CNN – Health

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN The future of Covid-19 vaccines — including when and how often booster doses might be needed — remains unclear and “complex,” according to advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration. The FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) detailed in a meeting Wednesday how emerging coronavirus variants and

By Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN Most Americans say the way they conduct their lives is still affected to some extent by the pandemic, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Wednesday, though fewer say their activities remain dramatically curtailed. A majority also favor continued masking in some public places, and say they’ve continued to

By Tasnim Ahmed, CNN Watching an ad in which former President Donald Trump promoted Covid-19 vaccines was linked to increased vaccinations in US counties with low immunization rates, according to a new study. The study was released Monday as a working paper in the National Bureau of Economic Research that has not yet been peer-reviewed.

By Brenda Goodman, CNN From the early days of the pandemic, doctors noticed that in severe cases of Covid-19 — the ones that landed people in the hospital on ventilators with shredded lungs — most of the internal wreckage wasn’t being directly inflicted by the virus itself but by a blizzard of immune reactions triggered

By Jen Christensen, CNN Covid-19 has become a chronic condition for tens of millions of people — and an expensive one, as well. Long Covid — a condition marked by lingering symptoms that can involve multiple bodily systems — has cost a cumulative $386 billion in lost wages, savings and medical expenses in the US

By Brenda Goodman, CNN Maybe BA.2 really is the “stealth variant.” The Omicron subvariant caused as many as 3 in 4 cases of Covid-19 in the United States last week, according to the latest genomic surveillance from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but so far, there are no signs of a looming

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN An additional 42 genes connected to the development of Alzheimer’s disease have been uncovered in the largest study of genetic risk for Alzheimer’s to date. “This is a landmark study in the field of Alzheimer’s research and is the culmination of 30 years’ work,” study co-author Julie Williams, center director at

By Jen Christensen, CNN A fourth dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine seems to offer short-lived protection against infection overall, but protection against severe illness did not wane for at least several weeks, according to a new study. The study, published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, looked at the health records of

By Virginia Langmaid, CNN A new study found that women in the US face the highest rates of preventable and maternal mortality when compared with women in 10 other wealthy nations. According to data collected by the Commonwealth Fund and published Tuesday, American women have an avoidable mortality rate of 198 per 100,000, the highest

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN Advisers to the US Food and Drug Administration are scheduled to meet Wednesday to get a clearer picture of what the future of Covid-19 booster shots might look like. Just last week, the FDA expanded the emergency use authorization of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines to allow adults 50 and older

By Jessica DuLong, CNN In recent years, public figures openly sharing their mental health struggles have helped lift fellow sufferers out of silent shame and stigma. A few decades earlier, the introduction of new medications to treat depression and anxiety disrupted the depiction of mental health problems as a personal failing in favor of an

By John Bonifield, CNN US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky announced a sweeping review of the nation’s lead public health agency Monday. The review will evaluate the CDC’s structure, systems and processes, Walensky told CDC staff in an email. Starting April 11, Jim Macrae, an administrator with the US Department

By Tasnim Ahmed, CNN Pandemic hospitalization rates are at new lows, the vast majority of US counties have low community levels of the coronavirus, and as of March 25, all 50 states have lifted mask requirements. But is there a cost to lifting restrictions and trying to return to a pre-pandemic normal? In a new

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN Interest in using wastewater surveillance to monitor Covid-19 continues to grow in the United States, as the values of the early detection tool come into clearer focus. In September 2020, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched the National Wastewater Surveillance System, investing millions of dollars in an effort

By Kristen Rogers, CNN For some people, coffee jump-starts their bowel movements in addition to their energy. Despite the drink’s popularity, there isn’t a lot of research on why coffee sends many people running to the bathroom within minutes of consuming it. “In some cases, as with coffee and bowel movements, there likely just hasn’t