts religious services and protests protected by the constitution.

When technical problems marred the ballyhooed launch of the Affordable Care Act’s website, President Barack Obama turned to Jeff Zients, an economic adviser touted for his managerial skills, to repair Obama’s signature policy rollout.

The prominent position would be similar to the role that Ron Klain, Biden’s soon-to-be chief of staff, played for the Obama administration during the Ebola crisis in 2014. While that outbreak ultimately killed only two people in the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has already cost more than 270,000 U.S. lives and shows little sign of slowing amid record hospitalizations.

U.S. deaths from the coronavirus pandemic have surged past 2,000 for two days in a row as the most dangerous season of the year approached, taxing an overwhelmed healthcare system with U.S. political leadership in disarray.

The toll from COVID-19 reached its second-highest level ever on Wednesday with 2,811 lives lost, according to a Reuters tally of official data, one short of the record from April 15.

Africa aims to have 60% of its population vaccinated against COVID-19 within the next two to three years, the African Union’s disease control group said on Thursday.

Some European countries expect to start rolling out vaccination campaigns in the next few weeks, but the control group said that vaccinations were unlikely to start in Africa until midway through next year.

The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Wednesday the COVID-19 pandemic, still raging with unprecedented fury nationwide, will pose the country’s grimmest health crisis yet over the next few months, before vaccines become widely available.

CDC Director Dr Robert Redfield urged stricter adherence to safety precautions such as wearing face coverings, social distancing and good hand hygiene to slow the spread of a highly contagious respiratory virus now claiming well over 2,000 U.S. lives a day.

The NBA said it tested 546 players as part of its “initial return-to-market testing phase,” which kicked off between Nov. 24 and Nov. 30. Anyone who tested positive was placed in isolation until cleared under league rules.

The league had few issues keeping its “bubble” environment at Walt Disney World free of the novel coronavirus as it carried out the end of their delayed season earlier this year, but now faces many of the same challenges other North American leagues have playing in the COVID-19 era.

In Germany’s industrial heartland, engineering firms have come up with a recipe for surviving the coronavirus pandemic.

Keep spending on research and development even if sales drop, build a financial buffer so you can craft a long-term business plan, be flexible with dealers to keep supply chains intact, have an innovative mindset and see crises as opportunities.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered the start of large scale vaccination against coronavirus in Russia, by the end of next week. Medics and teachers will be the first to get the shots and participation will be voluntary.

Russia’s pharma industry is ready to meet the challenge, Putin said during a government teleconference, on Wednesday. He explained that the amount of doses of the pioneering ‘Sputnik V’ formula already produced will reach two million in the coming days,

The COVID-19 pandemic has fueled a 40% increase in the number of people needing humanitarian assistance around the globe, the United Nations said on Tuesday, as it appealed for roughly $35 billion to help many of those expected to be in need next year.

The United Nations has set out 34 humanitarian response plans covering 56 countries for 2021, aiming to help 160 million of what it forecasts to be 235 million most vulnerable people worldwide facing hunger, conflict and the impacts of climate change and the coronavirus pandemic.

California’s governor said on Monday the state was at a “tipping point” in the COVID-19 pandemic that would soon overwhelm hospitals as political leaders nationwide turn to increasingly aggressive measures to hold back the latest surge.

Governor Gavin Newsom said he may clamp new “stay-at-home” orders on California’s roughly 40 million residents in the face of infections and hospitalizations that are still rising weeks before emergency vaccines are predicted for release.

A study of 10 patients at Oxford University used a novel scanning technique to identify damage not picked up by conventional scans.

Lung experts said a test that could spot long-term damage would make a huge difference to Covid patients.

A new report by BloombergNEF (BNEF) has attributed the Covid-19 pandemic to a record decline in carbon dioxide emissions in the United States.

Although US carbon dioxide emissions have been declining for a dozen years, BNEF estimates that this year’s decline will be the largest on record. Without the impact of Covid-19, the report estimates that emissions would have still fallen by about one percent. Thus, the pandemic alone was responsible for about an 8 percent decrease in emissions.

