Yesterday, AstraZeneca announced that they expect to have a new version of their COVID-19 vaccine ready by autumn. The adaptation will help to combat the current and emerging variants. The head of biopharmaceuticals research, Mene Pangalos, stated that the company...
Several pharmacy groups, including Walmart, Walgreens Boots Alliance, CVS Health, and Rite Aid, have reported that they’ve given millions more flu shots this year than in previous years. This is good news in the midst of the ever-growing pandemic. The flu is...
As the number of new cases is surging, the impacts of COVID-19 are really starting to be seen. One area that is taking a serious hit again is nursing homes. The nationwide totals for these facilities are the highest they’ve been since the beginning of August. In the...
With COVID-19 daily cases and hospitalizations passing what they were in the spring, experts are concerned. The same worries about not having enough hospital beds, equipment, and staff to take care of all the sick people are back, especially with Thanksgiving being a...
On Monday, the United States surpassed its 10 millionth coronavirus case. The current surge in volume is concerning, especially when you consider there were one million new infections in the last 10 days. Record numbers of cases are being recorded in 28 states, with...
President-elect Joe Biden has recently released his plans for handling the coronavirus pandemic. One focus is to encourage state and local leaders to put in place mask mandates, if needed, and continuing to practice social distancing. Biden’s goal is to have the...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed a smartphone app, V-SAFE, that will help them keep track of several things once vaccines are being rolled out to the public. The goal is to monitor for any serious side effects, especially in high-risk...
Today, the United States passed a grim milestone with having recorded 104,004 new cases of the coronavirus in a single day. This is the latest development in the surge that has started spiking in recent weeks. Seven states have set records for hospitalizations, with...
The rapport between President Trump and top public health officials has been contentious for months. One relationship in particular that has been fraught with tension is the one between the president and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of...
With the pandemic raging, there’s research going on to find factors that might contribute to the severity of illness a person experiences. Several recent studies have found that individuals who have extra weight are more vulnerable. Two different studies highlight the...
Today, President Trump declared a plan to dispense 150 million rapid coronavirus tests procured by the federal government to states, tribes, and other jurisdictions in the next few months. Experts were happy with this announcement because the country continues to...
While the overall death toll from COVID-19 is above 200,000, the number of children and teenagers that have died is around 100. According to data from the American Academy of Pediatrics and Children’s Hospital Association, 18 states haven’t had a single fatality in...
America has reached a grim milestone—the number of people who’ve died from COVID-19 has officially topped 200,000. This means that since the first known death related to the disease on February 6th, over 858 people have been dying each day. To put it in perspective,...
The number of deaths from COVID-19 is closing in on 200,000. Unfortunately, experts fear that figure could go much higher as they predict an influx in cases in the next several weeks. According to former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb,...
Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reversed their guidelines on who should be tested for the coronavirus after experts, both inside and outside the agency, raised concerns about public confusion over testing and how it’s impacting the...
Researchers at Yale University discovered that COVID-19 can infect the neurons in the brain. According to their data, the virus hijacks the machinery inside the neurons to make copies of itself. As it does this, it drains oxygen from nearby brain cells. The impact...
The vaccine candidate being developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca resumes after being paused for a week. The recommendation to restart came from an independent safety review committee and the United Kingdom health regulator. The study was halted after...
When the pandemic first started, people stopped going to preventative care appointments. According to data from the Health Care Cost Institute, vaccinations decreased by almost 60% in April. The nonprofit company looks at millions of health insurance claims and found...
The vaccine trial being conducted by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford was put on hold due to one of the participants experiencing an unexplained illness and the need to determine if it is related to the vaccine. The company called it a “routine action” to...
It’s coming up on that time of year where you should start thinking about getting your flu shot. Given that COVID-19 is ever-present, receiving the flu shot this year is paramount. The reason is that every year thousands of people go to hospitals because they’re sick...
In a press conference this past Sunday, President Trump announced that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was authorizing the use of convalescent plasma on an emergency basis to treat COVID-19. In the same briefing, the FDA commissioner, Stephen Hahn, claimed that...
One thing that has been clear since the beginning of the pandemic is that it disproportionately impacts people of color. A new study proposes that it doesn’t have to be this way. The study looked at 11,210 COVID-19 patients that sought care at one of the 92 Ascension...
