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Coronavirus (Covid-19) - Page 1

The U.S. currently has more confirmed cases of the coronavirus than any country in the world. Coronavirus is real it is not a hoax. Coronavirus is not the flu no matter what they say, you can get a flu shot which reduces the chances of you getting the flu, you cannot get a coronavirus shot because there are currently no coronavirus vaccines shots. Coronavirus is deadlier than the flu and spreads faster than the flu. Currently there are no shots or cures for the coronavirus. Coronavirus kills people of all ages. Coronavirus can remain in the air and on surfaces for more than an hour. Someone who is not showing any signs of illness can infect you. Be safe; stay home if directed, keep your distance from others, stay home if sick to prevent possible spread of the disease, wash your hands with soap before you touch your face and wash your hands with soap frequently. Below you can find the latest coronavirus updates statistics, totals, new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends, timelines and more.
Donald J. Trump failure to act quickly and reasonably to protect the American people from the Coronavirus has put America lives at risks.
Live statistics and coronavirus news tracking the number of confirmed cases, recovered patients, and death toll by country due to the COVID 19 coronavirus from Wuhan, China. Coronavirus counter with new cases, historical data, and info. Daily charts, graphs, news and updates
View United States Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.
Mira Cheng, CNN

One German man has redefined “man on a mission.” A 62-year-old from Magdeburg deliberately got 217 Covid-19 vaccine shots in the span of 29 months, according to a new study, going against national vaccine recommendations. That’s an average of one jab every four days.

In the process, he became a walking experiment for what happens to the immune system when it is vaccinated against the same pathogen repeatedly. A correspondence published Monday in the journal Lancet Infectious Diseases outlined his case and concluded that while his “hypervaccination” did not result in any adverse health effects, it also did not significantly improve or worsen his immune response.

The man, who is not named in the correspondence in compliance with German privacy rules, reported receiving 217 Covid shots between June 2021 and November 2023. Of those, 134 were confirmed by a prosecutor and through vaccination center documentation; the remaining 83 were self-reported, according to the study.
Story by Jason Gale

Bloomberg) -- Vaccines that protect against severe illness, death and lingering long Covid symptoms from a coronavirus infection were linked to small increases in neurological, blood, and heart-related conditions in the largest global vaccine safety study to date.

The rare events — identified early in the pandemic — included a higher risk of heart-related inflammation from mRNA shots made by Pfizer Inc., BioNTech SE, and Moderna Inc., and an increased risk of a type of blood clot in the brain after immunization with viral-vector vaccines such as the one developed by the University of Oxford and made by AstraZeneca Plc.

The viral-vector jabs were also tied to an increased risk of Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disorder in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the peripheral nervous system.

More than 13.5 billion doses of Covid vaccines have been administered globally over the past three years, saving over 1 million lives in Europe alone. Still, a small proportion of people immunized were injured by the shots, stoking debate about their benefits versus harms.
Former US President Donald Trump said: ‘What do you have to lose? Take it.’
By Mari Eccles

Nearly 17,000 people may have died after taking hydroxycholoroquine during the first wave of COVID, according to a study by French researchers.

The anti-malaria drug was prescribed to some patients hospitalized with COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic, "despite the absence of evidence documenting its clinical benefits," the researchers point out in their paper, published in the February issue of Biomedicine & Pharmacotherapy.

Now, researchers have estimated that some 16,990 people in six countries — France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Turkey and the U.S. — may have died as a result.
By Brenda Goodman, CNN

CNN — A highly mutated new variant of the virus that causes Covid-19 has countries on alert as scientists scramble to understand how far it has spread and how well our immunity will defend against it.

The new variant, called BA.2.86 and nicknamed Pirola by variant hunters on social media, has more than 30 amino acid changes to its spike protein compared with its next closest ancestor, the BA.2 subvariant of Omicron, according to Dr. Jesse Bloom, who studies viral evolution at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle.

“This makes it an evolutionary jump comparable in size to that which originally gave rise to Omicron,” Bloom posted on his lab’s website. The World Health Organization designated BA.2.86 a “variant under monitoring” on Thursday, a designation that encourages countries to track and report the sequences they find.

