Category: News

People around the world, trapped in their homes amid a health crisis, have something to look forward to this week when the full moon appears as a supermoon for the second of three times this year and in its most spectacular form.  A phenomenon known as the Super Pink Moon will make an appearance over a couple of nights this week. It will be the biggest and brightest on Tuesday, but its appearance on Monday and Wednesday will also be worth viewing. Housebound people are more likely than usual to want to step out into their yards or poke their heads out of their windows to watch this so-called supermoon and develop a new appreciation for the natural world or renew an old one. A full moon appears approximately once a month. When the moon gets closest to the Earth in its orbit, it appears bigger and brighter than usual and is called a supermoon. A supermoon can look up to 14% bigger and 30% brighter than a regular monthly full moon.  Most years have 12 full moons, but this year will have 13, three of them supermoons. The April supermoon follows the one of March 9 and precedes the one coming on…

Tuesday is World Health Day, which is being commemorated as the world faces one of the biggest international health threats of the past century. The head of the World Health Organization, director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, told a virtual news conference Monday in Geneva that the organization is paying tribute to the contribution of health care workers who have been at the forefront of treating patients with the coronavirus. He said Worth Health Day, which is celebrated each year on the World Health Organization’s founding day, is usually one of the group’s biggest days of the year, but this year the day is being overshadowed by the coronavirus pandemic. The 2020 Worth Health Day was “supposed to be the main event in our assembly in May. Unfortunately, we are in this situation,” Tedros said. He…

The debate over the usefulness of an antimalarial drug to treat U.S. coronavirus victims is pitting President Donald Trump against the country’s top U.S. infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci. With the U.S. coronavirus death toll increasing by hundreds a day, Trump at daily news briefings regularly touts the use of hydroxychloroquine, calling it a potential “game-changer” to save lives.  President Donald Trump speaks during a coronavirus task force briefing at the White House, April 5, 2020, in Washington."What do you have to lose? Take it," the president said in a White House briefing over the weekend. "I really think they should take it. But it's their choice. And it's their doctor's choice or the doctors in the hospital. But hydroxychloroquine — try it if you'd like." Fauci, often standing a step…

 The new coronavirus made Dr. Jag Singh a patient at his own hospital.His alarm grew as he saw an X-ray of his pneumonia-choked lungs and colleagues asked his wishes about life support while wheeling him into Massachusetts General’s intensive care unit.An X-ray room is seen at a Hospital in Fairfax, Virginia. (Photo: Diaa Bekheet). In some hospitals, chest X-ray has taken center stage as a frontline diagnostic test for COVID-19 patients.When they offered him a chance to help test remdesivir, an experimental drug that’s shown promise against some other coronaviruses, “it did not even cross my mind once to say ‘no,’” said Singh, a heart specialist.Coronavirus patients around the world have been rushing to join remdesivir studies that opened in hospitals in the last few weeks.Interest has been so great…

Americans in overwhelming numbers are actively avoiding others as much as possible and taking additional steps to protect themselves from the coronavirus, according to a survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research that shows how concerns about infection have grown sharply in the past six weeks.   The survey finds Americans are increasingly isolating, washing their hands and avoiding touching their face. Large portions of the country are confronting lay-offs and pay cuts and are adjusting to kids forced home from school and day care amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has upended American life and the nation's economy.   Half of Americans now say they are extremely or very worried that they or a family member will be infected by the virus. That compares with 31% who…

In the middle of the deadly, worldwide coronavirus pandemic, Michael Wells, a 34-year old neuroscientist, wanted to be useful ...

