Coronavirus category, Page 10
CDC urges Pfizer booster for children ages 5 to 11
Kids ages 5 to 11 should get a booster dose of Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine, advisers to the U.S. government said Thursday. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention quickly adopted the panel’s recommendation, opening a third covid-19 shot to healthy elementary-age kids — just like what is already recommended for...
Officials say more areas of U.S. may see mask recommendations
WASHINGTON — Covid-19 cases are increasing in the United States – and could get even worse over the coming months, federal health officials warned Wednesday in urging areas hardest hit to consider reissuing calls for indoor masking. Increasing numbers of covid-19 infections and hospitalizations are putting more of the country...
Pennsylvania covid update: 27K cases reported for week
On Wednesday, the Pennsylvania Department of Health released its weekly update on covid-19, showing an additional 27,391 infections in the past seven days. The state is recording new cases of the virus at levels not seen since mid-February. The latest report shows new cases increased 23% over the previous week’s...
Traveling this summer? CDC recommends testing for covid-19 in days before flying
If you are traveling internationally or within the United States this summer, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends you test for covid-19 in the days before flying. The agency’s recommendation for all travelers regardless of vaccination status came in an update to its covid-19 testing website on May...
Coronavirus vaccine could have saved 319,000 people, if they had taken shot, study finds
About a third of the 1 million lives lost to covid-19 could have been saved with vaccines, a new analysis shows. Researchers at the Brown School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Microsoft AI for Health analyzed data from the Centers...
Government offers 8 more free covid tests to public
WASHINGTON — The government website for people to request free covid-19 at-home tests from the U.S. government is now accepting a third round of orders. The White House announced Tuesday that U.S. households can request an additional eight free at-home tests to be shipped by the U.S. Postal Service. The...
FDA clears covid booster shot for healthy kids ages 5 to 11
U.S. regulators on Tuesday authorized a covid-19 booster shot for healthy 5- to 11-year-olds, hoping an extra vaccine dose will enhance their protection as infections once again creep upward. Everyone 12 and older already was supposed to get one booster dose for the best protection against the newest coronavirus variants...
North Korea’s Kim faces ‘huge dilemma’ on aid as virus surges
SEOUL, South Korea — During more than a decade as North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un has made “self-reliance” his governing lynchpin, shunning international help and striving instead for domestic strategies to fix his battered economy. But as an illness suspected to be covid-19 sickens hundreds of thousands of his...
Students protest, discontent grows over China’s covid policy
BEIJING — Administrators at an elite Beijing university have backed down from plans to further tighten pandemic restrictions on students as part of China’s “zero-covid” strategy after a weekend protest at the school, according to students Tuesday. Graduate students at Peking University staged the rare, but peaceful protest Sunday over...
1 in 9 covid hospital patients die or get readmitted within 30 days, study finds
One in 9 hospitalized covid-19 patients die or get readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of being sent home, a new study has found. Deaths were observed more often in men, older individuals, those with comorbidities and people who had a history of prior hospital stays, according to the...
U.S. deaths from covid hits 1 million — less than 2½ years in
The U.S. death toll from covid-19 hit 1 million on Monday, a once-unimaginable figure that only hints at the multitudes of loved ones and friends staggered by grief and frustration. The confirmed number of dead is equivalent to a 9/11 attack every day for 336 days. It is roughly equal...
North Korea confirms 21 new deaths as it battles covid
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Saturday reported 21 new deaths and 174,440 more people with fever symptoms as the country scrambles to slow the spread of covid-19 across its unvaccinated population. The new deaths and cases, which were from Friday, increased total numbers to 27 deaths and 524,440...
A million empty spaces: Chronicling covid’s cruel U.S. toll
On the deadliest day of a horrific week in April 2020, covid took the lives of 816 people in New York City alone. Lost in the blizzard of pandemic data that’s been swirling ever since is the fact that 43-year-old Fernando Morales was one of them. Two years and 1...
Allegheny County covid cases rise, Pittsburgh schools reinstate mask mandate
Covid-19 cases are on the rise again in Allegheny County, sending the county into “medium” community level as defined by federal guidelines and triggering mandatory masking across Pittsburgh Public Schools. The levels laid out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — low, medium, and high — take into...
North Korea reports 6 deaths after admitting covid-19 outbreak
North Korea said Friday six people died and nearly 190,000 are under quarantine following a rapid spread of fever across the nation in recent weeks, a day after it first acknowledged a covid-19 outbreak in a largely unvaccinated population. The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said that more than...
Pennsylvania covid-19 update: 21,781 cases reported for week
The Pennsylvania Department of Health published its weekly update of data on the covid-19 pandemic, reporting 21,781 additional infections of the last seven days, an average of 3,112 per day. That calculates to a 46% increase in a week, and more than triple the average of 862 daily cases recorded...
Biden urges world to renew covid fight as U.S. nears 1M deaths
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden appealed to world leaders on Thursday for a renewed international commitment to attacking covid-19 as he led the U.S. in marking the approaching “tragic milestone” of 1 million deaths at home from the virus. He ordered flags lowered to half-staff and warned against “complacency” around...
South African firm says it may close its covid vaccine plant
JOHANNESBURG — The first factory to produce covid-19 vaccines in Africa says it has not received enough orders and may stop production within weeks, in what a senior World Health Organization official described Thursday as a “failure” in efforts to achieve vaccine equity. South Africa’s Aspen Pharmacare said that it...
North Korea raises alarm after confirming 1st covid-19 case
North Korea announced its first coronavirus infection more than two years into the pandemic Thursday as leader Kim Jong Un called for raising covid-19 preventive measures to maximum levels. The Korean Central News Agency said tests from an unspecified number of people in the capital Pyongyang confirmed they were infected...
Pandemic gets tougher to track as covid testing plunges
Testing for covid-19 has plummeted across the globe, making it much tougher for scientists to track the course of the pandemic and spot new, worrisome viral mutants as they emerge and spread. Experts say testing has dropped by 70 to 90% worldwide from the first to the second quarter of...
Shanghai retightens on covid, frustrating trapped residents
BEIJING — The city of Shanghai is doubling down on pandemic restrictions after a brief period of loosening up, frustrating residents who were hoping a more than monthlong lockdown was finally easing as the number of new cases falls in China’s financial center. Teams in white protective suits have begun...
Rare cases of covid returning pose questions for Pfizer pill
WASHINGTON — As more doctors prescribe Pfizer’s powerful covid-19 pill, new questions are emerging about its performance, including why a small number of patients appear to relapse after taking the drug. Paxlovid has become the go-to option against covid-19 because of its at-home convenience and impressive results in heading off...
FDA limits use of Johnson & Johnson covid vaccine over blood clot risks, agency says
The use of Johnson and Johnson’s covid-19 vaccine, also known as Janssen, has been limited to “certain individuals” over rare blood clot risks, the Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday. It’s now limited to those 18 and older “for whom other authorized or approved covid-19 vaccines are not accessible or...
Pa. health department transitions to weekly covid updates
The Pennsylvania Department of Health on Wednesday began providing covid-19 updates on a weekly basis rather than daily. Numbers of new covid cases, hospitalizations and deaths still are being provided on the department’s online dashboard, but it now will update once a week. “The covid-19 pandemic is not over, and...
WHO reports nearly 15M deaths associated with covid
LONDON — The World Health Organization is estimating that nearly 15 million people were killed either by the coronavirus or by its impact on overwhelmed health systems in the past two years, more than double the official death toll of 6 million. Most of the fatalities were in Southeast Asia,...