A variant under monitoring that causes more severe disease or evades existing vaccines or treatments can be upgraded to WHO’s list of variants of interest or variants of concern. XBB.1.5, XBB.1.16 and EG.5 are listed as variants of interest. WHO has not designated any variants of concern.
Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN

CNN —  An updated intelligence assessment about the origins of the Covid-19 virus has reopened the long-simmering and unsolved debate about how the virus came to be – and will fuel a new committee House Republicans have created to investigate the issue. While scientists still predominantly believe the virus occurred naturally in animals and spread to humans in an outbreak at a market in Wuhan, China, the US Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence is now the second tentacle of the US government intelligence apparatus, along with the FBI, that endorses the “lab leak theory” – the minority view that the virus occurred as a result of work in a Chinese lab.

The DOE office is one of 18 government agencies that make up the intelligence community, which are under the umbrella of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Most of the intelligence community remains either split or leaning toward the natural occurrence theory that scientific investigations have concluded as most likely. But without conclusive evidence, no one has been able to reject the lab leak theory entirely.

The theory has been the subject of much focus by Republican lawmakers, and polling in 2021 suggested a majority of Americans believe the Chinese government had something to do with the origins of the virus. Asked whether they believe the virus originated from a laboratory leak in China or from human contact with an infected animal, about half (52%) said that they believed a lab leak was responsible.
Story by Yasmin Tayag

No country has a perfect COVID vaccination rate, even this far into the pandemic, but America’s record is particularly dismal. About a third of Americans—more than a hundred million people—have yet to get their initial shots. You can find anti-vaxxers in every corner of the country. But by far the single group of adults most likely to be unvaccinated is Republicans: 37 percent of Republicans are still unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, compared with 9 percent of Democrats. Fourteen of the 15 states with the lowest vaccination rates voted for Donald Trump in 2020. (The other is Georgia.)

We know that unvaccinated Americans are more likely to be Republican, that Republicans in positions of power led the movement against COVID vaccination, and that hundreds of thousands of unvaccinated Americans have died preventable deaths from the disease. The Republican Party is unquestionably complicit in the premature deaths of many of its own supporters, a phenomenon that may be without precedent in the history of both American democracy and virology.

Obviously, nothing about being a Republican makes someone inherently anti-vaccine. Many Republicans—in fact, most of them—have gotten their first two shots. But the wildly disproportionate presence of Republicans among the unvaccinated reveals an ugly and counterintuitive aspect of the GOP campaign against vaccination: At every turn, top figures in the party have directly endangered their own constituents. Trump disparaged vaccines while president, even after orchestrating Operation Warp Speed. Other politicians, such as Texas Governor Greg Abbott, made all COVID-vaccine mandates illegal in their state. More recently, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called for a grand jury to investigate the safety of COVID vaccines. The right-wing media have leaned even harder into vaccine skepticism. On his prime-time Fox News show, Tucker Carlson has regularly questioned the safety of vaccines, inviting guests who have called for the shots to be “withdrawn from the market.”
"You can start thinking about getting COVID as almost as an accelerant to aging," Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly said.
By Luz Pena

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- After over two and a half years of COVID research, scientists are seeing the first data points that prove a dramatic change in human organs after a COVID infection. "You can start thinking about getting COVID as almost as an accelerant to aging. The viral infection accelerates the aging process in people," said Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the Clinical Epidemiology Center at Washington University in St. Louis and the chief of research and education service at Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System. Dr. Al-Aly gathered data from millions of people across the country. Their studies on kidney outcomes in long COVID, long COVID in the brain and long COVID in the heart had similar patterns. All pointing to multiple human organs aging faster after COVID. The majority happening among people who were hospitalized but also some with mild COVID symptoms.
New data on the condition indicates that many people may deal with symptoms for a number of months after infection.
By Jillian Wilson

While most people can recover from COVID-19 and go back to their normal lives, many still have symptoms for months after an initial infection, according to new research from Scotland. A study published Wednesday in the Nature Communications journal followed 33,281 people with recent COVID-19 infections, as well as a control group of 62,957 people who had never been infected, to determine what symptoms were most associated with long COVID-19. This way, vague symptoms that are often dismissed ― like “brain fog” or confusion ― could be more definitively linked to long COVID.

