Month: May 2021

State public-health officials on Monday began allowing Alaska parents to sign up their children 12 and up for COVID-19 vaccine appointments, which will begin as early as Wednesday. That move is in response to a Monday decision by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to grant an Emergency Use Authorization to drug company Pfizer for use of its new vaccine for people ages 12 through 15. A federal advisory committee to the CDC is scheduled to review the data from the FDA and give its final recommendations early in the day on Wednesday, said Dr. Anne Zink, Alaska’s chief medical officer, during a call with reporters. The CDC will then offer their recommendation on Wednesday, too. “We do anticipate that they will likely also recommend this vaccine for those...

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ATLANTA (CNN) — It's the claim that's suddenly everywhere: The COVID-19 vaccine is going to make women infertile. "No! You don't know the science!" one woman posted on Twitter in response to naysayers. "The vaccine creates an immune response to the placenta and renders a woman sterile! They know this and this is the objective! It's a shifty world sterilisation programme." As it turns out, this unfounded fear isn't new, said vaccine expert and pediatrician Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, the chief of Stanford University School of Medicine's division of pediatric infectious diseases, who is currently leading vaccine trials in children younger than 12. "Oh my goodness, people have been saying this about every vaccine since I can remember," said Maldonado, who also chairs the American Academy of Pediat...

Doctors in India are warning against the practice of using cow dung in the belief it will ward off COVID-19, saying there is no scientific evidence for its effectiveness and that it risks spreading other diseases. The coronavirus pandemic has wrought devastation on India, with 22.66 million cases and 246,116 deaths reported so far. Experts say actual numbers could be five to 10 times higher, and citizens across the country are struggling to find hospital beds, oxygen, or medicines, leaving many to die for lack of treatment. In the state of Gujarat in western India, some believers have been going to cow shelters once a week to cover their bodies in cow dung and urine in the hope it will boost their immunity against, or help them recover from, the coronavirus. In Hinduism, the cow is a s...