All posts tagged "Infectionsandinfectiousdiseases"

President-elect Joe Biden’s goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans during his first 100 days in office got a seal of approval from the country’s top infectious disease expert on Sunday. “The feasibility of his goal is absolutely clear, there’s no doubt about it,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He also voiced approval for steps Biden has outlined. The president-elect promised Friday to boost vaccine production and distribution as the coronavirus outbreak continues to rage. “What the president-elect is ......

As if 2020 needed any more alarming headlines, each day brings news about the new “mutant” strain of the coronavirus identified in Great Britain, where health officials have proclaimed that it spreads far more readily than the microbe that has been crisscrossing the globe for months. Well, maybe. Scientists who study the biology of viruses say that so far, there is no proof that this new strain is more transmissible, only what amounts to circumstantial evidence. Human behavior and random chance also could explain the sudden emergence of the strain which, given that it was identified in a Color......

NEW YORK — New York Attorney General Letitia James is launching an investigation into a Brooklyn-based health care network that publicly boasted about doling out coronavirus vaccine shots on a “first come, first serve basis” in apparent violation of the state’s restrictions on inoculations. In a statement Monday, James said her office opened the probe after learning that COVID-19 vaccine doses were “wrongfully distributed and administered” by ParCare Community Health Network, which serves predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods across Brooklyn and upstate Orange County. “In order for the v......

The number of air travelers in the United States soared to a pandemic high on Sunday despite the ongoing surge of COVID-19 cases. A whopping 1,284,599 travelers were recorded at checkpoints by the Travel Security Administration on Sunday, marking the largest single-day total since mid-March, when the number of fliers greatly declined due to the coronavirus outbreak. Sunday’s large number of airport visitors came two days after Christmas. Ahead of the holidays, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that traveling “can increase the chance of getting and spreading the virus that c......

A 33-year-old California woman who works at Disney allegedly jumped the line for the first round of her COVID-19 vaccine through a connection at a local hospital. The woman, who has not been publicly identified, bragged on Facebook about getting the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine ahead of the general public, the Orange County Register reported Saturday, when primarily just frontline health care workers and people in long-term care facilities are supposed to be receiving the shot. “When I woke up this morning, I didn’t think I would be getting the COVID-19 vaccine today. But here we are. I’m ......

The COVID-19 vaccines rolling out across the nation are lifting spirits over the holidays. But there's also budding concern about new strains of the virus that have been discovered in Great Britain, South Africa and possibly in Nigeria. Scientists say they are hopeful, but unsure, that the vaccines will repel the mutants. The variant found in Great Britain may be more contagious than the original virus. And it's unclear if the pathogens will take hold in the U.S., where nearly 19 million people have already been infected. There's lots of uncertainty because things are happening quickly. Resear......