There are days, now, when you can almost forget about the virus. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world are still being infected with Covid-19 daily — an average of about 361 Americans died from it every day in the last week — but after more than two years and millions of lost lives, […]
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Back in March, when The Times asked readers how they felt about vaccinating their kids under 5, many said they were desperate — quite a few used that exact word — to get their little ones the shot. This sentiment, from Laurel K., the mother of a toddler in San Francisco, was typical: I respect […]
Read More Back in March, when The Times asked readers how they felt about vaccinating their kids under 5, many said they were desperate — quite a few used that exact word — to get their little ones the shot. This sentiment, from Laurel K., the mother of a toddler in San Francisco, was typical: I respect […]
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As countries, including Canada and Britain, have lifted their Covid testing requirements for vaccinated visitors in recent months, some Americans are irate that they still have to show a negative test to board a flight back to the United States. Jason Miller, a 37-year-old software engineer who lives in Texas, is so frustrated with the […]
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Dr. Jha said the current incidence of severe disease would be worse if not for Paxlovid, an oral treatment developed by Pfizer that helps prevent severe illness if taken soon after symptoms develop. Doctors are prescribing Paxlovid pills to about 20,000 patients a day, he said. That may help explain why the rates of hospitalization […]
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As the coronavirus morphs into a stubborn and unpredictable facet of everyday life, scientists and federal health officials are converging on a new strategy for immunizing Americans: a vaccination campaign this fall, perhaps with doses that are finely tuned to combat the version of the virus expected to be in circulation. The plan would borrow […]
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TOKYO — Last December, after two years of stop-and-go growth, Japan’s economic engine seemed like it might finally be revving up. Covid cases were practically nonexistent. Consumers were back on the town, shopping, eating out, traveling. The year 2021 ended on a high note, with the country’s economy expanding on an annual basis for the […]
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A virus that shows no signs of disappearing, variants that are adept at dodging the body’s defenses, and waves of infections two, maybe three times a year — this may be the future of Covid-19, some scientists now fear. The central problem is that the coronavirus has become more adept at reinfecting people. Already, those […]
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A widow in North Carolina whose husband died of Covid-19 feels crushed when she hears people talk casually about life in America returning to normal. I will never go back to normal, she thinks to herself. I still feel as though I am missing a limb. A man in New York City who lost his […]
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Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand who led the island nation through the pandemic, has tested positive for the coronavirus, her office said on Saturday. Ms. Ardern has had moderate symptoms since Friday evening, her office said, adding that she has been in isolation since her partner, Clarke Gayford, tested positive last Sunday. […]
Read More Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister of New Zealand who led the island nation through the pandemic, has tested positive for the coronavirus, her office said on Saturday. Ms. Ardern has had moderate symptoms since Friday evening, her office said, adding that she has been in isolation since her partner, Clarke Gayford, tested positive last Sunday. […]
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Waiting might be more effective in the long run. The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to recommend vaccination for all children and adolescents ages 5 and older, including for those were previously infected. But jumping from that to a mandate is a big step. Several experts said it would be better to keep focusing on […]
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In early 2021, scientists in Colombia discovered a worrisome new coronavirus variant. This variant, eventually known as Mu, had several troubling mutations that experts believed could help it evade the immune system’s defenses. Over the following months, Mu spread swiftly in Colombia, fueling a new surge of Covid-19 cases. By the end of August, it […]
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“People can be fed up, angry, tired and frustrated — I am too,” he said. “But wishing the pandemic away doesn’t make it so.” Mr. Adams introduced the color-coded alert system in March, based on parameters set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. New York had remained since then at the lowest level […]
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Coronavirus cases are surging again in South Africa, and public health experts are monitoring the situation, eager to know what’s driving the spike, what it says about immunity from previous infections and what its implications are globally. South Africa experienced a decline in cases after hitting an Omicron-fueled, pandemic peak in December. But in the […]
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China’s leader, Xi Jinping, waved at crowds of giddily cheering students. He held meetings with Olympic Games officials, economic policymakers and European leaders. He toured a tropical island. But there was a revealing gap in Mr. Xi’s busy itinerary last month, exposing the predicament that Covid is creating in a politically crucial year when he […]
