Month: October 2021

Maine’s Board of Pharmacy said this week that there’s been an increase in the number of prescriptions for ivermectin and it issued a reminder that the drug is not approved for use to prevent or treat COVID-19. An IverCare brand package containing a syringe of ivermectin – a drug used to kill worms and other parasites – intended for use in horses only. Health experts and medical groups are pushing to stamp out the growing use of the parasite drug to treat COVID-19. Associated Press/Ted S. Warren For humans, ivermectin has been approved to treat “infections caused by some parasitic worms, head lice and skin conditions like rosacea,” the board said in a notice to pharmacists, but it hasn’t been approved for treating the disease caused by the coronavirus. But that hasn’t stopped...

The Delta coronavirus variant’s deadly surge through the U.S. is leveling off, another sign that the nation’s most recent wave has crested. The seven-day average for daily reports of new Covid-19 deaths has hovered near 2,000 for more than a week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. That follows a roughly two-month climb in deaths as Delta swept particularly aggressively through the southern U.S., hammering states like Florida, Louisiana and Arkansas. Public-health authorities and researchers say severe illness and deaths have largely hit unvaccinated populations.

A new survey found that more parents were willing to vaccinate their children in mid-September than were willing to do so in July, a shift that coincided with schools reopening in the middle of a wave of hospitalizations and deaths caused by the highly contagious Delta. The latest monthly survey about vaccine attitudes by the Kaiser Family Foundation also found that about one in four U.S. parents reported that a child of theirs had to quarantine at home because of a possible exposure to Covid-19 since the beginning of the school year. That is even as two-thirds of parents say they feel that their school is taking appropriate measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus. The survey found that 58 percent of parents say that schools should have comprehensive mask requirements, 35 perce...

Health Ministry Director-General Nachman Ash said Friday that Israel is apparently nearing the end of the fourth COVID-19 virus wave that began in late June. “I believe we’re on the road to a real drop [in infection], but we’ll see it in the next few days,” Ash told Radio 103FM radio. “I believe the fourth wave is coming to an end.” However, he noted that with the reopening of schools after a break for the Jewish holidays, infection rates could rise again. “It’s hard to predict, and it’s definitely one of our concerns for the next weeks,” he said. On Friday, government figures placed the basic reproduction rate of the virus, which measures transmission, at 0.72. Any number over 1 indicates infections are rising, while a figure below that level signals that an outbreak ...

(CNN) — A man in northeastern Illinois died from rabies about a month after apparently being infected by a bat he found in his room, marking the first human case of the virus in the state since 1954, health officials said Tuesday. The man, who was in his 80s, woke up last month and found a bat on his neck in his Lake County, Illinois, home. After the bat tested positive for rabies, the man declined postexposure treatment, the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) said in a news release. About a month after his exposure, the man started suffering from neck pain, headache, numbness in his fingers, difficulty controlling his arms and trouble speaking, health officials said. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Tuesday confirmed the man’s diagnosis after tes...