In December, China abruptly abandoned its draconian “Zero Covid” policies, battered by a surge of infections and rising public anger against lockdowns. Half a year on, Covid cases again are on the rise, but this time the nation appears to be determined to press on with normal life as the government focuses on reigniting economic […]
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Biden administration officials were working on Tuesday to preserve funding for key components of the federal coronavirus response in negotiations with House Republicans over a deal to raise the debt limit, according to senior administration officials familiar with the talks. Administration officials are seeking to protect roughly $5 billion in funding for a program to […]
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When the health workers arrived at Upendo Primary School on the edge of the Tanzanian capital, they instructed girls who would turn 14 this year to line up to get a shot. Quinn Chengo held an urgent, whispered consultation with her friends. What was the injection for, really? Could it be a Covid vaccine? (They […]
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An advisory panel to the Food and Drug Administration voted on Thursday in favor of approving a vaccine by Pfizer to prevent the severe respiratory virus that is a potentially deadly threat to infants. The vaccine would be the first to protect babies from respiratory syncytial virus, or R.S.V., which is the reason many infants […]
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For millions of Americans, the Covid-19 emergency, that disorienting stretch of lockdowns, mandates, free-floating anxiety and exhaustion came to a muted end sometime during the past couple of years, brought about by vaccines and antiviral drugs. The expiration of the federal public health emergency on Thursday was a barely noticed formality. But signs remain everywhere […]
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A lot went wrong during the coronavirus pandemic as the virus tore through a polarized nation and public health leaders, policymakers and elected officials struggled to respond. Chronic underinvestment in public health at the federal, state and local levels only made things worse. All told, more than 1.1 million people have died of Covid-19 in […]
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Five years ago, a small group of cancer scientists meeting at a restaurant in a deconsecrated church hospital in Mainz, Germany, drew up an audacious plan: They would test their novel cancer vaccine against one of the most virulent forms of the disease, a cancer notorious for roaring back even in patients whose tumors had […]
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On Thursday, three years and 100 days after the Trump administration declared the coronavirus a public health emergency, the Biden administration will allow the emergency declaration to expire, ushering in a new era when the government will treat Covid-19 like any other respiratory ailment. If the coronavirus pandemic was a war, the United States is […]
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The official end of the nation’s Covid public health emergency on Thursday means that the country will begin to treat Covid-19 like any other transmissible disease, meaning the end of federal funds for free testing and treatment for all. In New York City, the rollback of the public health response has been underway for months. […]
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An old tuberculosis vaccine known to bolster the immune system did not prevent Covid infections among health care workers, scientists reported on Thursday. But the trial was shorter and smaller than originally designed, and the investigators said that the results did not rule out other potential benefits associated with the vaccine, known as B.C.G. for […]
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“Something clearly went wrong,” Anthony Fauci told me, reflecting on the long pandemic, in an interview for The New York Times Magazine. “I don’t know exactly what it was.” It has been a brutal three years. As the Covid-19 death toll first grew past 100,000 and then did that 11 times over, the country cast […]
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Just 3 percent of all Covid-19 vaccine doses delivered in 2021 went to Africa, home to a fifth of the world’s population, according to the World Health Organization. In the vast debacle of global vaccine inequity, it was Africa that was left furthest behind as the pandemic raged, and that had the least leverage to […]
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Deaths from Covid-19 in the United States are the lowest they’ve been since March 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s data tracker. Case rates have similarly plummeted, though infections have become harder to track because of the widespread availability of at-home rapid tests; many of the monitoring systems that were set […]
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In a nod to the ongoing risk the coronavirus poses to millions of Americans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended on Wednesday that adults 65 and older and those with weakened immune systems receive another dose of the reformulated booster that debuted last fall. The endorsement followed a daylong discussion by the C.D.C.’s […]
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More than half a century after his father sought the White House to end a calamitous war in Vietnam and to salve the country’s racial strife, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a presidential campaign on Wednesday built on re-litigating Covid-19 shutdowns and shaking Americans’ faith in science. Mr. Kennedy, a California resident, traveled to Boston, […]
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WASHINGTON — The Biden administration plans to spend more than $1 billion on a new program to offer free coronavirus shots to uninsured Americans later this year after the vaccines move to the commercial market, administration officials said. The program for the uninsured, which will be modeled partly on an existing childhood vaccination program, will […]
