Health

Four elderly sisters in New Jersey haven’t been able to have their regular get-togethers during the coronavirus pandemic, but they made an exception to get their Covid-19 vaccinations. Edith Camp, 96, Bernice Cecil, 92, Nora McDonald, 86, and 84-year-old Rose Ramsey — got their second doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine on Tuesday at Inspira Medical Center Mullica Hill, south of ...

Italy said Thursday it has blocked a shipment to Australia of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine in the first such export ban under an EU vaccine monitoring scheme. Rome’s order blocking the dispatch of more than 250,000 doses was accepted by the European Commission, which has fiercely criticised the Anglo-Swedish company this year for supplying just a fraction of the vaccine doses ...

Police in China and South Africa have seized thousands of doses of counterfeit Covid-19 vaccine and made dozens of arrests, Interpol says. In China, police made 80 arrests at a factory allegedly making fake vaccine, where at least 3,000 doses were found. Three Chinese nationals and a Zambian were detained at a warehouse in Gauteng, South Africa, where ampoules containing ...

With a surge in the number of long COVID cases and the implication of the ever-expanding list of lingering symptoms on people, health organizations in and around the world have raised a lot of concern. Just recently, U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) had announced their initiative to study the long term effects of COVID-19 and claimed to develop possible ...

One in four of the world’s population will suffer from hearing problems by 2050, the World Health Organization warned Tuesday, calling for extra investment in prevention and treatment. The first-ever global report on hearing said that the causes of many of the problems — such as infections, diseases, birth defects, noise exposure and lifestyle choices — could be prevented. The ...

Ghana has become the first country to receive coronavirus vaccines through the Covax vaccine-sharing initiative. A delivery of 600,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine arrived in Accra on Wednesday. The first recipients are due to be healthcare workers. The Covax scheme aims to reduce the divide between rich countries and poorer nations unable to buy doses. The programme is planning ...

The US government on Saturday authorized Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose COVID-19 vaccine, enabling millions more Americans to be vaccinated in the coming weeks and setting the vaccine up for additional approvals around the world. The J&J vaccine is the third authorised in the United States, following ones from Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna, both of which require two doses, reports Reuters. The ...

The US House passed an enormous, $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package early Saturday, hailed by Democrats as a critical step in funneling new funding toward vaccinations, overburdened local governments, and millions of families devastated by the pandemic. Four days after the Covid-19 death toll surpassed 500,000 in the United States, the sprawling measure backed by President Joe Biden and seen ...

Pfizer-BioNTech has begun testing a third dose of its COVID-19 vaccine in a small group of people. The vaccine is currently authorized in several countries in a two-dose regimen, given 21 days apart, and has proven in studies to be about 95% effective in protecting against COVID-19 disease. But as new (and more infectious) genetic variants of the COVID-19 virus ...

In an analysis released Wednesday, the US Food and Drug Administration said the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine has met the requirements for emergency use authorization — another step toward the authorization of a third shot for the United States. The efficacy of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine against moderate to severe/critical Covid-19 across all geographic areas was 66.9% at ...