Researchers found that among those infected with COVID-19, people who went on to show signs of long COVID were more likely to persistently suffer from 24 of 26 tracked symptoms. Most commonly, those with long COVID experienced breathlessness, palpitations, brain fog and chest pain. When compared with those who had never had COVID-19, study participants with long COVID symptoms were 3.5 times more likely to report breathlessness. The new findings underscore what other research has also found: People who had severe COVID-19 infections were more likely to have long COVID symptoms. Additionally, people with asymptomatic infections were less likely to suffer from long COVID. The study also showed that vaccination may be linked to a lower risk of long COVID and was specifically connected with a reduced risk of developing seven of the 26 tracked symptoms.
By Alexander Tin

As many as one in four seniors and one in five adults under 65 experienced "long COVID" or "post-COVID" symptoms after surviving a coronavirus infection, a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Tuesday. The study — published in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report — is the latest to try and quantify how many of the millions of Americans who have now tested positive for the virus are facing long-term issues caused by their infection. By comparing electronic health records in a large national database of patients, the study's authors found 38.2% of COVID-19 survivors "experienced at least one incident condition" — a list that includes heart, lung, kidney and gastrointestinal problems, pain, fatigue, loss of smell or taste, mental health issues, and more —  in the months after their infection. By contrast, just 16% of other people were diagnosed with such conditions.
The new research is the longest follow-up study of the neurological symptoms among long Covid patients.

By Kaitlin Sullivan and Erika Edwards

The devastating neurological effects of long Covid can persist for more than a year, research published Tuesday finds — even as other symptoms abate. The study, published in the journal Annals of Clinical and Translational Neurology, is the longest follow-up study of the neurological symptoms among long Covid patients who were never hospitalized for Covid. The neurological symptoms — which include brain fog, numbness, tingling, headache, dizziness, blurred vision, tinnitus and fatigue — are the most frequently reported for the illness. The new study, from researchers at Northwestern University, is a follow-up to a shorter-term study published last spring that focused on 100 patients with long Covid. That research found that 85 percent of the patients reported at least four lasting neurological problems at least six weeks after their acute infections. For the follow-up, the team continued to survey 52 of the original participants, who were patients at the university’s Neuro COVID-19 Clinic — a long Covid clinic — for up to 18 months. The cohort was three-quarters female, and the average age was 43. Almost 80 percent were vaccinated, and all had mild Covid symptoms that did not require hospitalization.
By The Lancet

Two years after infection with COVID-19, half of the patients who were admitted to the hospital still have at least one symptom, according to the longest follow-up study to date, published on May 11, 2 in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine. The research study followed 1,192 participants in China infected with SARS-CoV-2 during the first phase of the pandemic in 2020. While physical and mental health generally improved over time, the analysis suggests that COVID-19 patients still tend to have poorer health and quality of life than the general population. This is especially the case for participants with long COVID, who typically still have at least one symptom including fatigue, shortness of breath, and sleep difficulties two years after initially falling ill.
By KIM TONG-HYUNG and HYUNG-JIN KIM

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea imposed a nationwide lockdown Thursday to control its first acknowledged COVID-19 outbreak after holding for more than two years to a widely doubted claim of a perfect record keeping out the virus that has spread to nearly every place in the world. The outbreak forced leader Kim Jong Un to wear a mask in public, likely for the first time since the start of the pandemic, but the scale of transmissions inside North Korea wasn’t immediately known. A failure to slow infections could have serious consequences because the country has a poor health care system and its 26 million people are believed to be mostly unvaccinated. Some experts say North Korea, by its rare admission of an outbreak, may be seeking outside aid. However, hours after North Korea confirmed the outbreak, South Korea’s military said it detected the North had fired three suspected ballistic missiles toward the sea. It was its 16th round of missile launches this year, in brinkmanship aimed at forcing the United States to accept North Korea as a nuclear power and negotiate sanctions relief and other concessions from a position of strength.
Over 300 people in the U.S. are still reported dead from the virus each day.
By Arielle Mitropoulos