The world crossed the one-million mark of confirmed COVID-19 cases this past week. With untold millions more possible in the months to come, scientists are committed to making a vaccine.There's a lot about COVID-19 that scientists still don't know. They don't know entirely how it is spread. And without proven treatments or vaccines, good hygiene and staying away from other people are the only known methods of prevention.Dr. Peter Hotez at Baylor College of Medicine started working on a coronavirus vaccine in 2003, during the outbreak of SARS, but after that, research funds dried up.Hotez expects more coronaviruses to develop and spread. Some may be more benign that COVID-19, some far deadlier."Pandemics for coronaviruses have become a new normal. That we saw with SARS in 2003. We saw it in…

Michael Wells was looking for a chance to use his scientific training to help fight the coronavirus when — on the same day the pandemic forced his lab to temporarily close — he decided to create his own opportunity. “CALLING ALL SCIENTISTS," he tweeted on March 18. "Help me in creating a national database of researchers willing and able to aid in local COVID-19 efforts. This info will be a resource for institutions/(government) agencies upon their request.” That's how the 34-year-old neuroscientist at the Broad Institute and Harvard University launched a national effort to marshal scientists to volunteer in the fight against the virus. Less than 10 days later, more than 7,000 scientists had joined Wells’ database. Organizations and governmental departments in a dozen states, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have tapped into the…

“Meetings are huge for me,” says Mike S., a 52-year-old web content specialist who has been sober since 2012.When his community began practicing social distancing, some of his usual meetings began offering the option of attending online. Mike went in person as long as he could, but things already felt different.With some regulars attending online through a video conferencing service called Zoom, the number of people physically attending “dropped on average by about half,” he said, “which was disconcerting and felt ominous.”Connection with one another is a key part of the way many people in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction stay clean and sober, which makes the stay-at-home orders affecting many urban centers particularly challenging.Larry C., a real estate agent, relapsed last year after more than a dozen years…

With the coronavirus pandemic nowhere near its end, for many patients the risk of infection has made seeking treatment in hospitals potentially dangerous. This has led to telemedicine becoming more and more routine. Andrei Dziarkach has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. ...

With the coronavirus pandemic nowhere near its end, for many patients the risk of infection has made seeking treatment in hospitals potentially dangerous. This has led to telemedicine becoming more and more routine. Andrei Dziarkach has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. ...

With coronavirus deaths climbing rapidly in New York, the governor announced Friday he will use his authority to take ventilators and protective gear from private hospitals and companies that aren't using them, complaining that states are competing against each other for vital equipment in eBay-like bidding wars."If they want to sue me for borrowing their excess ventilators to save lives, let them sue me," Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.The executive order he said he would sign represents one of the most aggressive efforts yet in the U.S. to deal with the kind of critical shortages around the world that authorities say have caused health care workers to fall sick and forced doctors in Europe to make life-or-death decisions about which patients get a breathing machine.The number of the people infected in…

Social distancing and isolation can be hard, as New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently pointed out during a daily briefing on the status of COVID-19 in his state. “Don’t underestimate the personal trauma, and don’t underestimate the pain of isolation. It is real,” Cuomo said. “This is not the human condition — not to be comforted, not to be close, to be afraid and you can’t hug someone. … This is all unnatural and disorienting.”  Experts already know that years of loneliness or feelings of isolation can lead to anxiety, depression and dementia in adults. A weakened immune system response, higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease and a shorter life span can also result. A Pittsburgh Public Works employee removes a basketball rim from a city court in an effort to encourage social distancing, March 30, 2020.Children who have fewer…

Prince Charles on Friday remotely opened the new Nightingale Hospital at London's main exhibition and conference center, a temporary facility that will soon be able to treat 4,000 people who have contracted COVID-19. Charles said he was "enormously touched" to be asked to open the temporary facility at the ExCel center in east London and paid tribute to everyone, including military personnel, involved in its "spectacular and almost unbelievable" nine-day construction. "An example, if ever one was needed, of how the impossible could be made possible and how we can achieve the unthinkable through human will and ingenuity," he said via video link from his Scottish home of Birkhall. "To convert one of the largest national conference centres into a field hospital, starting with 500 beds with a potential of…

