Month: November 2020

A daily pill combining four cholesterol and blood pressure medicines taken with low-dose aspirin cut the risk of heart attacks, strokes and heart-related deaths by nearly one third in a large international study that’s expected to lead to wider use of this “polypill” approach. For more than a decade, doctors have been testing whether the cheap, all-in-one combo pills could make it easier to prevent heart disease, the top killer worldwide. Friday’s results show their value — and not just for poor nations. “It’s for all sensible countries,” said Dr. Salim Yusuf of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. “If the rich countries don’t want the benefit, that’s their prerogative.” He helped lead the study and gave results at an American Heart Association conference. They also were published ...

Local hospital leaders sounded yet another dire alarm Friday about increasingly crowded hospitals and sick, exhausted health care workers as the new coronavirus pandemic surges ever higher, pleading again for mask-wearing and social distancing. Without action, patients could be turned away from hospitals, they said. “Please rethink your Thanksgiving plans,” said Dr. Helen Koselka, TriHealth regional chief medical officer. “I am here on behalf of all health care workers. Please help us. … Health care workers are tired. We are tired of seeing fear in the faces. We’re tired of seeing people passing away who were in a normal state of health a few days before.” For four weeks, the region’s hospital leaders have been calling out warnings that have grown in volume and number. In a Friday media...

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

The number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations per day in the United States is continuing to hit record highs - as massive lines form at testing sites right across the country as states battle the third wave of the virus.      New infections across the country hit a record high for the third consecutive day with 153,496 cases on Thursday. Daily cases have repeatedly surged to all-time highs of more than 120,000 per day over the past week.  Hospitalizations have also reached a single-day high with more than 67,000 patients currently being treated across the country.  Deaths, however, dropped slightly with 919 American dying on Thursday. It comes after the death toll spiked a day earlier to 1,893, which is the highest number of fatalities since May 8 during the initial peak of the outbre...

Mutation is not expected to interfere with effectiveness of vaccines under development. A new study published in Science confirms that SARS-CoV-2 has mutated in a way that’s enabled it to spread quickly around the world, but the spike mutation may also make the virus more susceptible to a vaccine. The new strain of coronavirus, called D614G, emerged in Europe and has become the most common in the world. Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows the D614G strain replicates faster and is more transmissible than the virus, originating in China, that spread at the beginning of the pandemic. There were bright spots in the study findings: While the D614G strain spreads faster, in animal studies it was not associated with...