Tag: Vaccination and Immunization

How To Recognize Health Misinformation on Social Media

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday in a case that involves the Biden administration’s efforts to communicate with social media sites about posts officials believed made false or misleading claims about Covid-19 vaccines and the pandemic. While the case primarily focuses on a debate around free speech, it also spotlights the potential harms […]

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The Fourth Anniversary of the Covid Pandemic

Four years ago today, society began to shut down. Shortly after noon Eastern on March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared Covid — or “the coronavirus,” then the more popular term — to be a global pandemic. Stocks plummeted in the afternoon. In the span of a single hour that night, President Donald Trump […]

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7 Covid Mysteries Scientists Are Starting to Unravel

When the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a global pandemic in March 2020, nearly everything about the novel coronavirus was an open question: How was it spreading so quickly? How sick would it make people? Would a single bout buy you protection from future cases? In the four years since, scientists have unraveled some of […]

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He Had 217 Covid Shots Without Side Effects, Study Finds

Two years ago, German doctors stumbled across news reports of a man being investigated for receiving scores of coronavirus vaccines with no medical explanation. Then followed a flurry of speculation about what he had been up to. As it turned out, prosecutors were looking into whether he had been receiving so many extra doses as […]

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Vaccination Rates Dipped for Years. Now, There’s a Measles Outbreak in Britain.

The 5-year-old looked nervously at her older brothers, scanning their faces for any sign of distress as needles were swiftly stuck into their upper arms, the syringe plungers pushed in and the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine administered. Whether it was for her benefit or not, they barely flinched. Then it was her turn. The […]

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Brazil Has a Dengue Emergency, Portending a Health Crisis for the Americas

Brazil is experiencing an enormous outbreak of dengue fever, the sometimes fatal mosquito-borne disease, and public health experts say it is a harbinger of a coming surge in cases in the Americas, including Puerto Rico. Brazil’s Health Ministry warns that it expects more than 4.2 million cases this year, outstripping the 4.1 million cases the […]

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Alternating Arms for Vaccines May Boost Your Immunity, Study Says

If you’ve presented the same arm for every dose of a particular vaccine, you may want to reconsider. Alternating arms may produce a more powerful immune response, a new study suggests. The researchers studied responses to the first two doses of Covid-19 vaccines. Those who alternated arms showed a small increase in immunity over those […]

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Covid Vaccine Hesitancy Took Off This Winter. Can We Fix It?

The response has been almost like clockwork, at nearly every medical visit in the last few weeks. “It’s time for the flu shot,” I’ll say to my patients, “plus the updated Covid vaccine.” And that’s when the groans start. In the past, the flu shot elicited the most resistance. The patients at my New York […]

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Europe Faces a Measles Outbreak

The News Measles, a disease preventable by vaccination, is resurgent in Europe and in Britain. Small outbreaks have also popped up in multiple parts of the United States. In Europe, reported measles cases rose more than 40-fold last year compared with 2022, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday. Nearly a third of those cases […]

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Florida Health Official Calls for Halt to Covid Vaccines

Florida’s surgeon general on Wednesday called for a halt to the use of Covid vaccines, citing widely debunked concerns that contaminants in the vaccine can permanently integrate into human DNA. “These vaccines are not appropriate for use in human beings,” Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general and highest-ranking health official, said in a statement […]

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Covid Has Resurged, but Scientists See a Diminished Threat

The holidays have come and gone, and once again Americans are riding a tide of respiratory ailments, including Covid. But so far, this winter’s Covid uptick seems less deadly than last year’s, and much less so than in 2022, when the Omicron surge ground the nation to a halt. “We’re not seeing the signs that […]

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Covid Variant JN.1 Now Accounts for Nearly Half of U.S. Cases

As the holiday season winds down and Covid-19 cases start to pick up, a variant called JN.1 has now become the most common strain of the virus spreading across the United States. JN.1, which emerged from the variant BA.2.86 and was first detected in the United States in September, accounted for 44 percent of Covid […]

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Mandy Cohen, New CDC Director, Tries to Foster Trust in a Battered Agency

Dr. Mandy K. Cohen dropped by the Fox affiliate in Dallas in November, just days after the governor of Texas signed a law barring private employers from requiring Covid-19 shots. If she thought promoting vaccination would be a tough sell in a ruby-red state, Dr. Cohen, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control […]

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How a Rare Myocarditis Death Caught the Attention of the Anti-Vaccine Movement

Before he received his second shot of a Covid-19 vaccine, there was little reason to think that George Watts Jr. was about to die. He was 24 and showed no obvious heath problems. His family said he lived cautiously. He spent most of his time playing video games in his room at his parents’ house […]

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‘Medical Freedom’ Activists Take Aim at New Target: Childhood Vaccine Mandates

For more than 40 years, Mississippi had one of the strictest school vaccination requirements in the nation, and its high childhood immunization rates have been a source of pride. But in July, the state began excusing children from vaccination if their parents cited religious objections, after a federal judge sided with a “medical freedom” group. […]

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Climate Change Drives New Cases of Malaria, Complicating Efforts to Fight the Disease

There were an estimated 249 million cases of malaria around the globe last year, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, significantly more than before the Covid-19 pandemic and an increase of five million over 2021. Malaria remains a top killer of children. Those new cases were concentrated in just five countries: Pakistan, Nigeria, Uganda, […]

