Health & Fitness

Maine CDC reports 1 new coronavirus-related death, 17 new cases Updated: 11:23 AM EDT Jul 7, 2020 The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention reported one new coronavirus-related death and 17 new cases on Tuesday.The number of Mainers with COVID-19 who have died is 110. The new reported death was a man in his 90s from Cumberland County.The 17 new cases brings the total in Maine to 3,440.A total of 2,816 Mainers have recovered from the virus, which is an increase of 29 over the past 24 hours.Slow the spread: CLICK HERE to read the CDC guidelines on coronavirusMAINE CORONAVIRUS DATA: Deaths: 110 Total cases: 3,440 Confirmed ...

Customers sit at tables socially distanced from each other at the outdoor terrace of a bar, operating at reduced capacity in Plaza Mayor in Madrid, Spain. NurPhoto Covid-19 antibodies in Spain's population "are insufficient to provide herd immunity," a new study has claimed, despite the country being one of the worst-affected by the pandemic. In a peer-reviewed paper published in the Lancet medical journal Monday, researchers from Harvard, MIT and several Spanish institutions analyzed findings from a widescale study on antibody prevalence in Spain. More than 251,700 cases of coronavirus have been confirmed in Spain, while the virus has killed 28,388 people in the country to date, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. With 607 deaths per mil...

A 35-year-old man in Brazil may be the first to experience long-term remission from H.I.V. after treatment with only a specially designed cocktail of antiviral drugs, researchers said on Tuesday. Just two people have been confirmed cured of H.I.V. so far, both after risky treatments involving bone-marrow transplants for their cancers. The Brazilian patient, who was not identified, has not shown signs of lingering H.I.V. infection in blood tests that detect the virus, according to investigators at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, a prestigious research institution. He also does not seem to have detectable antibodies to the virus. “Although still an isolated case, this might represent the first long-term H.I.V. remission” without a bone-marrow transplant, the scientists said. They pres...

Illinois’ rate, at 11.5 beds occupied per 100,000 residents, is not much lower than those in other states in the headlines now, such as California at 17, though it is still far less than Arizona’s 40. One caveat: Three states haven’t consistently reported hospitalization data, including Florida, which is seeing a major surge in reported cases.

With the coronavirus case count climbing, officials in Napa expect the county will be forced to take a step back in reopening, shutting down indoor dining, wineries, tasting rooms and other activities. Napa city officials announced Monday the likelihood of closures, saying that the state has flagged the county that its coronavirus rate has exceeded the threshold of 100 positive cases per 100,000 people. On Saturday, the rate was 137.9. If the rate remains over 100 for three consecutive days, a county is subject to increased restrictions. ...

Two cases of the plague were recorded in the Khovd province in western Mongolia, reported Russian state media agency TASS on Tuesday. Marmots are large ground squirrels, a type of rodent, that have historically been linked to plague outbreaks in the region. Officials from the Republican Ministry of Agriculture and Food told citizens in the border area not to hunt marmots or eat marmot meat, and take preventive measures against insect bites. Rodents are the main vector of plague transmission from animals to humans, but the disease can also be passed on through flea bites. Plague killed an estimated 50 million people in Europe during the Black Death pandemic in the Middle Ages, but modern antibiotics can prevent complications and death if administered quickly enough. Bubonic plague, whi...

“I knew we had to get the kids treatment,” she said. Dr. Harald Jueppner, a pediatric nephrologist at Massachusetts General, was the researcher who first identified the mutation that caused the condition. Dr. Nizar learned that he had been studying the mutated gene, called a PTH/PTHrP receptor, for 20 years out of scientific interest. But he had never seen a patient. She told him he could now see three — herself and her two sons. She also learned that Dr. Jueppner and a colleague, Thomas Gardella, had found in lab experiments that certain peptides, or short chains of amino acids, looked promising as possible treatments for Jansen’s. At that point Dr. Nizar latched onto the researchers, urging them to study the peptides for Jansen’s. They tried one of them in animal experiments. It partial...

Recent studies have suggested that people's blood types may affect their risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus or developing a serious case of the disease. Overall, the findings indicate that people with Type O blood seem to be more protected and that those with Type A appear more vulnerable. So does that mean some people can slack off on preventive measures while others need to ratchet them up? Not so fast, say doctors who point out that the findings show associations, not causation — and don't indicate that any particular blood type guarantees protection. While the findings may catch the public's attention at a time when people fatigued by the pandemic are looking for signs of hope, doctors say the results are more relevant to researchers trying to better understand the virus. "I thi...

“There is a risk of a human plague epidemic spreading in this city,” Bayannur’s local health commission said in a statement. Over the past year, China has reported five cases of the disease associated with some of the deadliest pandemics in human history. The plague caused the Black Death that devastated the population of medieval Europe and repeatedly afflicted Asia, but it has largely been controlled since the mid-20th century. A World Health Organization spokeswoman in Geneva said Tuesday that the plague case count in China was low and the agency did not consider it high risk, but it was monitoring the situation, Reuters reported. Officials at Inner Mongolia’s regional center for disease control have warned that the plague may have long been circulating locally and there is risk of h...

Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images. Coronavirus Diaries is a series of dispatches exploring how the coronavirus is affecting people’s lives. For the latest public health information, please refer to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website. For Slate’s coronavirus coverage, click here. This as-told-to diary is based on a conversation with Adamu Chan, an incarcerated journalist at San Quentin State Prison in California. San Quentin is experiencing a massive COVID-19 outbreak—more than 1,400 cases—after the state transferred infected people from another prison into San Quentin. The conversation has been transcribed, condensed, and edited for clarity by Aviva Shen. Probably i...