Cyber Monday is on track to bring in a record of as much as $12.7 billion in online sales, according to latest industry estimates, surpassing Black Friday’s digital numbers as U.S. retailers reached the last leg of an extended holiday selling season caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Estimates from Adobe Analytics, however, showed this year’s conclusion to Thanksgiving weekend promotions would still be the largest online sales day in history, with spending between $10.8 billion and $12.7 billion.

Large global trials of several COVID-19 vaccine candidates involving tens of thousands of participants are well underway with some having gathered sufficient data to seek emergency use authorisation.

The following is what we know about the race to deliver vaccines to help end the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 1.45 million lives worldwide:

Moderna Inc will apply for U.S. and European emergency authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine on Monday after full results from a late-stage study showed it was 94.1% effective with no serious safety concerns, the company said.

Moderna also reported that its vaccine’s efficacy rate was consistent across age, race, ethnicity and gender demographics as well as having a 100% success rate in preventing severe cases of a disease that has killed nearly 1.5 million people.

The first two vaccines against the novel coronavirus could be available to Americans before Christmas, Health Secretary Alex Azar said on Monday, after Moderna Inc became the second vaccine maker likely to receive U.S. emergency authorization.

“They will be determining which groups to be prioritized. I would hope that the science and the evidence will be clear enough that our governors will follow the recommendations that we will make to them,” Azar said.

During the first lockdown Afsaneh Parvizi-Wayne, a 55-year-old entrepreneur, went for a drive around London. “I remember looking in the rear-view mirror,” she says, “and I noticed all these little hairs coming out of my chin. That was a bit of a shock. Like, bloody hell, I’ve really been growing these out.”

“I’ve been dyeing my hair since for ever,” says Amanda Armstrong, 54, a recruitment boss from Bournemouth. “I was one of those people who, the minute I got a grey root coming through, I’d book the appointment.” Armstrong formerly specialised in fashion recruitment, meaning that it was particularly important that she was well-groomed at all times. “I felt like I had to dress and look a certain way,” she says. “I couldn’t bear to be seen with grey roots. I thought people would think I didn’t care what I looked like.” When the pandemic hit, Armstrong’s hairdresser closed, but even when it reopened in the summer, she didn’t think to return. Her hair hasn’t been dyed since February. “The longer it grew out,” she says, “the more I got used to it. It was a bit streaky, but I felt like ‘this is natural. This is who I am.’”

With Sputnik V set for launch after its phase-three trial is completed, another Russian Covid-19 vaccine, EpiVacCorona, will be made available to the public next month. It is hoped that mass inoculation can begin in the New Year.

Developed by Siberia’s Vector Center, results from testing are ready to be presented, and an international publication is being sought to publish them, according to the head of the research body’s zoonotic infections and influenza department.

The economic consequences of Covid-19 are becoming clearer, and they aren't good. The number of Russians in poverty is projected to grow by about a million by the end of 2020, with the overall economy due to fall as much as 4.5%.

Massive crowds gathered in central London on Saturday to protest lockdown measures designed to combat the Covid-19 pandemic, and police followed through on their promise to arrest demonstrators, leading to multiple clashes.

The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Certain blood groups less likely to get COVID-19... Vitamin D fails to help in severe COVID-19 cases... Triggers of COVID-19 “cytokine storm” identified... COVID-19 survivors benefit from home health care

U.S. health authorities will hold an emergency meeting next week to recommend that a coronavirus vaccine awaiting approval be given first to healthcare professionals and people in long-term care facilities.

The meeting, announced on Friday by a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) committee on immunizations, suggests that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) may be close to authorizing distribution of the long-awaited medication, at least to those considered most vulnerable.

Ten COVID-19 vaccines could be available by the middle of next year if they win regulatory approval, but their inventors need patent protection, the head of the global pharmaceutical industry group said on Friday.

“We will hopefully by the next summer have probably 10 vaccines which have proven their value. But all of them really need to be submitted by rigorous scientific scrutiny by the regulators.”

The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and Indian generic pharmaceutical company Hetero have agreed to produce more than 100 million doses of Russian-made Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccine per year on Indian soil.

While we look forward to the clinical trial results in India, we believe that manufacturing the product locally is crucial to enable swift access to patients.

The Walt Disney Company said it is laying off more than 30,000 employees, mostly at its theme parks, as the coronavirus lockdown renders the very existence of resorts and parks absolutely pointless.