The CEO of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, said that he was part of a meeting last month with President Trump. During the meeting, they discussed the possible benefits of using oleandrin as a treatment for COVID-19. In a recent press conference, the president said that he had...
Early this week, President Trump appointed a new advisor, Dr. Scott Atlas, to the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force. Dr. Atlas is a radiologist, senior fellow at conservative Hoover Institution of Stanford University, and a commentator on Fox News. Before these...
Scientists at the Department of Health in the United Kingdom announced that they’re releasing new tests for COVID-19 that can provide results in under 90 minutes. Two separate tests are going to be used to identify the coronavirus and several other common viruses. The...
Dr. Deborah Birx, the Coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, made a statement yesterday that the United States is entering a “new phase” of the pandemic. She said that it’s much more extensive than the outbreaks that occurred earlier this year in New...
One thing that we’ve heard about for a while is the importance of contact tracing. It’s usually a key element in public health as a means of reducing the spread of a pathogen. It’s been used for diseases like tuberculosis, yellow fever, and Ebola. Other countries...
The big question on everyone’s mind is how to reopen? Major League Baseball (MLB) tried starting their season this week, but the number of players and support staff testing positive for COVID-19 exploded. This has led many to question that if pro sports teams and...
This morning, two large-scale clinical trials for vaccines against COVID-19 began. The first is from Moderna in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health. It has 30,000 participants throughout our country. Pfizer is conducting the other with 30,000 members...
As we’re getting ever closer to the start of school, there is still so much that we don’t know about how the coronavirus impacts children. There has been much debate about the best way to handle the situation, but some new information from a study in South Korea might...
Yesterday, in a press conference, President Trump recognized that the coronavirus pandemic is becoming worse and would like to continue to do so. “It will probably, unfortunately, get worse before it gets better,” he said. He also endorsed the use of masks, which is a...
Cases of COVID-19 are surging and this has prompted many areas to issue mask mandates. However, some leaders across the country are still refusing to make them mandatory in public places. This is worrisome since there is mounting evidence showing that they benefit...
In an unpublished report from the White House Coronavirus Task Force, the officials recommend that at least the 18 hardest-hit states, such as California, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas, should be putting into place tougher measures, like mask mandates, and...
For a while now, we’ve been hearing that masks don’t really protect you, but protect others from getting the virus from you. However, there’s increasing evidence to indicate that they also protect you. The reason for this is that if you’re wearing a mask and are...
Amid fears over catching COVID-19, many patients are continuing to delay going to hospitals and doctors for routine care. This has been ongoing since the beginning of the pandemic. Initially, the healthcare community was supportive of this in hopes of limiting the...
As of yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized that COVID-19 can linger in the air of crowded indoor spaces. This announcement came after increasing evidence demonstrated that the virus is able to float in the air inside for hours, which caused over...
All around the world, scientists are trying to develop a test for COVID-19 that would give a result in less than an hour and wouldn’t need burdensome equipment or highly trained staff to operate it. The new tests would be able to be done in doctor’s offices, or even...
In an interview over the weekend, President Trump stated that “99%” of COVID-19 cases are “totally harmless.” This comment comes as over 130,000 Americans have succumb to the virus and at least 2.8 million have been infected with the number of cases starting to surge...
COVID-19 is starting to heavily impact areas that weren’t hard hit before. Many of these spaces are communities and states that are represented by Republican leaders. All of a sudden, these leaders are now recommending that their constituents wear masks, which is a...
The European Union (EU) announced yesterday that it’s reopening its borders to individuals from 14 countries (Algeria, Australia, Canada, Georgia, Japan, Montenegro, Morocco, New Zealand, Rwanda, Serbia, South Korea, Thailand, Tunisia and Uruguay), but America was not...
A mutation in the novel coronavirus is appearing in about 95% of all the genomes sequenced by infectious-disease specialists at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. The idea of a mutating virus isn’t new, in fact, it’s quite...
There has been rumors that testing was going to slow down a result of a comment made by President Trump at his rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. However, in a hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Committee early this week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National...
For the past several days, President Trump has been saying the reason that we’re seeing increases in the number of COVID-19 cases is the result of more Americans being tested. This might have been true back in April back before the country was really started to...
A three-page federal review conducted by two lawyers at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) found that the first testing kits issued by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) failed as a result of “likely” contamination because scientists...