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Covid-19 treatments are widely available to at-risk New Yorkers, but many who could benefit from them may not even be aware they exist. One such treatment, an antiviral medication called Paxlovid, is very effective, said Dr. Ted Long, the head of New York City’s Test and Trace Corps, a city program that provides free testing […]
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Dr. Michael Z. Lin, a professor of neurobiology at Stanford, told me that clear observation and sensible rules were important but only if they made sense when considering the science behind them. “If we only relied on empirical observations and never developed theories to act on,” Lin said, “we’d still be in the Middle Ages […]
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Sixty percent of Americans, including 75 percent of children, had been infected with the coronavirus by February, federal health officials reported on Tuesday — another remarkable milestone in a pandemic that continues to confound expectations. The highly contagious Omicron variant was responsible for much of the toll. In December 2021, as the variant began spreading, […]
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Four days into a coronavirus lockdown in her Shanghai neighborhood, Ding Tingting began to worry about the old man who lived alone in the apartment below her. She knocked on his door and found that his food supply was dwindling and that he didn’t know how to go online to buy more. Ms. Ding helped […]
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Yang Wenhui should be a proud example of China’s rise from economic rubble to global powerhouse. Growing up poor, he ate so much cabbage that he didn’t touch it again for many years. He worked as a farmer and a construction worker before joining the country’s nascent logistics industry. In 2003, he started his own […]
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Hours after a federal judge struck down a nationwide mask requirement on airplanes, trains, buses and other public transportation on Monday, the country’s largest airlines said they would stop requiring masks, ending a practice that had been in place for most carriers for nearly two years. The airlines weighed in after a Biden administration official […]
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How many Russian military officers watching that humiliation were ready to tell Putin the truth about Ukraine once the war started going badly? When the Russian military was up against foes in Georgia, Syria, Crimea and Chechnya, Russia could just indiscriminately bomb its way out of any problem. But now that Putin’s military has found […]
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PHILADELPHIA — The city of Philadelphia has become the first major American city to reinstate an indoor mask mandate this spring, responding to sharply rising numbers of new coronavirus cases. The reinstatement, announced last week, took effect Monday. The mandate requires masks in all indoor public places, though businesses have the option of choosing instead […]
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Several hundred children ages 5 to 11 have died of Covid since the pandemic began, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but pediatric shots have been a hard sell for many parents. Only about 28 percent of children in that age group have received two doses and would be eligible for a […]
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When the highly transmissible Omicron variant of the coronavirus arrived in the United States last fall, it pushed new case numbers to previously unseen peaks. Even then, the record wave of recorded infections was a significant undercount of reality. In New York City, for example, officials logged more than 538,000 new cases between January and […]
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Nearly 400 million people are estimated to be under some form of lockdown in China as officials try to stop a fast-moving Omicron outbreak that is beginning to weigh on the world’s second-largest economy. Hundreds of thousands of people have been sent to isolation facilities in China and millions more have been told to stay […]
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Covid outbreaks in elite circles in Washington, D.C., and on Broadway have received a lot of media attention in recent days, but they appear to be only one part of a broader regional rise in infections: States in the Northeast are now reporting an uptick in cases. Last week, this newsletter covered what seemed like […]
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With new coronavirus cases low but rising sharply in recent days, the city of Philadelphia announced on Monday that it will reinstate an indoor mask mandate a little more than a month after lifting it, becoming the first major U.S. city to do so. “This is our chance to get ahead of the pandemic,” said […]
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America’s attempt to vaccinate the world against Covid is about to come to an end. “We are at a point now where without additional funding we are going to have to start winding down our programming,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, the leader of the United States Agency for International Development’s Covid-19 task force. Such funding does […]
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The highly contagious subvariant of Omicron, known as BA.2, has prompted concern among health officials as it becomes the dominant version of the coronavirus around the world. So far, signs suggest that BA.2 is 30 to 80 percent more transmissible than the original version of Omicron, and cases are already going up in several states […]
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