The parks run by the company in Shanghai, Hong Kong and Tokyo remain open, while all 12 parks in North America were closed between March and May. Disneyland in Florida and Disneyland Paris were reopened earlier this year, but the latter closed again late last month after the French authorities imposed a new lockdown due to a second wave of coronavirus infections.

While most of Europe’s large cities are now under strict lockdown to prevent Covid’s spread, the biggest of them all, Moscow, is an exception. Instead of shutting down bars, shops and restaurants, a lighter touch has been applied.

On Thursday, the city's mayor indicated that the strategy – a mixture of appealing to personal responsibility and ordering relatively small-scale restrictions, while also beefing up hospital capacity – seems to be working. Sergey Sobyanin told national TV that about 50 percent of Muscovites are now immune to Covid-19 infection.

The U.S. Supreme Court late on Wednesday backed Christian and Jewish houses of worship challenging New York state’s latest restrictions in novel coronavirus hot spots.

An Oct. 6 decision by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo shut down non-essential businesses in targeted areas where infections have spiked, including some Brooklyn neighborhoods. It limited gatherings at religious institutions to 10 people in some areas and 25 in others.

The South Caucasus country’s prime minister, Giorgi Gakharia, said on Thursday the new measures would come into force on Saturday and last until Jan. 31. Restrictions will be temporarily eased from Dec. 24 to Jan. 3 and on Jan. 6-7 for the Orthodox Christmas.

He said a curfew would be imposed across the country, instead of only in big cities, and would start one hour earlier, at 10 p.m., and last until 5 a.m., restricting the movement of pedestrians and vehicles. All restaurants, cafes, open markets, shopping malls, swimming pools and gyms will be closed for two months, although food delivery, drive-in and take-away services will be allowed.

National math and reading tests used to track U.S. students’ knowledge in those subjects are being postponed until 2022 due to the coronavirus outbreak, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) said.

Woodworth said a change in operations and lack of access for students to be assessed means that NAEP would not be able to produce estimates of students’ knowledge when compared to either past or future national or state estimates.

South Korea reported 583 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, the highest since March, as it grapples with a third wave of infections that appears to be worsening despite tough new social distancing measures.

The government reimposed strict distancing rules on Seoul and surrounding regions this week, only a month after they had been eased following a second wave of infections. Some experts say the government moved too early to relax those rules, as the daily tally exceeds 500 for the first time since March 6, with young people at the centre of the surge.

After a two-week deluge of calls and messages from parents - and at least one death threat - the school board in Chandler, Arizona, called a special meeting this fall.

Parents, teachers and others poured out their thoughts in 1,100 public comments posted online before the September meeting. “If our schools do not open in person I will yank both my boys OUT and take them to another school district!!!” one parent wrote.

The British-Swedish company, which has developed its candidate vaccine together with the University of Oxford, “will begin the submission of the clinical data to regulators around the world that have a framework in place for emergency use or conditional approval,” its spokesman said on Monday, adding that the list of the regulators that will receive the application particularly includes the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The statement came as the drug manufacturer published interim results of the vaccine’s clinical trials, which it said “showed the vaccine was highly effective in preventing COVID-19” and declaring its overall effectiveness to amount to 70 percent - much lower than 90-percent efficacy that other leading vaccine candidates showed.

Maryland has deployed police “compliance units” across the state to ensure adherence to its Covid-19 restrictions at bars, restaurants and anywhere else people might gather, ramping up enforcement just in time for Thanksgiving.

The units will “focus on educating the public about existing orders and protocols, preventing super-spreading events, and taking enforcement actions when necessary,” Hogan’s office said in a statement, adding that the patrols would “continue throughout the holiday season.”

More than 500 million people will be able to take the pioneering Russian Sputnik V vaccine against the coronavirus next year. Its developers say the two-shot jab will be sold cheaper than those of its foreign competitors.

The drug will be produced not only in Russia but also by “leading foreign pharmaceutical companies” who agreed to cooperation deals with the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). Talks with additional international partners are underway to further increase production capacity. “Sputnik V will be two or more times cheaper than mRNA vaccines with similar efficacy levels,” RDIF said in a statement.

