Month: September 2021

The Mu variant, also known as B.1.621, is a COVID-19 virus strain that was initially discovered in Colombia in January 2021, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO declared the strain a “variant of interest” and named it Mu on Aug. 30, 2021. Scientists say the variant is worth watching because of Mu’s prevalence in 39 countries and 49 states in the U.S. But a lot still is unknown about the Mu variant. It was not labeled a “variant of concern,” which only would happen if reliable data shows the variant is transmissible or worrying characteristics like the Delta variant. Here is what to know about the Mu variant of COVID-19. The Mu variant has spread to 49 states and Washington D.C. The exception is Nebraska. WHO officials s...

The Yolo County jail is facing a COVID-19 outbreak among those incarcerated there for the first time since the pandemic. After an incarcerated person at Monroe Detention Center fell ill and tested positive on Tuesday, another 14 people also tested positive, the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office said. All 15 people were put in isolation and so far no one has needed to be hospitalized, Capt. Matthew Davis with the sheriff's office said. Other incarcerated people who were exposed to COVID-19 will be tested every three days for the next two weeks, the sheriff’s office said. It was not immediately clear how many other people were exposed. All patients with positive test results were housed in a single "pod," which is a large room containing many individual cells, Davis said. There were 286 pe...

The Delta variant has wreaked havoc across the U.S. over the last few months, fueling a rapid increase in cases in nearly every state, and hitting areas where vaccination rates are lower especially hard. Now, the highly infectious COVID variant appears to be declining in some states, just as it's rising in others. According to data from Johns Hopkins, there were nearly 300 percent more new COVID cases this Labor Day weekend than there were last year in 2020. So, why is the situation starting to improve in areas that until recently saw the most dramatic spikes? RELATED: 74 Percent of Delta Variant Infections Have This in Common, New Study Says. Mary Jo Trepka, MD, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Florida International University who tracks the trajectory o...

The day after a lab processing error skewed COVID-19 case numbers, the state on Wednesday reported 3,079 new COVID cases and 31 more confirmed COVID-19 deaths. On Tuesday, the daily number of new confirmed positive tests was dramatically lower than in recent weeks due to a lab processing error, Nancy Kearney, spokeswoman for the Department of Health, previously said. The error was expected to be resolved and the higher number of PCR tests on Wednesday may make up for cases not counted earlier due to the error. All of New Jersey’s 21 counties are listed as having “high” rates of coronavirus transmission, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC is recommending people in all 21 counties wear masks for indoor public settings regardless of vaccination rates...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded grants to five universities to study whether or not there is a link between having abnormal periods and the COVID-19 vaccine. In the U.S., there have been thousands of accounts of women who have gotten vaccinated against the virus and later had periods that came earlier usual, felt heavier or just appeared irregular.  And a report from The Sunday Times in June found that 4,000 women in the UK had temporary changes in their menstrual cycles after getting vaccinated.  Now, the federal health agency has distributed one-year supplemental grants totaling $1.67 million to Boston University, Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins University, Michigan State University and Oregon Health and Science University.  The five studies will likely recruit...