Month: August 2020

But in the United States, where at least 4.6 million people have been infected and nearly 155,000 have died, the promise of that vaccine is hampered by a vexing epidemic that long preceded Covid-19: obesity. Scientists know that vaccines engineered to protect the public from influenza, hepatitis B, tetanus and rabies can be less effective in obese adults than in the general population, leaving them more vulnerable to infection and illness. There is little reason to believe, obesity researchers say, that Covid-19 vaccines will be any different. "Will we have a Covid vaccine next year tailored to the obese? No way," said Raz Shaikh, an associate professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. More than 107 million American adults are obese, and their ability to retur...

Many officials had hoped to send students back to school this month with coronavirus cases under control. But reopenings are underway as the number of cases in the US is more than 4.7 million and 156,782 people have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, leaving school districts to strategize how to safely restart. Their plans for the best way forward vary wildly. Chicago Public Schools is expected to begin the year with full remote learning for students, according to local reports. Meanwhile, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds pressed to have students back in the classroom by emphasizing that defying the state's 50% in-person learning mandate is against the law. Other school leaders fall somewhere in between. In California, Los Angeles County announced that officials will not issu...

While secondhand smoke likely doesn’t directly cause the coronavirus, smokers can exhale infected droplets into the air, experts say. “Not only are they potentially spreading virus by not wearing a mask, they are blowing those droplets to the people around them to potentially get infected,” Dr. Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association, told the Associated Press. The virus is mainly thought to spread from person to person through respiratory droplets. GLOBAL CORONAVIRUS UPTICK SPARKED BY YOUTH GOING CLUBBING, VISITING BEACHES: REPORT  Secondhand smoke also reduces lung function, can inflame asthma and cause heart disease, lung cancer or a stroke – all of which would complicate contracting the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Pr...

Image copyright Alamy Image caption Some eight million children in England were sent home from school in March Schools should be the last places to shut in future lockdowns, after non-essential shops, pubs and restaurants, England's children's commissioner says. Anne Longfield says children have a right to education and, must not be an "afterthought", and that schools should be "first to open, last to close". She says children play a smaller role in spreading Covid-19 than adults and are less likely to get ill from it. The government says getting children back to school is a national priority. M...