Health category, Page 101

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson became the first leader of a major country to test positive for the coronavirus while disturbing new outbreaks appeared in the United States, deaths surged in Italy and Spain and the world warily trudged through the pandemic that has sickened more than a half-million people....

ELGIN, S.C. (AP) — With South Carolina’s first coronavirus hot spot just a short jaunt up the highway, Johellen Lee hadn’t been out for anything but groceries for nearly a month. “I looked like a hag,” she said. So she headed to see her best friend and hair stylist Erica...

Allegheny County health officials reported an additional 61 cases of covid-19 Saturday morning. That is more than twice the 25 new cases reported from Thursday to Friday. Females make up 110 cases, or 50.2%, and males account for 109 cases, or 49.8%. The age breakdown of cases is as follows:...

NEW ORLEANS — There were the great fires of 1788 and 1794 and the multiple yellow fever outbreaks of the 1800s. Hurricane Betsy hit in 1965, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the memories linger in New Orleans like remnants of a bad dream. Now the city is one of the...

America’s coronavirus infections have surged to the most in the world, reaching 100,000 cases Friday with New York still the worst hit in the country. Troubling new outbreaks are bubbling in other cities including Chicago, Detroit and New Orleans, which is rushing to build a makeshift hospital in its convention...

Kathy Payne has a routine: She wipes down the trays holding the mail she’s about to deliver. She puts on gloves to sort the letters and packages, then a new pair when she climbs into her vehicle. As she fills people’s mailboxes throughout the day, she constantly cleans her steering...

LOS ANGELES — The surge of coronavirus cases in California that health officials have warned was coming has arrived and will worsen, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Friday, while the mayor of Los Angeles warned that by early next week his city could see the kind of crush that has crippled...

Health care systems in Western Pennsylvania are working to equip all employees in clinical areas of its hospitals with protective masks. UPMC said it is also providing masks to staff and visitors to hospitals after they pass a screening test. Westmoreland County-based Excela Health, which has hospitals Greensburg, Latrobe and...

A study of 33 pregnant women in China who were infected with the new coronavirus found that three of them gave birth to babies with COVID-19. All three infants survived after receiving treatment for their symptoms, doctors reported Thursday in the medical journal JAMA Pediatrics. One of those infants was...

On one hand, efforts to slow the spread of covid-19 likely have contributed to a declining number of new flu cases in recent weeks, state Department of Health spokeswoman Brittany Lauffer said Wednesday. On the other, increased testing to identify covid-19 cases and people’s concern about the illness likely have...

One of the nation’s biggest health insures is waiving patient payments for hospital stays tied to the coronavirus. CVS Health’s insurer Aetna said Wednesday that many of its customers will not have to make co-payments or other forms of cost sharing if they wind up admitted to a hospital in...

Hospitals are gearing up to test if a century-old treatment used to fight off flu and measles outbreaks in the days before vaccines, and tried more recently against SARS and Ebola, just might work for COVID-19, too: using blood donated from patients who’ve recovered. Doctors in China attempted the first...

Brand-name disinfectants are flying off store shelves, snatched up by shoppers looking for effective weapons against the novel coronavirus. But some disinfectants are better than others; some probably aren’t necessary at all; and some can actually be harmful, spawning antibiotic-resistant bacteria. We reviewed recommendations for the general population from the...

My daughter called to tell me she was sent home from work when she told her boss she was not feeling well. “I hope I don’t have the ‘virus’,” she said. (She doesn’t.) Still, in motherly fashion, I reminded her to follow her physician’s instructions to stay home until she...

Dear Mayo Clinic: Is intermittent fasting for weight loss safe? What are the risks of short-term diets that are very low-calorie? Answer: Recent research has found that using intermittent fasting for weight loss may have some benefits in the short term. But at this point, the long-term effects of this...

At a time when emergency rooms are strained and hospital beds could become scarce, the Allegheny Health Network Brentwood Neighborhood Hospital is a welcome addition to the South Hills. The hospital, which is a partnership between AHN and Emerus (a nationwide developer and operator of neighborhood hospitals), opens 9 a.m....

Dr. Amesh Adalja, a Pittsburgh-based infectious disease expert and a fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, has been answering our questions throughout the coronavirus pandemic. We asked him six more on Sunday. Adalja, who has published papers on pandemic preparedness in the New England Journal of Medicine, stresses...

NEW YORK — Burgeoning coronavirus outbreaks at nursing homes in Washington, Illinois, New Jersey and elsewhere are laying bare the industry’s long-running problems, including a struggle to control infections and a staffing crisis that relies on poorly paid aides who can’t afford to stay home sick. That came into clear...

The world can change a lot in nine months. Last fall, everything seemed normal. Summer was drawing to a close. Work was good. My family took a short trip to Lake Erie. Football season was starting. Relatives visited. And my wife and I found out there was an addition to...

NEW YORK — Hospitals have been rushing to stockpile a decades-old antimalarial drug touted by President Donald Trump and others as a treatment for the new coronavirus. Hydroxychloroquine is being snapped up by medical systems at more than twice the typical pace as U.S. hospitals seek to build large inventories...

Environmental groups have long fought for animal rights, rallied against pollution and pushed back on overfishing, but a new message this week urged the nation to eat more seafood as it hunkers down during the coronavirus pandemic. Specifically, many are asking you to please buy American-caught seafood. “Over the past...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday ordered the state’s 40 million residents to stay at home, restricting non-essential movements to control the spread of the coronavirus that threatens to overwhelm the state’s medical system. “This is a moment we need to make tough decisions,” Newsom said. “We...

As coronavirus cases continue to rise rapidly across Pennsylvania, the state is seeing “significant hospitalization rates,” Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said Thursday. “It really is varying day to day,” Levine said during a daily covid-19 update. The reported average hospitalization rate is about 10%. Levine said Pennsylvania’s rate...

SEATTLE — Staff members who worked while sick at multiple long-term care facilities contributed to the spread of COVID-19 among vulnerable elderly in the Seattle area, federal health officials said Wednesday. Thirty-five coronavirus deaths have been linked to Life Care Center in Kirkland. A report Wednesday from the U.S. Centers...