A new study recently published in Nature Medicine found that antibodies to COVID-19 may only last two to three months in the human body. Antibodies are protective proteins that the body makes in response to being exposed to an infection. This timeframe is especially...
Scientists at the University of Oxford are hopeful that a commonly available and low-cost steroid, dexamethasone, can reduce the chances of death in patient with a severe infection of COVID-19. According to their research, they say that the drug decreased deaths of...
Contact tracing is when individuals who have had interaction with an infected person are notified and asked to self-isolate. This is an essential instrument in keeping the highly infectious COVID-19 from spreading further. As states are starting to reopen, you would...
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the World Health Organization (WHO) has had issues communications to the public with information about COVID-19. Unfortunately, there have been several times that they’ve had to recant what they said. This has led to significant...
The latest data is showing that there’s an increase in the number of cases with more hospitalizations since Memorial Day. In over a dozen states and Puerto Rico, they’re recording their highest averages of new cases since the pandemic started. In nine states, Texas,...
A study that was published today in Nature looked at the effect stay-at-home order and other restrictions had in reducing the spread of COVID-19. It found that they prevented 60 million infections in the United States and 285 million in China. A different study...
In the beginning of the pandemic, despite individuals presenting with the classic symptoms of COVID-19, many doctors used broad-spectrum antibiotics as a treatment even though they knew that they aren’t effective at treating viruses. Part of the reason they did this...
According to a federal government report, 60,000 nursing home residents have been infected with COVID-19 and over 25,000 have died so far. In addition, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said that the virus has infected 34,000 nursing home staff...
Today, President Trump gave a 10-minute address from the Rose Garden. During the speech, he didn’t take any responsibility for the loss of American lives, but said China had “instigated a global pandemic.” He went on to say, “The world is now suffering as a result of...
The Walt Disney Company has issued a statement that they plan to start reopening their theme parks in Orlando, Florida. The plan has several phases with Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom being open on July 11th and Epcot and Hollywood Studios opening on July 15th. The...
Per a new paper published in the journal Thorax, the COVID-19 outbreak on one cruise ship showed that over 80% of the individuals who tested positive didn’t have any symptoms. This means that asymptomatic transmission had been occurring. It has been difficult to know...
There is speculation among President Trump and top White House officials that the number of deaths related to COVID-19 aren’t real. The information that has been supplied by state health departments and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) include...
Today, the President toured the Owens & Minor Inc distribution center in Pennsylvania. According to White House officials, this center has produced millions of N95 masks, surgical gowns and gloves. All of these have been sent to hospitals and surgery centers...
Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was speaking to senators this past Tuesday and issued a warning in regards to reopening schools and the economy too quickly. He said that it could be dangerous and ending...
Today, House Democrats put forth a coronavirus relief package that would provide financial aid to states, businesses and families in the amount of $3 trillion. Of this, $1 trillion would be designated for state and local governments. In addition, $75 billion would be...
In a press conference today, President Trump addressed questions from reporters regarding the fact that three of the top officials of the Coronavirus response have decided to self-quarantine after coming into contact with a member of Vice-President Pence’s staff that...
In the past few days, there was a study released, that hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet, but claims that a mutation of COVID-19 created a new strain that seems to be more contagious and, possibly, more deadly. This mutation first appeared in Europe in February and...
A new study was released by scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, who were assisted in their research by scientists at Duke University and the University of Sheffield in England, has found a new strain of COVID-19. The team analyzed over 6,000 coronavirus...
On a fund-raising conference call organized by the European Union (EU) today that include leaders from around the world over $8 billion was raised to help fund research for developing a vaccine for COVID-19. The call lasted over three hours and countries provided...
A London-based research company, BenevolentAI, started looking at possible ways to treat the COVID-19 back in late January. They were using technologies to scan scientific literature about the virus. For the past several years, the company has been building technology...
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is planning to authorize emergency use for an antiviral drug, remdesivir, in treating patients infected with COVID-19. According to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease...
Scientists in Wuhan, China, where the COVID-19 outbreak began, have been continuing to study the novel virus. Recently, they’ve found the genetic markers for the virus in airborne droplets that are smaller than one-ten-thousandths of inch in diameter, which are called...
