Coronavirus category, Page 26

Conspiracy theorists need little more than suspicion, some cherry-picked facts and vibrant imaginations to spin tales about the origins of the covid-19 pandemic. But for the scientists working to establish the facts, the path to the truth is much more plodding. Their search will take them through a trove of...

German lawmakers approved new measures Thursday to rein in record coronavirus infections after the head of the country’s disease control agency warned Germany could face a “really terrible Christmas.” The measures passed in the Bundestag with votes from the center-left Social Democrats, the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats....

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla — A Florida teacher hospitalized with covid-19 has died after her husband unsuccessfully sued to force doctors to treat her with ivermectin, a drug popular among some skeptics of accepted coronavirus treatments despite a lack of studies proving its effectiveness. Tamara Drock died Friday, 12 weeks...

Pressed to address gaping inequality in global covid-19 vaccines, the Biden administration took steps Wednesday to make billions of dollars available to drugmakers to scale up domestic production to share with the world and prepare for the next pandemic. Under the new initiative, the government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development...

NEW YORK — An influential U.S. advisory panel will discuss expanding eligibility for covid-19 vaccine booster shots to all adults Friday, a move that could make the shots available nationwide as early as this weekend. Some cities and states already allow all adults to get boosters of Pfizer’s vaccine, but...

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh-based infectious disease expert and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, has said it since the beginning of the pandemic — that covid-19 was a respiratory virus and we were going to be living with it for a long time. In a...

WASHINGTON — Pfizer asked U.S. regulators Tuesday to authorize its experimental pill for covid-19, setting the stage for a likely launch this winter of a promising treatment that can be taken at home. The company’s filing comes as new infections are rising once again in the United States, driven mainly...

BERLIN — Austria took what its leader called the “dramatic” step Monday of implementing a nationwide lockdown for unvaccinated people who haven’t recently had covid-19, perhaps the most drastic of a string of measures being taken by European governments to get a massive regional resurgence of the virus under control....

Austria is putting unvaccinated people under lockdown starting Monday, the most drastic move by a Western European country to slow the latest wave of the coronavirus. European cases reached almost 2 million last week, the most in a single week in the region since the pandemic started. The Netherlands and...

PHILADELPHIA — The CDC’s color-coded vaccination map showed Pennsylvania had hit an impressive milestone this week: 95% of adults had gotten at least one dose of a covid-19 vaccine. Hours later, Gov. Tom Wolf touted the figure at a news conference. The staggering number would put Pennsylvania ahead of every...

He’s not going anywhere. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert who’s provided reassurance to many Americans during the pandemic, says he won’t quit until the country gets past covid-19. “I’m the head of an institute that actually played the major role in the development of the vaccines...

Pittsburgh-based Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease expert and critical care and emergency medicine physician, wrote in a opinion piece this week that it is impossible “to eliminate or eradicate covid-19.” “This is not possible with an efficiently spreading respiratory virus that has an animal reservoir and can spread from...

The government on Friday directed nursing homes to open their doors wide to visitors, easing many remaining pandemic restrictions while urging residents, families and facility staff to keep their guard up against outbreaks. The new guidance from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services instructs nursing homes to allow visits...

UPMC’s top doctor affirmed Thursday that Pennsylvania’s largest health system and nongovernment employer will comply with a newly issued federal mandate that all health care workers get vaccinated for covid-19 by early January, in line with prior pledges by competing medical providers in recent months. Dr. Donald Yealy, UPMC’s chief...

NEW YORK — People who trust Fox News Channel and other media outlets that appeal to conservatives are more likely to believe falsehoods about covid-19 and vaccines than those who primarily go elsewhere for news, a study has found. While the Kaiser Family Foundation study released this week found the...

Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration announced last week that it was prepared to lift the school mask mandate by Jan. 17. Why then, after the Commonwealth Court ruled Wednesday that Acting Health Secretary Alison Beam didn’t have the authority to issue the order in the first place, would the administration even...

Thousands of new covid-19 cases could appear in the state Department of Health’s Monday report as Pennsylvania begins counting reinfections, officials said. For the past 19 months, state health officials have counted only one case per infected person, even if that individual contracted the virus again at some later time....

AMSTERDAM — The European Medicines Agency has recommended the authorization of two new medicines against the coronavirus for people at risk of severe disease. In a statement on Thursday, the EU drug regulator said it had concluded that the monoclonal antibody treatments — a combination of casirivimab and imdevimab, and...

AUSTIN — A federal judge on Wednesday ordered a halt to the enforcement of Texas’ ban on mask mandates in the state’s schools. U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel ruled in Austin that the ban ordered by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott violated a federal law protecting disabled students’ access to public...

Allegheny County officials are asking all businesses to require their employees to be vaccinated against covid-19 by Jan. 1. “Jan. 1 will be a year since these vaccines have been available,” Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said during a news conference Wednesday. “We know how safe they are, we know...

Over the past 30 years, fire departments in both urban and rural areas have struggled to recruit new firefighters into a profession that’s more than half volunteers. In rural America, the pandemic has brought the crisis to a new apex. Rural firefighters have been on the front lines of the...

WASHINGTON — About 900,000 kids ages 5 to 11 will have received their first dose of the covid-19 vaccine in their first week of eligibility, the White House said Wednesday, providing the first glimpse at the pace of the school-aged vaccination campaign. Final clearance for the shots was granted by...

Pfizer asked U.S. regulators Tuesday to allow boosters of its covid-19 vaccine for anyone 18 or older, a step that comes amid concern about increased spread of the coronavirus with holiday travel and gatherings. Older Americans and other groups particularly vulnerable to the virus have had access to a third...

Pfizer on Tuesday asked the Food and Drug Administration to give the go-ahead on covid-19 booster shots for anyone 18 or older. According to the Associated Press, the company is submitting early results of a 10,000-person booster study to back up its request. The study suggested a booster shot could...