It took Oxford University’s brightest minds decades of work to give them the expertise to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. In the end, it was a momentary error - and a dose of good fortune - that carried them over the line.

While skill and hard work drove development, AstraZeneca said it was a minor mistake that made the team realise how they could significantly boost the shot’s success rate, to as much as 90% from around 60%: by administering a half dose, followed by a full dose a month later.

U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams on Tuesday pleaded with Americans to grasp “the severity of the moment” and remain vigilant against the coronavirus pandemic, as record hospitalizations pushed healthcare professionals to the brink.

“We are almost to a vaccine. ... We’ve got new remedies out there. We just need you, the American people, to hold on a little bit longer,” Adams, a White House Coronavirus Task Force member, told Fox News in an interview.

With coronavirus lockdowns forcing businesses to shut their doors for months, a team of researchers has attempted to find out how many lives the restrictions saved in the United States and just how much economic damage was caused.

The sobering calculations found that the closures from the pandemic’s onset in March through to the rollbacks in May saved approximately 29,000 lives and came with a $169 billion price tag.

Italy reported 630 COVID 19-related deaths on Monday, rising from 562 the day before and taking the official toll since its outbreak began in February to 50,453, according to health ministry data.

The health ministry also reported 22,930 new coronavirus infections over the past 24 hours, down from 28,337 the day before, with the fall reflecting the usual drop in the number of swabs conducted on Sundays.

Millions of Americans are defying health warnings and traveling ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, likely exacerbating a surge in coronavirus inflections just before a series of promising new vaccines become widely available.

With U.S. COVID-19 infections hitting a record 168,000 per day on average, Americans are flocking to crowded airports against the advice of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. surgeon general and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert.

AstraZeneca said on Monday its COVID-19 vaccine could be as much as 90% effective, giving the world’s fight against the global pandemic a new weapon, cheaper to make, easier to distribute and faster to scale-up than rivals.

The British drugmaker said it will have as many as 200 million doses by the end of 2020, around four times as many as U.S. competitor Pfizer. Seven hundred million doses could be ready globally as soon as the end of the first quarter of 2021.

Americans may receive Pfizer's new Covid-19 vaccine from December 11, and the country's immunization rate could climb high enough to allow for a return to normalcy around May, the initiative's chief scientific adviser has said.

An FDA vaccine advisory committee is scheduled to meet on December 10 and may grant Pfizer's request for emergency use authorization that day, Dr. Moncef Slaoui said on Sunday during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper. The Trump administration stands ready to ship the vaccine to immunization sites in all 50 states within 24 hours, he said, so the first doses would be administered to recipients on December 11 or December 12.

First the vaccines, now the bill. As G20 leaders called, at the weekend, for fair distribution, US pharma giants have started to announce how much their products will cost,. Meanwhile, Russia says its alternative will be cheaper.

The two American drug makers that aim to bring their vaccines to market first have now revealed their pricing strategies. Pfizer, which filed for US approval of its formula on Saturday, said earlier that a dose of its product will carry a $19.50 price tag. Moderna, thought to be close to signing a deal for a comprehensive rollout in the European Union, announced this week that it will charge between $25-37. As two doses of the vaccine are required per person, spaced out over several weeks, the overall cost will be doubled; $39 and $50-74, respectively.

But it turned out to be shrewd business move as orders surged online, and now he can hardly keep pace with demand.

�I think by the time Santa comes he will have to wear a mask because Santa has to show a good example to people,� Rimoczi said, sitting in his workshop in the backyard of his village home in Lajosmizse, about 70 kilometres south of Budapest.

Toilet paper aisles are emptying again as COVID-19 curfews and shutdowns in states from California to New York send pandemic-weary shoppers on a new scramble for essentials.

Charmin maker Procter & Gamble, the No. 1 U.S. toilet paper seller, said it is running plants 24/7 to meet demand.

A World Health Organization (WHO) special COVID-19 envoy predicted a third wave of the pandemic in Europe in early 2021, if governments repeat what he said was a failure to do what was needed to prevent the second wave of infections.

Europe briefly enjoyed sinking infection rates that are now surging again: Germany and France on Saturday saw cases rise by 33,000 combined, Switzerland and Austria have thousands of cases daily, while Turkey reported a record 5,532 new infections.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Saturday issued emergency use authorization for Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc�s COVID-19 antibody therapy, an experimental treatment given to U.S. President Donald Trump that he said helped cure him of the disease.

