Month: August 2021

WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand’s government has extended a strict nationwide lockdown through Tuesday as it tries to quash its first outbreak of the coronavirus in six months. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Friday the government expects to keep Auckland, where most of the cases have been found, in full lockdown for at least two more weeks. But she expects most other parts of the country can ease restrictions slightly from Wednesday. The announcement came as health authorities reported 70 new daily cases, the most yet in the outbreak, which has grown to nearly 350 cases in total. Ardern said there was evidence the lockdown was working and new case numbers were beginning to level off. She said she remained committed to the strategy of eliminating the virus entirely. ——— MORE ON ...

"If they are around people who are vaccinated, everyone in the household gets vaccinated, that significantly reduces the risk to our children," Dr. Vivek Murthy said in a conversation hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation. In the classroom, there are layers of protection that the CDC has laid out to keep children safe -- including wearing properly fitting masks, properly ventilating buildings and regular testing, Murthy said. "Even though our kids do better, that doesn't mean that Covid is benign, it doesn't mean that it's harmless in our children," Murthy said. "In fact, we've lost hundreds of children to Covid-19." The misperception that young people don't have to worry about Covid-19 may also be hindering their motivation to get vaccinated, Murthy said. As of Saturday, teen...

A new study estimates that nearly one-third of the US population —  103 million Americans — may have contracted COVID-19 by the end of 2020, with only a fraction of those cases correctly reported in public health reports. Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health researchers found that those with mild to no symptoms were not likely to report their infections and exacerbated the spread of the virus in a new study, published Thursday in Nature magazine. “The vast majority of infections were not accounted for by the number of confirmed cases,” Jeffrey Shaman,  professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health said in a press release. “It is these undocumented cases, which are often mild or asymptomatic infectiou...

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