Health & Fitness

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – Faced with a surge in coronavirus cases, the Allegheny County moved quickly last week to shutdown in-person operations and indoor seating at restaurants and bars. Now, as potential lifeline to those businesses, they are loosening some restrictions. The Allegheny County Health Department issued a new two-week order that loosens some restrictions, like allowing outdoor dining and drinking. The order also limits gatherings to no more than 25 people inside and 50 outside. This new order rescinds the other two recently issued — one banning the on-site consumption of alcohol and the other shutting down bars and restaurants except for takeout. It takes effect at 12:01 a.m. Friday. CLICK HERE: READ THE FULL ORDER Indoor areas must be close except to through-traffic, an...

Forget the coronavirus, say hello to dengue fever.  An 11th case of the mosquito-borne illness has been confirmed in the Florida Keys, officials from the Florida Department of Health announced Tuesday.  All of the cases have been found in Key Largo, the northernmost key about 60 miles south of Miami, including eight cases that were found there during the last week of June, officials said.  The viral disease is contracted through the bite of a female Aedes aegypti mosquito, a species that’s considered invasive and also spreads illnesses like yellow fever, Zika and chikungunya. Symptoms of dengue typically appear within two weeks of a bite and include fever, severe muscle aches and pains, and at times a rash, the health department said.  Health officials are in the process...

LANSING, Mich. – The Detroit Region is now considered “medium-high risk” as the number of new coronavirus (COVID-19) cases continues to increase throughout the state. READ: Here’s how all 83 Michigan counties are divided into regions in Gov. Whitmer’s reopening plan “The Detroit Region has increased to the medium-high risk level based on case rate and percent positivity increases over three weeks,” the state says on its MI Safe Start map. The seven-day rolling average of cases in the Detroit Region has risen to 22 per million population, which warrants medium-high risk. The 3% positive test rate is not yet at the medium-high risk level. While the Lansing Region’s case rates have decreased in the last week, it’s still considered high risk. The Grand Rapids Region has also been upgraded t...

Six months ago, no one thought COVID-19 existed in the U.S.The first reported case came on Jan. 21. Within 99 days, 1 million Americans became infected.It took just 43 days after that to reach 2 million cases.And 28 days later, the U.S. reached 3 million cases of the novel coronavirus Wednesday. In 35 states, the rate of new cases keeps increasing, threatening to reverse the progress made during weeks of painful shutdowns and stay-at-home orders.The latest numbersThe U.S. has reported at least 131,000 deaths due to the virus, according to Johns Hopkins University.Many Americans have fallen into a false sense of security as states started reopening, abandoning safety measures such as social distancing and wearing face masks, health officials say.While the death rate has generally decl...

Editor’s note: The Salt Lake Tribune is providing free access to critical stories about the coronavirus. Sign up for our Top Stories newsletter, sent to your inbox every weekday morning. To support journalism like this, please donate or become a subscriber. Utah reached two unwanted milestones Wednesday in the coronavirus pandemic, setting a new one-day record for new cases and crossing the 200 mark in the state’s death toll. The state recorded 722 new cases of COVID-19 Wednesday, the Utah Department of Health reported — and seven new fatalities, making the overall death toll 201 Utahns. The state’s epidemiologist, Dr. Angela Dunn, said in a statement that the new cases “further reinforce the need for Utah residents to be taking the appropriate precautions to pr...

The Pennsylvania Department of Health reported 849 new coronavirus cases Wednesday, the second highest one-day total since late May. The health department said the statewide total has risen to 92,148 cases. The new data follows the state reporting 995 new cases Tuesday, the highest one-day number since May 10. Across Pennsylvania, 6,812 deaths have been tied to COVID-19, including 25 new fatalities reported Wednesday, the health department said. More than two-thirds of the state’s coronavirus deaths have occurred in long-term care facilities, such as nursing homes. The number of new cases has risen in the past few weeks. The report today marks the second highest number since May 22 and it’s the third time the state has reported more than 800 new daily cases in the past week. For pers...

This article was produced in partnership with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive ProPublica's biggest stories as soon as they’re published. HOUSTON — When Karen Salazar stopped by to check on her mother on the evening of June 22, she found her in worse shape than she expected. Her mother, Felipa Medellín, 54, had been complaining about chest pains and fatigue, symptoms that she attributed to a new diabetes treatment she’d started days earlier. Medellín, who had seen a doctor that day, insisted she was fine. But Salazar, 29, noticed that when Medellín lay down, her chest was rising and falling rapidly — as if she couldn’t catch her breath. “I grabbed her hand and I said: ‘I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to go to the hospital, but I’m c...

Coronavirus asymptomatic spread continues to be a considerable problem that has fueled the recent surge in COVID-19 cases. A new study says that presymptomatic carriers pose an even higher risk, as they can spread the disease for days before the onset of symptoms. Researchers say an increase in testing and contact tracing is the only way to catch these “super spreaders” and reduce the transmission rate. After months of lockdowns and strict social distancing measures, several countries and US states have started lifting restrictions and reopening their economies. But in the weeks that followed, many communities found themselves facing new coronavirus surges, with some US states witnessing higher COVID-19 infectivity rates than ever before. People who aren’t respecting soci...

A major research effort is under way to understand whether Covid-19 can spread through tiny airborne particles that are released by infected people and remain suspended in the air for hours. Scientists are working alongside sanitary engineers at the World Health Organization to investigate how tiny aerosols bearing the virus may be released into the environment; whether they are spread around rooms by air-conditioning units; and how infectious the particles may be. Among the studies being conducted are experiments with caged hamsters to assess whether viruses wafting through the air in hospitals and other high-risk settings are sufficiently potent to spread infections. In an open letter published on Monday, the scientists implied that the WHO was underplaying the risk of airborne ...

Carsyn Davis of Fort Myers, Florida, was, by all accounts, an exceptional young person. At 17, Davis was a survivor of childhood cancer and an autoimmune disorder, and she regularly volunteered with special needs children and at the Special Olympics. She was heavily involved with her youth church group and bowled for her high school bowling league. On June 13th, according to a coroner’s report, Davis started to develop symptoms such as a headache, sinus pressure, and a mild cough. Her parents, a physician’s assistant and a nurse, thought she was developing a sinus infection. Six days later, however, they started to notice she looked “grey” while she slept. When they checked her oxygen levels, they found they were dangerously low. So they decided to give her a dose of hydroxychloroqu...