Regeneron�s REGEN-COV2 �antibody cocktail� - containing an antibody made by the company and a second isolated from humans who recovered from COVID-19 - is designed so that the two antibodies seek out and bind to the coronavirus� spike protein to prevent it from entering healthy human cells.

The United States recorded its 12th million COVID-19 case on Saturday, even as millions of Americans were expected to travel for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, ignoring warnings from health officials about furthering the spread of the infectious disease.

The COVID-19 epidemic has claimed more than 255,000 lives in the United States - more than in any other nation - according to the Reuters tally - and the recent escalation has prompted more than 20 states to impose sweeping new restrictions this month to curb the virus.

Researchers in Israel claim to have partially reversed cellular aging using a somewhat controversial treatment. While only a small study, it improves our understanding of the aging process in humans. The shortening of telomeres, the caps at the end of each of our chromosomes, is one of the main underlying mechanisms behind aging. Cell division whittles down these telomeres each time it occurs, leaving each new chromosome slightly shorter than its predecessor.

A new vaccine approach using genetically engineered immune cells from a patient's body has created a durable and long-lasting defense against HIV infection, generating new hope not just for a vaccine, but also a cure. In experiments on mice, a team at Scripps Research induced broadly neutralizing antibodies, or bnAbs, capable of preventing HIV infection.

Toilet paper aisles are emptying again as COVID-19 curfews and shutdowns in states from California to New York send pandemic-weary shoppers on a new scramble for essentials.

“Oddly though, at places like Walgreens and Dollar Tree you can find what you need. I think people are seeing the empty shelves at bigger stores and panic buying,” Hatcher said.

COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer Inc and Moderna Inc could be ready for U.S. authorization and distribution within weeks, setting the stage for inoculation to begin as soon as this year, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said on Wednesday.

States and territories are prepared to begin distributing the vaccines within 24 hours of receiving regulatory authorization, officials said on a call with reporters, adding that complex cold storage requirements will not be an impediment to all Americans being able to access the vaccines.

Governments and officials are voicing hopes that COVID-19 vaccines could bring “herd immunity”, with some calculating that immunising just two-thirds of a population could halt the pandemic disease and help protect whole communities or nations.

But the concept comes with caveats and big demands of what vaccines might be capable of preventing. Some experts say such expectations are misplaced.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Tuesday it had approved the first COVID-19 self-testing kit for home use that provides results within 30 minutes.

The single-use test, made by Lucira Health, has been given emergency use authorization for home use with self-collected nasal swab samples in individuals aged 14 and older who are suspected of COVID-19 by their health care provider, the FDA said.

Daily coronavirus cases in Tokyo and South Korea hit fresh highs on Wednesday, as pollution-cloaked New Delhi struggled with rising cases and Australia reported a highly contagious virus strain which forced a state-wide lockdown.

In Australia, a state imposed a six-week lockdown after a new outbreak in Adelaide expanded to 22 cases, restricting people from leaving their homes, mandating masks, closing schools, factories and takeaway food, and banning funerals and weddings.

In July, the Canadian province of Manitoba went two weeks without a single new case of COVID-19. Theaters and casinos reopened and children soon returned to school.

By October, the 1.4 million people living in a province only slightly smaller geographically than Texas had Canada’s highest rate of active cases - now 512 per 100,000 people, or nearly quadruple the national rate.

Airlines are scrambling to prepare ultra-cold shipping and storage facilities to transport COVID-19 vaccines developed by Pfizer and Moderna, whose doses, which require deep freezing, are likely to be among the first to be distributed.

Pfizer Inc PFE.N said on Wednesday that final results from the late-stage trial of its COVID-19 vaccine show it was 95% effective, adding it had the required two-months of safety data and would apply for emergency U.S. authorization within days.

The drugmaker said efficacy of the vaccine developed with German partner BioNTech SE BNTX.O22UAy.F was consistent across age and ethnicity demographics, and that there were no major side effects, a sign that the immunization could be employed broadly around the world.

Pfizer Inc PFE.N said on Wednesday that final results from the late-stage trial of its COVID-19 vaccine show it was 95% effective, adding it had the required two-months of safety data and would apply for emergency U.S. authorization within days.