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Climate Change Drives New Cases of Malaria, Complicating Efforts to Fight the Disease

There were an estimated 249 million cases of malaria around the globe last year, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, significantly more than before the Covid-19 pandemic and an increase of five million over 2021. Malaria remains a top killer of children. Those new cases were concentrated in just five countries: Pakistan, Nigeria, Uganda, […]

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Unvaccinated and Vulnerable: Children Drive Surge in Deadly Outbreaks

Large outbreaks of diseases that primarily kill children are spreading around the world, a grim legacy of disruptions to health systems during the Covid-19 pandemic that have left more than 60 million children without a single dose of standard childhood vaccines. By midway through this year, 47 countries were reporting serious measles outbreaks, compared with […]

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Omicron, Now 2 Years Old, Is Not Done With Us Yet

By November 2021, nearly two years after the coronavirus emerged in Wuhan and spread across the world, the surprises seemed to be over. More than four billion people had been vaccinated against the virus, and five million had died. Two new variants, known as Alpha and Delta, had surged and then ebbed. As Thanksgiving approached, […]

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How R.F.K. Jr.’s Causes Made Him Millions of Dollars

In 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earned more than $500,000 as the chairman and top lawyer at Children’s Health Defense, the nonprofit organization that he has helped build into a leading spreader of anti-vaccine falsehoods and a platform for launching his independent bid for the White House. The compensation was almost three times as high […]

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Ending TB Is Within Reach — So Why Are Millions Still Dying?

At Kaneshie Polyclinic, a health center in a hardscrabble neighborhood of Accra, the capital of Ghana, there is a rule. Every patient who walks through the door — a woman in labor, a construction worker with an injury, a child with malaria — is screened for tuberculosis. This policy, a national one, is meant to […]

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DeSantis Leans Into Vaccine Skepticism to Energize Struggling Campaign

Gov. Ron DeSantis had hoped that his response to the coronavirus pandemic, which helped propel him to a resounding re-election in Florida last year, would produce similar results in the Republican presidential primary. But despite leaning into his record on Covid-19, Mr. DeSantis remains adrift in the polls and badly trailing former President Donald J. […]

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What to Know About Dengue Fever as Cases Spread to New Places

Cases of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne viral illness that can be fatal, are surging around the world. The increase is occurring both in places that have long struggled with the disease and in areas where its spread was unheard-of until the last year or two, including France, Italy and Chad, in central Africa. Last week, […]

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Do Early R.S.V. Vaccine Trials Have a Henrietta Lacks Story?

Respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V., is a nasty bug. It’s the leading cause of hospitalizations among American infants and results in thousands of deaths among the elderly each year. So earlier this year, after the Food and Drug Administration approved two vaccines for adults 60 and up, approved antibodies for babies and toddlers, and approved […]

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Feeling Terrible After Your Covid Shot? Then It’s Probably Working.

A new study has an encouraging message for Americans who shy away from Covid shots because of worries about side effects: The chills, fatigue, headache and malaise that can follow vaccination may be signs of a vigorous immune response. People who had those side effects after the second dose of a Covid vaccine had more […]

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How Do You Fight Bird Flu in France? Vaccinate 64 Million Ducks.

To protect its flocks and its foie gras from the ravages of bird flu, France has begun a mass vaccination of 64 million ducks. The campaign, which started this week, aims to prevent the spread of a deadly variant of avian influenza that has forced French farmers to cull more than 30 million birds in […]

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Americans Are Losing Trust in Science After Covid

Dr. Mandy Cohen has been on a national tour. The new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she aims to rebuild trust in that troubled agency at a moment when Covid-19 cases are rising again and the Biden administration has begun a new vaccine campaign. She has her work cut out for […]

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Kati Kariko Helped Shield the World From the Coronavirus

She grew up in Hungary, daughter of a butcher. She decided she wanted to be a scientist, although she had never met one. She moved to the United States in her 20s, but for decades never found a permanent position, instead clinging to the fringes of academia. Now Katalin Kariko, 66, known to colleagues as […]

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As Covid Infections Rise, Nursing Homes Are Still Waiting for Vaccines

A big obstacle, though, continues to be resistance to vaccination among nurses and aides. Like many facility owners, Avalon Health Care Group, which owns or operates more than a dozen nursing homes in western states, is not mandating staff be vaccinated. Dr. Sabine von Preyss-Friedman, Avalon’s chief medical officer, says she tries to address the […]

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New Covid Vaccines Hit Insurance Snags: What to Do if Yours Gets Denied

Vero Lopez was excited about getting the new Covid vaccine. She’s cautious about the virus, still carrying a mask around and avoiding indoor dining. So Ms. Lopez, 52, contacted her health care provider, Kaiser Permanente, as soon as she found out the shots were approved last week. She couldn’t get the vaccine through them yet, […]

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DeSantis Spreads Covid Vaccine Skepticism With Guidance Contradicting C.D.C.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida’s administration issued Covid-19 vaccine recommendations this week that directly contradicted federal officials’ guidance as his presidential campaign tries to use the resurgence of the virus to appeal to Republican voters. With cases ticking up, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended on Tuesday that everyone six months and older […]

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