Read More WASHINGTON — The Biden administration plans to spend more than $1 billion on a new program to offer free coronavirus shots to uninsured Americans later this year after the vaccines move to the commercial market, administration officials said. The program for the uninsured, which will be modeled partly on an existing childhood vaccination program, will […]
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The News The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved an additional round of bivalent booster shots for adults who are 65 and over as well as people with compromised immune systems. The effort is to ensure ongoing protection against Covid, which is still claiming more than 1,300 lives each week. The bivalent shots target […]
Read More The News The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday approved an additional round of bivalent booster shots for adults who are 65 and over as well as people with compromised immune systems. The effort is to ensure ongoing protection against Covid, which is still claiming more than 1,300 lives each week. The bivalent shots target […]
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WASHINGTON — Robert F. Kennedy Jr. stood before the Lincoln Memorial in January 2022 and condemned the federal government’s coronavirus response by railing against totalitarianism. Jews in Nazi Germany, he suggested, had more freedom than Americans facing vaccination mandates and school, church and business closures in the era of Covid-19. “Even in Hitler’s Germany, you […]
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WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration plans to allow older and immunocompromised Americans to get a second updated coronavirus booster shot in the near future, an acknowledgment of the virus’s continuing risks to vulnerable people whose immunity might be sagging months after a previous inoculation. Federal regulators are expected to authorize the additional dose […]
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China has for the first time approved a Covid-19 vaccine based on mRNA technology, greenlighting a homegrown shot months after the ruling Communist Party eliminated its strict pandemic restrictions in December. The shot, developed by CSPC Pharmaceutical Group Ltd., based in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang, was approved for emergency use by China’s health […]
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KOKOMO, Ind. — Tammy Cunningham doesn’t remember the birth of her son. She was not quite seven months pregnant when she became acutely ill with Covid-19 in May 2021. By the time she was taken by helicopter to an Indianapolis hospital, she was coughing and gasping for breath. The baby was not due for another […]
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Pregnant women are particularly vulnerable to Covid-19, and new government data show that maternal mortality rose sharply in 2021, the second year of the pandemic. Here’s what women need to know to keep themselves safe. If I’m pregnant or trying to get pregnant, how do I protect myself from Covid? The most important step is […]
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We need to seriously change our approach to indoor air quality. Just as we expect clean water from our spigots, we should have cleaner air moving through our buildings. Better filters, more outdoor air intake and new technologies to diminish pathogen burden should all be part of the plan — these things are key for […]
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Cases typically involve people exposed to poultry. In the United States, the C.D.C., in partnership with state and local public health departments, is monitoring people who are exposed to H5N1. As of last week, 6,315 people had been monitored; 163 reported symptoms; and one tested positive, according to Dr. Tim Uyeki, the chief medical officer […]
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Three years after our lives were upturned by the Covid-19 pandemic, questions remain. What have we learned? What about our leaders and policymakers? What happens next time? Times Opinion will soon start a limited-run weekly newsletter, The Next Pandemic, exploring the most pressing ideas and debates on how to prepare for future threats. This includes […]
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After hours of deliberation over safety concerns, a Food and Drug Administration advisory panel on Wednesday recommended approval of a second vaccine for the respiratory syncytial virus in older adults, advancing the first shots against a respiratory illness that can be deadly for the very young and the very old. Over two days this week, […]
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The company has forecast Covid vaccine sales of $5 billion for 2023. The N.I.H. tends to be uneasy about aggressively asserting legal rights to its work, experts said, a stance that some activists believe hurts taxpayers who face high prices for medicines developed with government funding and research. In the case of the dispute over […]
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Over time, fatality rates considerably higher than those encountered with Covid would (one hopes) shake a lot of the country’s current mitigation fatalism — because a disease that kills 5 percent of those infected looks very different from one that kills only 1 percent. But a deadlier pandemic would probably also, perversely, reignite arguments over […]
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In early December, Aldo Caretti developed a cough and, despite all his precautions, came up positive for Covid on a home test. It took his family a couple of days to persuade Mr. Caretti, never fond of doctors, to go to the emergency room. There, he was sent directly to the intensive care unit. Mr. […]
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