The drugmaker said efficacy of the vaccine developed with German partner BioNTech SE BNTX.O22UAy.F was consistent across age and ethnicity demographics, and that there were no major side effects, a sign that the immunization could be employed broadly around the world.

Brazil’s Butantan Institute biomedical center will receive this week the first doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine against COVID-19, its director, Dimas Covas, said on Tuesday, speaking remotely in a congressional hearing.

But Russia has also been testing a version that has undergone lyophilisation, turning the liquid vaccine into a dry, white mass that can be stored at normal fridge temperatures of 2 to 8 degrees Celsius (35.6-46.4°F). It is then diluted before injection.

Together with Pfizer Inc’s vaccine, which is also more than 90% effective, and pending more safety data and regulatory review, the United States could have two vaccines authorized for emergency use in December with as many as 60 million doses of vaccine available this year.

Moderna Inc MRNA.O is the second U.S. pharmaceutical company to release interim data showing that its vaccine worked in a large, late-stage clinical trial. The biotech firm said its vaccine was 94.5% effective.

The number of coronavirus cases in the United States crossed the 11-million mark on Sunday reaching yet another grim milestone, according to a Reuters tally, as the third wave of COVID-19 infections surged across the country. ...

Texas and California have reported the highest number of COVID-19 infections across the United States, together accounting for about 2.1 million cases or about 19% of the total cases since the pandemic began, according to Reuters analysis. ...

The Midwest remains the hardest-hit region based on the most cases per capita with North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Iowa and Nebraska the top five worst-affected U.S. states. ...

China’s factory output rose faster-than-expected in October and retail sales continued to recover albeit at a slower-than-forecast pace, as the world’s second-largest economy emerged from its COVID-19 slump. ...

China’s industrial sector has staged an impressive turnaround from the pandemic paralysis seen earlier this year, helped by resilient exports. Now, with the coronavirus largely under control in China, consumers are opening up their wallets again in a further boost to activity. ...

Michigan and Washington state on Sunday imposed sweeping new restrictions on gatherings, including halting indoor restaurant service, to slow the spread of the coronavirus as total U.S. infections crossed the 11 million mark, just over a week after hitting 10 million.

South Korea reported more than 200 new coronavirus cases for the third consecutive day on Monday, as the government mulls tightening social distancing to curb persistent outbreaks from offices, medical facilities and small gatherings.

Johnson & Johnson JNJ.N launched a new late-stage trial in Britain on Monday to test a two-dose regimen of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine among thousands of volunteers, as the U.S. drugmaker expands its trials by geography and type.

Infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN that the US government must “get people to take the vaccine” against Covid-19, but warned that normality won’t return until next summer and masks will still be recommended.

Roughly 300,000 households have moved out of New York City since March, fleeing a metropolis that has become a land of lockdowns and rising violent crime in a year dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic and civil unrest.

U.S. President-elect Joe Biden’s top aide Ron Klain on Sunday urged Congress to pass bipartisan COVID-19 financial relief as a surge in cases shattered U.S. records and strained hospitals nationwide, and called for immediate action to allow his team to coordinate with the outgoing Trump administration.

Other top Biden advisers also stressed the need to control the spiraling outbreak now, even before Biden takes office on Jan. 20, saying the next few weeks were critical and warning that local healthcare systems were at a tipping point.

The lead scientist behind a coronavirus vaccine being developed jointly by Pfizer and BioNTech has cautioned that it won’t have an immediate effect on case numbers and it may be a year before normalcy returns. An effective inoculation against Covid-19 has been billed as the best way to end the global health crisis, but Professor Ugur Sahin, co-founder of BioNTech, has cautioned against assuming the pandemic is behind us.

Biologist Noemi Lukacs, 71, retired to Szirak, her birth village, to establish English & Scientific Consulting (SciCons) and manufacture a genetic sensor so sensitive that a few grams can supply the entire global industry for a year. ....

