Health

Though many Americans are eager to return to normal after a year of living through the Covid-19 pandemic, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Wednesday reminded Americans that “we’re not quite there yet.” “We are so close — so very close to getting back to the everyday activities we

For the first few months of her life, Ayah Lundt was the picture of health. Born in January last year at a whopping 8.3 pounds, the bubbly baby girl with dark curls and bright brown eyes hit all her developmental milestones. By six months, she was crawling and trying new foods. Bananas and mushy broccoli

Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson said Wednesday it had found a quality problem at a Baltimore plant helping manufacture its single-dose coronavirus vaccine under contract. The New York Times reported Wednesday. that workers at Emergent BioSolutions, the Baltimore plant that has been making Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine, accidentally mixed up some of the ingredients, ruining

If you think herd immunity is the finish line to this pandemic, it’s time for a reality check. Herd immunity with Covid-19 could come and go, scientists say. Or we might never reach it at all. “There’s a lot of things that have to go our way to actually get to herd immunity,” said Dr.

The Covid-19 pandemic had a significant and negative impact on pregnant women and their infants, according to a global review of studies. The review, published Wednesday in the journal the Lancet, found that stillbirths and maternal deaths increased by nearly a third, according to pooled data from 40 studies that covered 17 countries. There was

Mounting evidence suggests the more contagious coronavirus variant first identified in the UK, which experts believe is partly driving an uptick of cases in places like Michigan, may already be dominant across the US. “I think we are there,” said William Lee, vice president of science at Helix, a company whose tests have identified a

Two US counties will receive a surge of free, rapid, at-home Covid-19 tests in an effort to study how people use them and how that impacts Covid-19 trends in the community, according to an announcement Wednesday by the National Institutes of Health. The project — called “Say Yes! COVID Test” — will roll out 2

A dangerous coronavirus variant is wreaking havoc in other parts of the world, so the US must stick with safety measures over the next few months to prevent that kind of damage as the variant takes more of a hold stateside, an expert says. The B.1.1.7 variant, first spotted in the UK, is more contagious,

Theories about a laboratory leak being the source of the coronavirus pandemic sound like something out of a comic book, one virologist says. Dr. Robert Garry of Tulane University and other virologists have been publishing studies for a year that demonstrate SARS-CoV-2 originated naturally in animals and is unlikely to have been engineered in a

Despite the country slowly opening up after a year of Covid-19 restrictions, the amount of blood donations needed has stayed in high demand. American Red Cross chief medical officer Dr. Pampee Young said the organization is in critical need of blood and platelet donations. “The demand for blood never goes away because it’s got a

The Democratic-led House select committee reviewing the federal response to Covid-19 says it obtained documents that show the Trump administration at the start of the pandemic crisis “pursued a haphazard and ineffective approach to procurement” of personal protective equipment and medical supplies. In letters to three government agencies dated Tuesday, the House Select Subcommittee on

Covid-19 was the third leading cause of death in the United States last year, after heart disease and cancer, according to provisional data released on Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The death rate from 2019 to 2020 increased by 15.9%, going up from 715.2 to 828.7 deaths per 100,000 people,

There are three Covid-19 vaccines authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration, and they all required that each vaccine manufacturer conduct clinical trials with tens of thousands of volunteers to ensure that the vaccines are safe and effective. CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen participated in a clinical trial for the Johnson & Johnson

New Covid-19 cases have spiked in the US in the last several days, the latest data showed Tuesday — and White House and health officials are pleading with the country to take more precautions until more people can be vaccinated. The country has averaged 65,700 new cases a day over the last week — a

Germany will only administer AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine to people aged 60 and above, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Tuesday, following the advice of the country’s vaccine committee. The move follows reports of rare blood clots in the brains of 31 people following the first dose since the shots started being administered in the country. The decision

Thank God for vaccines. The Biden administration’s mass vaccination campaign comes just as spring brings warmer weather and longer days, fueling a sense of broad optimism for many across the United States. On weekend nights, cities like New York are again brimming with pleasure-seekers; you can feel the raw and almost feral enthusiasm of millions