A cruise ship where at least two passengers died of coronavirus while barred from South American ports finally docked Thursday in Florida after two weeks at sea and days of negotiations with initially resistant local officials. The Zaandam and a sister ship sent to help it, the Rotterdam, were allowed to unload passengers at Port Everglades after working out a detailed agreement with officials who feared it would divert needed resources from a region that has seen a spike in virus cases.   Broward County officials and Holland America, the company that operates the ships, announced the agreement shortly before the ships pulled into port.   Holland America initially said 45 people who were mildly ill would stay on board until they recovered, but the docking plan released later Thursday…

Iraq has thousands of confirmed COVID-19 cases, many times more than the 772 it is has publicly reported, according to three doctors closely involved in the testing process, a health ministry official and a senior political official.   The sources all spoke on condition of anonymity. Iraqi authorities have instructed medical staff not to speak to media.   Iraq's health ministry, the only official outlet for information on the COVID-19 disease, could not immediately be reached for comment. Reuters sent voice and written messages asking its spokesman if the actual number of confirmed cases was higher than the ministry had reported and if so why.   The ministry said in its latest daily statement on Thursday that the total recorded confirmed cases for Iraq were 772, with 54 deaths.  …

Along with the global coronavirus virus pandemic, Nigeria is also battling a deadly Lassa fever outbreak that so far this year has killed at least 176 people in the country. Doctors say the illness is an annual problem in Africa that deserves more attention. Ifiok Ettang reports from Jos, Nigeria. ...

India will pull out of a three-week lockdown in phases, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday, as officials battle to contain the country's biggest cluster of coronavirus infections in the capital, New Delhi.   The shutdown, which has brought Asia's third-largest economy to a shuddering halt, is due to end on April 14.   Modi had ordered India's 1.3 billion people indoors to avert a massive outbreak of coronavirus infections, but the world's biggest shutdown has left millions without jobs and forced migrant workers to flee to their villages for food and shelter.   He told state chief ministers that the shutdown had helped limit infections but that the situation remained far from satisfactory around the world and there could be a second wave.   "Prime minister said that…

The new coronavirus is forcing more top Israeli officials into isolation after the country's health minister, who has had frequent contact with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tested positive, the Health Ministry said Thursday.   The Middle East has over 81,000 confirmed cases of the virus, most of those in Iran, and over 3,600 deaths. Iran’s Health Ministry said Thursday that the new coronavirus killed another 124 people, pushing the country's death toll to 3,160.   In a rare acknowledgment of the severity of the outbreak by a senior Iranian official, President Hassan Rouhani said the new coronavirus may remain through the end of the Iranian year, which just began late last month, state TV reported Thursday.   “The corona issue is not an issue that we can say it will…

NASA may have just found the next man to walk on the moon — or the first woman to land on Mars — or someone who can float above the Earth and make repairs to the International Space Station.Wednesday was the deadline for submitting an application to join the next class of astronauts.NASA says more than 12,000 people applied — the largest number in three years — proving that those who believe Americans have lost interest in space are wrong.“We’ve entered a bold new era of space exploration with the Artemis program, and we are thrilled to see so many incredible Americans apply to join us,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Wednesday. “The next class of Artemis Generation astronauts will help us explore more of the moon than ever before…

China’s National Health Commission (NHC) announced Wednesday it has more than 1,300 asymptomatic coronavirus cases, the first time it has acknowledged cases of people testing positive for the virus but not showing symptoms.At a news briefing in Beijing, commission spokesman Mi Feng said the 1,367 asymptomatic cases were under quarantine and medical observation.The commission had said Tuesday it would begin releasing figures on asymptomatic cases in response to “public concern” about the figures.The French news agency AFP reports there had been mass calls online for the NHC to release the information after it was reported an infected woman in Henan province had been exposed to three asymptomatic cases.While the proportion of people who have contracted the virus but remain asymptomatic is currently unknown, scientists say these "carriers" can still pass…