Month: July 2021

Maine reported another 49 cases of COVID-19 and 10 deaths linked to the virus on Thursday, as infections continue to rise in nearly every state. The additional cases reported Thursday bring the total of cases in Maine to 69,373 since the start of the pandemic. There have been 877 deaths. The numbers still remain far below what Maine was seeing during peak infection periods last April and January, but indicate the more contagious delta variant could be on the rise, especially among unvaccinated people. As of Wednesday, 59.3 percent of Maine’s roughly 1.3 million residents had received their final dose of vaccine. That figure rises to 67.4 percent among the age 12-and-over population that is eligible for vaccination. Information on the people who died and current hospitalizatio...

This story is part of Down to Earth, a Vox reporting initiative on the science, politics, and economics of the biodiversity crisis. It’s probably not the news you want to hear in the middle of a long-awaited summer: Dangerous ticks are spreading across the country. Whether this season will be especially ticky depends on where you live or visit, experts say. But the range of several species that carry pathogens is expanding across North America. We’re now finding the parasitic arachnids in places we never have before. Take the black-legged tick, which can transmit bacteria that causes Lyme disease. In the past two decades, the number of US counties with an established population has more than doubled. The lone star tick — a species implicated in potentially fatal allergic reactio...

A 24-year-old contracted COVID-19 in Florida He was airlifted to Georgia to be put on ECMO circuit He underwent a double lung transplant at the University of Maryland A 24-year-old man with COVID-19 is wishing he had been vaccinated after spending months in the hospital and needing a double lung transplant. Blake Bargatze was the only one in his family to not get vaccinated, and was infected with the virus in April while in Florida, his family told WSB-TV.  For more than three months, Bargatze was in three different hospitals in Florida and Georgia before landing at the ICU at the University of Maryland Medical Center.  “I just don’t ever want anybody else to go through this,” his mother, Cheryl Nuclo, told the station. His mother said Bargatze did vape regularly but did not have diabet...

More than a year into the coronavirus pandemic, experts have unraveled so many mysteries about how to treat the virus and prevent it. But at the same time, SARS-CoV-2 is always changing as new variants emerge. And accordingly, the ways in which the virus affects people seem to be shifting as well. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the most common COVID-19 symptoms doctors are seeing right now, and how vaccines and variants fit into this picture. The most common symptoms — such as cough, fever, and loss of taste and smell — are all still pretty much the same. Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the most common symptoms of the virus included a cough (often dry), shortness of breath, a fever of 100 degrees or higher, and the sudden loss of taste and smell. Those, however, are by no means ...

A protester. Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock The Delta variant is here. It's now responsible for the majority of COVID-19 infections in the United States and is driving a rapid rise in cases, not only in red states like Arkansas but in true blue New York City. But while the Delta variant is much more contagious than either the original strain or the Alpha variant that first appeared in Britain, and has shown greater ability to infect vaccinated individuals, all the vaccines approved for use in the United States have so far proven highly effective in preventing severe disease and death. So it's understandably maddening that much of the American right has decided this is the time to double down on making opposition to vaccination a central front in our endless culture war. It's madden...

Overdose deaths hit a record 93,000 amid coronavirus last year due to pandemic-driven instabilities and loss of support systems, inaccess to medical care and the increasing presence of deadly synthetic opioids, top experts in addiction suspect. "It’s a horrifically tragic loss of life, particularly considering where we have been going as a country, as a world, with so many people dying," Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the NIH told Fox News. "We have all been affected by COVID in so many ways." The provisional data released by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics reflects a 29.4% increase in drug overdose deaths by December 2020, or a marked increase over the approximate 72,000 deaths recorded the year prior. IN PANDEMIC, DRUG OVERDOSE D...