Month: September 2020

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In late January, as the new coronavirus was beginning to spread from China’s Hubei Province, a group of lay Buddhists traveled by bus to a temple ceremony in the city of Ningbo — hundreds of miles from Wuhan, center of the epidemic. It was a sunny day with a gentle breeze, and the morning service was held al fresco, followed by a brief luncheon indoors. A passenger on one of the buses had recently dined with friends from Hubei. She apparently did not know she carried the coronavirus. Within days, 24 fellow passengers on her bus were also found to be infected. It did not matter how far a passenger sat from the infected individual on the bus, according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine on Tuesday. Even passengers in the very last row of the bus, seven rows behind the infected ...

Coronavirus antibodies could last for at least four months and fade more slowly than previously reported, according to a new study. The findings come from a large-scale survey published Tuesday involving more than 30,500 people in Iceland. Billed as the most comprehensive look at the body’s response to the virus, scientists believe it gives hope to achieve immunity through a vaccine. If a vaccine generates antibodies that are as long-lasting, there is “hope that host immunity to this unpredictable and highly contagious virus may not be fleeting and may be similar to that elicited by most other viral infections,” wrote scientists in an editorial on the study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers are still trying to decipher built immunity to the virus...

(Reuters) - The Trump administration will send most of its newly purchased 150 million rapid COVID-19 tests to U.S. states for schools and critical services, a White House official said on Tuesday, as New York City pushed back reopening classrooms in a deal with union leaders. FILE PHOTO: A healthcare worker uses a swab to test a man at a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) drive-in testing location in Houston, Texas, U.S., August 18, 2020. REUTERS/Adrees Latif The moves came as The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday issued a sweeping order temporarily halting landlords across the nation from evicting millions of tenants in what it said was an effort to reduce the spread of coronavirus. The order covers all 43 million U.S. residential renters as long as they me...

We're making this important information about the pandemic available without a subscription as a public service. But we depend on reader support to do this work. Please consider joining others in supporting independent journalism in Alaska for just $3.23 a week. As more and more Alaskans test positive for COVID-19, cases have been confirmed among an increasing number of children statewide as well. Now, with a new school year underway and the COVID-19 pandemic still in full force, more information is emerging about kids and the coronavirus. Kids and young adults 19 or younger made up 15.3% of total COVID-19 cases in Alaska as of the end of August, or 813 cases of 5,298 total. In contrast, back in May, kids made up just 8.4% of total cases, wi...