FRIDAY, Dec. 17, 2021 (HealthDay News) — This season’s flu vaccine may do little to prevent infection with the main circulating virus strain because the strain has changed since the vaccine was developed, a new study suggests. However, the vaccine is still likely to protect against severe illness and death,Continue Reading
FRIDAY, Dec. 17, 2021 (HealthDay News) — Mask mandates work, according to a large international study that linked the laws with a reduction in COVID-19 deaths. The study included 44 countries with a combined population of nearly 1 billion. Over time, researchers found, the increase in COVID-related deaths was significantlyContinue Reading
THURSDAY, Dec. 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) — It’s a phenomenon first identified in India earlier this year: Patients who have or are recovering from COVID-19 who then contract a sometimes deadly fungal infection known as mucormycosis — also known as “black fungus.” Now, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control andContinue Reading
THURSDAY, Dec. 16, 2021 (HealthDay News) — Along with being contaminated, there was also a basic design flaw in COVID-19 testing kits created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention early in the pandemic, a new agency review shows. It was already known that the PCR kits wereContinue Reading
WEDNESDAY, Dec. 15, 2021 (HealthDay News) — The Omicron variant is spreading rapidly in the United States and could trigger a huge wave of COVID infections as early as January, federal health officials said Tuesday. In just one week there was a sevenfold spike in the highly contagious variant’s presenceContinue Reading
WEDNESDAY, Dec. 15, 2021 (HealthDay News) — When it comes to fending off new viruses, baby has Mom and Dad beat. An infant’s immune system is better than an adult’s at combating new viruses, researchers say. Compared to adults, babies get a lot of viral respiratory infections, but babies areContinue Reading
WEDNESDAY, Dec. 15, 2021 (HealthDay News) — Here’s a social distancing strategy that really worked in the early days of the pandemic: New research shows that providing hotel rooms to homeless people at high risk for severe COVID-19 significantly lowered their chance of infection. In early April 2020, the cityContinue Reading
TUESDAY, Dec. 14, 2021 (HealthDay News) — Compared to previous coronavirus variants, Omicron appears to cause less severe illness, but is more resistant to the Pfizer vaccine, researchers at South Africa’s largest health insurer report. The team at Discovery Health analyzed 211,000 positive coronavirus cases during the country’s fourth wave,Continue Reading
TUESDAY, Dec. 14, 2021 (HealthDay News) — Pfizer Inc. announced Tuesday that a final analysis shows its experimental antiviral pill Paxlovid sharply reduced hospitalizations and deaths among people at high risk for severe illness. The latest results, which reinforce an earlier analysis released in November, show that Pfizer’s drug cutContinue Reading
MONDAY, Dec. 13, 2021 (HealthDay News) — The COVID-19 death toll in the United States reached 800,000 on Monday, and one expert believes it will likely hit 1 million at some point in 2022. The 800,156 confirmed deaths in the nearly two years since the first known U.S. victims ofContinue Reading