Health & Fitness

The more transmissible strain of Omicron, BA.2, is now the dominant Covid variant in the United States. In just the last week, it has risen from 35% of all new cases genetically sequenced to 55%, per CDC data. That’s a remarkable 80% jump in just seven days. In the swath of the Northeast that includes Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Maine and has a population of about 55 million people, BA.2 now accounts for more than 70% of all new cases. That’s up from just over 50% the week before and 38% the week before that. New BA.2 cases, shown in pink, vs. BA.1 cases, in purple. CDC A late January report from the Statens Serum Institut, which operates under the auspices of the Danish Ministry of H...

Even combining a Johnson & Johnson vaccine with a booster of either Johnson & Johnson, or one of the two messenger RNA vaccines, wasn’t as strong as three shots of the messenger RNA vaccines in preventing emergency room visits or hospitalizations, according to the report. Story continues below advertisement Shortly after the study’s release, the CDC greenlighted a second booster, either of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shots, for those who received Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and booster at least four months ago. It did not formally recommend the second booster but said people may get it if they choose. More than 1.3 million people received the Johnson & Johnson vaccines and booster, according to CDC data. The BA.2 “stealth” omicron variant is expected to soon become...

Even combining a Johnson & Johnson vaccine with a booster of either Johnson & Johnson, or one of the two messenger RNA vaccines, wasn’t as strong as three shots of the messenger RNA vaccines in preventing emergency room visits or hospitalizations, according to the report. Story continues below advertisement Shortly after the study’s release, the CDC greenlighted a second booster, either of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shots, for those who received Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and booster at least four months ago. It did not formally recommend the second booster but said people may get it if they choose. More than 1.3 million people received the Johnson & Johnson vaccines and booster, according to CDC data. The BA.2 “stealth” omicron variant is expected to soon become...

Even combining a Johnson & Johnson vaccine with a booster of either Johnson & Johnson, or one of the two messenger RNA vaccines, wasn’t as strong as three shots of the messenger RNA vaccines in preventing emergency room visits or hospitalizations, according to the report. Story continues below advertisement Shortly after the study’s release, the CDC greenlighted a second booster, either of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shots, for those who received Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and booster at least four months ago. It did not formally recommend the second booster but said people may get it if they choose. More than 1.3 million people received the Johnson & Johnson vaccines and booster, according to CDC data. The BA.2 “stealth” omicron variant is expected to soon become...

Even combining a Johnson & Johnson vaccine with a booster of either Johnson & Johnson, or one of the two messenger RNA vaccines, wasn’t as strong as three shots of the messenger RNA vaccines in preventing emergency room visits or hospitalizations, according to the report. Story continues below advertisement Shortly after the study’s release, the CDC greenlighted a second booster, either of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shots, for those who received Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and booster at least four months ago. It did not formally recommend the second booster but said people may get it if they choose. More than 1.3 million people received the Johnson & Johnson vaccines and booster, according to CDC data. The BA.2 “stealth” omicron variant is expected to soon become...

Even combining a Johnson & Johnson vaccine with a booster of either Johnson & Johnson, or one of the two messenger RNA vaccines, wasn’t as strong as three shots of the messenger RNA vaccines in preventing emergency room visits or hospitalizations, according to the report. Story continues below advertisement Shortly after the study’s release, the CDC greenlighted a second booster, either of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shots, for those who received Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and booster at least four months ago. It did not formally recommend the second booster but said people may get it if they choose. More than 1.3 million people received the Johnson & Johnson vaccines and booster, according to CDC data. The BA.2 “stealth” omicron variant is expected to soon become...

The F.D.A. has authorized additional shots for older Americans and those with certain immune deficiencies. Here’s what scientists know about who needs the doses, and when. Image Preparing a Covid shot in a vaccination clinic at Meritus Medical Center in Maryland last month.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times Published March 29, 2022Updated March 29, 2022 Aiming to protect Americans who are most vulnerable to the coronavirus, the Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday authorized a second booster dose of Covid vaccine for all adults 50 and older. The agency’s decision comes as the highly contagious Omicron subvariant BA.2 pummels Europe and threatens to do the same in the United States. But the scientific evidence for fourth dose is incomplete, at best, and researchers d...

A California martial arts instructor had to have half her skull removed after an unchecked sinus infection metastasized throughout her brain. She detailed her cranial catastrophe in a harrowing video with over 7 million views on TikTok. “Surgeons told me I would have been dead within a week if I hadn’t gone to the hospital when I did,” Natasha Gunther, 25, told News Dog Media of the harrowing ordeal. A before-and-after video, captioned “Sometimes all you can do is laugh right?,” shows the long-haired karate enthusiast sitting in a car before surgery. It then cuts to a pic of the gal post-op, in which she sports a pronounced dent in her head where surgeons had to extract part of her cranium. The fiasco began in late 2021 after the judo blackbelt reported to the...

The hardest hit region continues to be the Northeast, where BA.2 is causing more than 70% of all cases. The South and Mountain West are seeing the fewest cases in the US. BA.2 is causing slightly more than one-third of infections in those regions. This is a developing story and will be updated.

The National Institutes of Health is funding a clinical trial to test a contraceptive gel formulation called NES/T, which men would apply to their shoulders and upper arms once per day. The hormonal gel is currently in Phase II clinical trials, said Dr. Wang, who is one of the lead investigators. She estimates that, optimistically, the gel could be available in five years — but even that would be moving very fast, she said. Contraline, a biotechnology company in Virginia, is awaiting clinical trials for Adam, an injectable hydrogel that lasts for a year. The company bills it as “the IUD, for men.” Researchers in India are testing a nonsurgical vasectomy procedure known as Reversible Inhibition of Sperm Under Guidance, or R.I.S.U.G., which involves injecting a gel into the tubes in the pen...