One million Americans have now died from the coronavirus, according to an announcement made Thursday by President Joe Biden, marking a long-dreaded milestone for an incomprehensible tragedy. "Today, we mark a tragic milestone: one million American lives lost to COVID-19. One million empty chairs around the dinner table. Each an irreplaceable loss. Each leaving behind a family, a community, and a nation forever changed because of this pandemic. Jill and I pray for each of them," Biden said in a statement. "As a nation, we must not grow numb to such sorrow. To heal, we must remember." The president plans to order flags to half-staff in remembrance.
By Nectar Gan, CNN

Hong Kong (CNN) China's top leader Xi Jinping has issued the strongest warning yet against anyone who questions the country's zero-Covid policy, as stringent, frequent lockdowns fuel public discontent and deal a devastating blow to the Chinese economy. At a meeting chaired by Xi on Thursday, the ruling Communist Party's supreme Politburo Standing Committee vowed to "unswervingly adhere to the general policy of 'dynamic zero-Covid,' and resolutely fight against any words and acts that distort, doubt or deny our country's epidemic prevention policies." This is the first time Xi, who according to state media made an "important speech" at the meeting, has made public remarks about China's battle against Covid since public furor erupted over the harsh lockdown in Shanghai. "Our prevention and control strategy is determined by the party's nature and mission, our policies can stand the test of history, our measures are scientific and effective," the seven-member committee said, according to government news agency Xinhua. "We have won the battle to defend Wuhan, and we will certainly be able to win the battle to defend Shanghai," it said.
By Eduardo Baptista and Andrew Galbraith

BEIJING/SHANGHAI, May 5 (Reuters) - Beijing residents tentatively returned to work on Thursday after a muted five-day Labour Day holiday devoid of the usual trips across the country or lavish family dinners, as China pledged to fight any criticism of its uncompromising "zero-COVID" policy. The long break is usually one of the most lucrative times of the year for restaurants, hotels and other businesses in China. This year, travellers spent 43% less than in 2021, data showed on Thursday.
Officials in Chinese capital have designated 518 coronavirus outbreak sites amid growing fears of a city-wide lockdown.

Beijing, China – When Zhou Huan received a notification that his Beijing neighbourhood would be locked down from the evening of April 25, his first thought was getting back to his convenience store to get supplies. Nearly two weeks into the restrictions, Zhou’s store has become a lifeline in his community of about 500 people. Although delivery services have continued throughout the capital, as many as 200 residents visit his convenience store every day to buy food items, drinking water and other necessities, driving daily sales close to pre-lockdown figures of up to RMB 10,000 ($1,500). “It is good that I can still bulk-order items from our supplier,” Zhou told Al Jazeera. “It’s also good that my neighbours come here quite often and make up for the loss of my regular customers — the workers of those commercial towers here in Shuangjing, but they’re all closed until who knows when.”
By Brenda Goh and Sophie Yu

SHANGHAI/BEIJING, May 2 (Reuters) - China's commercial capital of Shanghai was dealt a blow on Monday as authorities reported 58 new COVID-19 cases outside areas under strict lockdown, while Beijing pressed on with testing millions of people on a May Day holiday few were celebrating. Tough coronavirus curbs in Shanghai have stirred rare public anger, with millions of the city's 25 million people stuck indoors for more than a month, some sealed inside fenced-off residential compounds and many struggling for daily necessities.
By Nectar Gan and CNN's Beijing Bureau