The former university professor followed the race to the vaccine closely and rooted especially for the contestants who look set to come first: those using modified RNA to train cells of the human body to recognise and kill the coronavirus. The RNA was her dog in the race. The modified RNA, or mRNA, methodology is a whole new group of drugs, with the COVID vaccine the first product likely to get regulatory approval and go into mass production. But more applications are expected, which has Lukacs overjoyed. “Once you get into the RNA field, it is an extremely exciting area,” she said, recalling decades of struggles when the rest of the scientific community did not share her excitement. ...

Scientists have unraveled one of the mysteries of Covid-19, why the virus strikes down older people while seeming to leave children untouched. The breakthrough could pave the way for new treatments to combat the pandemic.

Russia was widely criticized when it became the first country in the world to register a coronavirus vaccine in August. It was accused of rushing through the approval of the ‘Sputnik V’ formula for political or propaganda gain.

Since then the whole development of the vaccine has been dogged by Schadenfreude as the press leapt on signs of impropriety in the data, and Russia has even been accused of stealing the technology.

A new study has found that the very mutation which allowed SARS-CoV-2 to spread so far and wide among the human population may also be an Achilles heel for future vaccines to target. One of the latest strains of coronavirus, and currently the most common in the world, is called D614G.

Thailand’s numbers “speak for themselves,” said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in closing remarks to the World Health Assembly, which took place this week.

Thailand was the first country outside China to report a case of COVID-19, but to date it has counted fewer than 4,000 cases and just 60 fatalities, despite having a population of 70 million and one of the world’s biggest and most tightly packed cities in Bangkok.

They are the “dream team” scientist couple who came up with a big idea that could protect humanity from a virus that has killed more than a million people and put an end to a pandemic that has upended economies across the globe.

But as the world breathed a sigh of relief at Monday’s news that the experimental vaccine developed by German biotech company BioNTech and US pharmaceutical company Pfizer has shown positive results in the all-important phase 3 trials, Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci displayed characteristic modesty.

Asked whether he had any private passions or hobbies that he would indulge once the vaccine reached the market, Şahin said: “We are thoroughbred scientists. We love our work, and we love talking about it. Work is never stress for us, something we try to catch a break from.” He said there was “no way” he would replace the bicycle he has used for his daily commute for the last 15 years. After Sunday night’s bombshell phone call, Şahin and Türeci, BioNTech’s chief medical officer, “celebrated a little”.

Danish authorities worry that a mutated form of coronavirus found in farmed mink might hamper the effectiveness of future vaccines.

The government has ordered a mass cull of up to 17 million animals and a four-week lockdown for people living in the northwest of the country. There has been an outcry, with arguments over the legality of the cull.

Health authorities in Brazil have allowed medical institute Butantan to resume its late-stage clinical trials for China’s Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine. The trials had been suspended due to a study subject’s death.
The case was registered in Sao Paulo as a suicide, and Brazil’s health regulator, Anvisa, said late Wednesday that the initial information was incomplete and lacked the cause of the “severe adverse event.”

With the world’s scientists hunting for a Covid-19 drug, Siberia’s Vector Center has discovered antiviral properties in the Chaga mushroom, found on birch trees, suggesting that the fungus is capable of suppressing coronavirus. According to the SCIENCE First Hand journal, researchers believe that drinking extracts of the fungus throughout the day could fight the growth of the deadly infection.

Overlapping genes are relatively common, especially in RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2, so the discovery is not necessarily shocking, but it marks another challenge to overcome as humanity tries to unlock the mystery of the coronavirus scourge.

Given how genome scanners are designed to identify individual genes, they can often miss overlapping ones tucked away in between neighboring nucleotides. In this particular case, it may prove to be a major blind spot in coronavirus treatment and vaccine development, but for now, scientists do not know for sure.

It has yet to be established exactly what capabilities ORF3d affords the coronavirus and whether it might impact current and ongoing vaccine research, but scientists do know that it triggers a strong antibody response.

This particular gene has only been identified once before, in a variant of the coronavirus discovered in pangolins.

The subjects of the Phase III testing were not the only ones to receive the jab. Russia registered the vaccine in August after it was proven safe in a smaller Phase II survey and made it available to volunteers from high-risk groups, like doctors in Covid-19 wards. The developers observed 10,000 of those people and now say the results showed a similar efficacy rate of over 90 percent. ..... The vaccine is based on two types of human adenoviral vector, with two shots administered three weeks apart.