COVID-19 has thrown a curve ball at scientists when it comes to what symptoms people who have the disease actually are experiencing. Just today, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated the list of potential symptoms on their website. Prior to the...
There have been several recent studies done throughout the country that point to the fact the majority of people who have been infected with COVID-19 have not had symptoms. For example, on the aircraft carrier the Theodore Roosevelt, there have been 840 cases and, of...
With all the delays in getting testing results, there is definitely not a clear picture as to what the actual infection rate is throughout the country, many governors are trying to find ways to reopen their states. The lack of information available to them as they try...
Earlier this week, the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp (R), issued a statement that today certain businesses, such as barbershops, nail salons, gyms, bowling alleys and tattoo parlors, would be allowed to be reopen. In addition, starting Monday, dine-in service would...
It doesn’t matter what news source you watch, you’ve probably heard about the shortage of supplies. These shortages include not just beds, ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE), but doctors, nurses and other healthcare personnel. The issue with these...
When it comes to dealing with COVID-19, Singapore seemed to have it under control. They had their first case on January 23rd and within a very short time, had traced the contacts of all of the infected individuals (they can trace up to 4,000 contacts of patients each...
The congressional Democrats and the White House maybe close to an agreement for an additional relief package. This one would be targeted toward replenishing the emergency fund for small businesses, also known as the Paycheck Protection Program, which ran out of the...
It has been widely talked about for several weeks. The first test kits for COVID-19 that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) laboratories in Atlanta developed were ineffective. These tests were sent to almost all of the 100 state and local public...
As of today, the number of COVID-19 cases has surpassed more than 2 million people worldwide. The number of deaths is over 130,000. The numbers doubled in about 13 days and are growing continually. Many public health officials fear that the numbers are actually much...
There has been an emerging link between air pollution and deaths from COVID-19. Harvard researchers recently released a study that looked at the link between long-term air pollution exposure and deaths as the result of the virus. They found that if a person lives for...
The White House trade adviser, Peter Navarro, is charged with coordinating the country’s medical supply chain. He issued a warning today that a prolonged shutdown of nonessential commerce may result in a wide range of negative health effects. He further states that...
Over the weekend, President Trump signaled his frustration with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984 and a lead member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. This comes after Dr. Fauci said in an...
Research is pointing to data that shows that COVID-19 was in the New York area by mid-February. This was weeks before there was a confirmed case. According to geneticists, the origin of the strain of the virus in New York is from Europe, not Asia. Two independent...
Currently, there aren’t any treatment options specific to COVID-19. This has led to many scientists and doctors to try new and innovative therapies. It has also caused several potential therapies to be purported as a treatment without enough information to support...
The latest target of attack for President Trump’s blame regarding response to COVID-19 is the World Health Organization (WHO). In a press conference yesterday, he said that failures and mistakes by the organization resulted in the virus spreading the way it has. Due...
New York City has become the center of the battle against COVID-19 here in the United States. While it’s infecting all people across the state, new numbers show that it’s hitting men harder and killing them at twice the rate. Per the city’s health department, there...
As of this past weekend, over 9,400 people across the country have been reported as succumbing to the virus. However, experts say that the true number of COVID-19 cases and deaths aren’t known and most likely much higher than the reported numbers. They express that...
For the past few weeks, President Trump has been on the news touting a possible treatment for COVID-19—hydroxychloroquine. The medication is normally used to treat malaria or autoimmune disorders, such as lupus or rheumatoid arthritis. The later is why some think that...
New York is the epicenter of our nation’s battle against COVID-19. Unfortunately, they’ve reported their highest number of deaths (562) in a single day. This brought the total number deaths in New York to 3,000, which is double what it was just three days ago. During...
As of yesterday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new test for antibodies of the COVID-19. This is different from the current testing that is being done, which is designed to tell if a person has an active infection. These tests use a nose or throat...
There’s no question that with information about COVID-19 is changing rapidly and constantly. Many people are trying to stay informed and keep their loved ones informed too. So, information, whether or not it is true, is being spreading like wildfire as people are...
A travel ban means that individuals from a certain area aren’t allowed to enter or leave an area. In the case of the travel bans put into place by the Trump administration, this means that individuals coming from various parts of the world are not permitted to enter...
Article updated with latest information on 04/13/2020. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), COVID-19 is spread from person to person mainly through respiratory droplets that are expelled into the air when an infected person coughs or sneezes. These...