(CNN) Beijing has banned all restaurant dining, shut down Universal Studios and ordered residents to provide proof of a negative Covid test to enter public venues in a major escalation of restrictions as a five-day holiday gets underway. The Labor Day holiday, which started on Saturday this year, has traditionally been a busy time for mass travel and gatherings in China. But there is little holiday spirit this year, as the Chinese government doubles down on its zero-Covid policy to fight the country's worst outbreak since Wuhan. Many local governments have ordered residents not to leave their cities unless absolutely necessary and have imposed lengthy quarantine requirements for people coming from areas where Covid cases have been reported. The Chinese Transport Ministry expects 100 million journeys to be made over the holiday -- a 62 percent plunge from last year. As a month-long lockdown continues in the financial hub of Shanghai, the Chinese capital of Beijing is grappling with a new Omicron outbreak that has put officials and residents on edge.
It's too soon to know whether the BA.4 and BA.5 omicron variants will take off in the U.S. as they are in South Africa. But some experts are anxious.
Karen Weintraub | USA TODAY

COVID-19 cases are skyrocketing in South Africa, as they did in the earliest days of the omicron outbreak. It's too soon to know whether that will have any implications for the United States, but omicron exploded here right after Thanksgiving, only a few weeks after it took off there.
By Jessie Yeung, CNN

(CNN) China has introduced lockdown measures in its two biggest cities, Beijing and Shanghai -- the twin engines that power much of the nation's economy -- in an uncompromising bid to stamp out Covid-19 outbreaks. Shanghai is at the center of the latest outbreak, reporting upwards of 10,000 new cases a day. Authorities have responded with a city-wide lockdown that has lasted weeks, confining nearly all 25 million residents of the once-bustling financial hub to their homes or neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Beijing officials have launched mass testing exercises, shut schools and imposed targeted lockdowns on some residential buildings in a bid to rein in infections. Those actions have sparked fears of a wider lockdown similar to Shanghai's.
Vivian Wang, Paul Mozur and Isabelle Qian

Immediately after Beijing said it had detected a new coronavirus outbreak, officials hurried to assure residents there was no reason to panic. Food was plentiful, they said, and any lockdown measures would be smooth. But Evelyn Zheng, a freelance writer in the city, was not taking any chances. Her relatives, who lived in Shanghai, were urging her to leave or stock up on food. She had spent weeks poring over social media posts from that city, which documented the chaos and anguish of the monthlong lockdown there. And when she went out to buy more food, it was clear many of her neighbors had the same idea: Some shelves were already cleaned out.
Tracey Tully

CAMDEN, N.J. — No one thought Frank Talarico Jr. was going to live. Not his doctors, his nurses or his wife, a physician assistant who works part time at the Camden, New Jersey, hospital where he spent 49 days fighting to survive COVID-19. A 47-year-old police sergeant, he was not vaccinated against the coronavirus. Unconvinced of the vaccine’s merits, he figured he was young and fit enough to handle whatever illness the virus might cause. He was wrong.
Outrage over draconian lockdowns is raising questions about city’s status as a global business hub.
By Liam Gibson | Aljazeera

Taipei, Taiwan – As Shanghai’s strict COVID-19 lockdown grinds towards its second month, expatriate residents are heading for the exits, a trend that in the long term could threaten the city’s status as a global business hub. The government’s draconian restrictions have prompted rare rebukes from foreign business groups and resulted in the United States ordering all non-emergency staff at its consulate to evacuate.
Andrew Marquardt

Shanghai’s 25 million residents have endured an extreme COVID lockdown for nearly a month—and now a new nightmarish topic is trending on Weibo, the country’s Twitter-like social media platform. After consuming food from government-issued care packages, a number of residents living in housing compounds across several Shanghai neighborhoods have reported suffering from stomach pains and diarrhea, according to reporting from Bloomberg News. The care packages, which included meals like braised duck and meatballs, were sent to residents to help combat food shortages. The city’s residents are prohibited from leaving their homes during the lockdown, which began earlier this month, and it has become increasingly difficult to purchase food. Some delivery apps have prohibited individual orders, meaning many residents have had to coordinate with neighbors to join large group orders.
Bloomberg News

China’s worst equity selloff since early 2020 reflects a growing concern about President Xi Jinping: He can’t afford the political costs of shifting from a Covid Zero strategy that is pummeling the economy. In Shanghai, a weekslong Covid-19 lockdown got even worse, with workers in hazmat suits fanning out over the weekend to install steel fences around buildings with positive cases. In Beijing, the process is just getting started, as authorities on Monday began shutting down a bustling district in the capital to quash fresh outbreaks and ordered mandatory testing elsewhere.
Analysis by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large