All over the news there is discussions going on about trying to ‘flatten the curve’. There’s usually a graph that accompanies this as well (see image). For many, it’s confusing, so let’s break it down. The red area shows how the number of cases increase dramatically...
Many people have been wondering how to clean surfaces in their home. According to health officials, this is just as critical as washing your hands. This has led individuals to try to figure out what products to use that will get rid of COVID-19. In response to these...
If you’ve been following the White House Task Force press conferences, you’ve been seeing several different faces talking at the podium. If you’re like most people, you probably don’t recognize anyone other than President Trump and Vice-President Pence. Who are these...
There has been significant amount of talk surrounding social distancing. This has led to confusion around what it is. Sometimes, it’s been used interchangeably with self-quarantine, but are they really the same thing? Social distancing, or physical distancing, is...
The number of confirmed coronavirus cases found on the ship, the Diamond Princess, had grown to 355 in total and 55 of those being American citizens. Of the 3,700 passengers there are 400 American passengers on board. Some were evacuated this past Monday. Initially,...
A Chinese tourist died in France yesterday marking the first death related to COVID-19 in Europe and the first outside of Asia. The tourist was an 80-year-old man from the Hubei province of China. He was traveling with his daughter, who also tested positive and is...
As infections and fatalities are swelling, the world’s second-largest economy is almost at a standstill. Given the restrictions put in place to contain the spread of the virus many urban manufacturing and financial centers are on at least partial lockdowns, migrant...
If you’ve been watching the news, you’ve probably seen health officials using an infrared thermometer to check individuals’ temperatures before they’re allowed to go into grocery stores or other public buildings. It seems like an easy enough way to see if someone has...
Just one week ago, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) starting shipping out test kits to select qualified US and international laboratories. The kits are designed for use with an existing testing instrument that is commonly used to test for seasonal influenza. The...
Officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) have chosen a name for the new coronavirus. It’s now called COVID-19. It’s an acronym for coronavirus disease 2019. The goal was to find a name that didn’t give any reference to people, places or animals to avoid any...
According the numbers released early today, the death toll in China is 811, which is past the number of individuals who died in the 2003 SARS epidemic, which killed 774 people worldwide. There are 37,198 confirmed cases in China, but many doctors believe the number is...
Whenever there is video footage or images of people walking around a city during an outbreak of an illness, they all seem to be wearing face masks. This has led to many people buying face masks in mass quantities. This begs the question: Do they really protect you?...
There has been some concern from doctors in China that the new coronavirus might be spread by individuals that don’t exhibit any symptoms of the illness. A recent letter that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on January 30th appears to back these...
As of Sunday, the first death outside of China has occurred in the Philippines. It was a 44-year-old man who was resident of Wuhan and had arrived in the Philippines on January 21st. As it stands now, the number of deaths is over 360 with the majority of them...
Article updated with latest information on 07/09/2020. One of the challenging aspects of COVID-19 is that some of the symptoms associated with it are similar to that of the common cold, allergies or the flu. The other issue is that the virus is still so new that all...
As of yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) has officially declared the novel coronavirus a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). It was only a week ago that WHO had decided to hold off on making this declaration. The reason they...
One of the best ways to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is by using proper handwashing techniques. Unfortunately, many of us don’t know the best way to do this. Let’s take a closer look at the steps: 1. Turn on the water and get your hands wet. This helps you to spread...
The number of deaths in China reached 100 today. The estimated number of cases is to be just under 3,000. As a result of the increasing amount of cases, Chinese officials placed Wuhan and some surround areas on partial lockdown as of last Thursday. Officials also...
A man who lives in Washington state was the first American to be diagnosed with the new coronavirus. He recently returned from visiting Wuhan, China and once back in the United States, started to have symptoms associated with the novel virus. He has been taken to the...
While in China the new coronavirus has claimed another life, it’s also on move and has made it to Thailand and Japan. As of this past Monday, Thai officials announced that there are two confirmed cases. Japan only has one case so far. In talking to the first patient...
As of three days ago, Chinese officials have reported that there is a new virus found in the city of Wuhan that first appeared in late December. The virus is causing pneumonia-like symptoms, such as fever, difficulty breathing and lung lesions. So far, it has infected...