(CNN) Plenty of people -- members of Congress, former top White House aides -- come out looking bad in the more than 2,000 texts sent and received by Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows between Election Day 2020 and January 20, 2021, obtained by CNN. No one -- and I mean NO ONE -- looks worse than Rick Perry, however. You remember Perry -- the former Texas governor who served as the secretary of energy in former President Donald Trump's White House. What you may not remember is that CNN reported this about Perry back in December 2021:
In a small trial, long covid patients who received occupational therapy reported improvements in their daily functioning and quality of life.
By Ed Cara

The results of a small study this week may offer some hope to people struggling with prolonged symptoms following a case of covid-19. The study found that long covid patients taking part in a rehabilitation program in Ireland, conducted online, experienced noticeable improvements in how their fatigue affected their well-being and daily functioning. There is much that we’re still unsure about when it comes to long covid, from its likely causes to how often it happens (estimates range from the single digits to over 25% of covid-19 cases). And we know even less about the best ways to help sufferers recover from it.
By Ryan Woo and David Stanway

BEIJING/SHANGHAI, April 25 (Reuters) - A mass COVID-19 testing order in Beijing's biggest district prompted residents in the Chinese capital to stock up on groceries, fearing they could be destined for a lockdown similar to that of Shanghai, which entered a fourth week of bitter isolation. Authorities in Chaoyang, home to 3.45 million people, late on Sunday ordered those who live and work there to be tested three times this week as Beijing warned the virus had "stealthily" spread for about a week before being detected. Knowing how Shanghai residents struggled to source food and other essentials while locked indoors, shoppers in Beijing crowded stores and online platforms to stock up on vegetables, fresh meat, instant noodles and toilet paper.
AFP

Not even one in four people have completely recovered from COVID a full year after being hospitalized with the disease, a UK study indicated Sunday, warning that long COVID could become a common condition. The study involving more than 2,300 people also found that women were 33 percent less likely to fully recover than men. It also found that obese people were half as likely to fully recover, while those who needed mechanical ventilation were 58 percent less likely. The study looked at the health of people who were discharged from 39 British hospitals with COVID between March 2020 and April 2021, then assessed the recovery of 807 of them five months and one year later.
By Robert Preidt HealthDay Reporter, HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, April 25, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- A year after being hospitalized with COVID-19, only about 25% of people felt fully recovered, a new study shows, and the risk of long COVID was highest among women, obese people and those who were on a ventilator. There are no specific treatments for long COVID, and researchers said these findings highlight the urgent need to find effective therapies for the condition. "The limited recovery from five months to one year after hospitalization in our study across symptoms, mental health, exercise capacity, organ impairment and quality-of-life is striking," said study co-leader Rachael Evans of the National Institute for Health Research Leicester Biomedical Research Centre in the United Kingdom.
By Simone McCarthy

Hong Kong (CNN) Beijing is racing to track a Covid-19 outbreak that may have been spreading in the capital for a week, city authorities said on Saturday, raising the prospect more stringent restrictions could soon be implemented in line with other Chinese cities. Beijing officials said at a press briefing Saturday that they were tracking cases across multiple districts and involving students, tour groups, and interior decoration workers. The capital reported 22 new local cases on Saturday, national health authorities said Sunday morning. "The city has recently seen several outbreaks involving multiple transmission chains, and the risk of continued and undetected transmission is high. The situation is urgent and grim," municipal official Tian Wei told reporters Saturday. "The whole city must act immediately."
By HUIZHONG WU, Associated Press

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Volunteers and government workers in Shanghai erected metal barriers in multiple districts to block off small streets and entrances to apartment complexes, as China hardens its strict “zero-COVID” approach in its largest city despite growing complaints from residents. In the city's financial district, Pudong, the barriers — thin metal sheets or mesh fences — were put up in several neighborhoods under a local government directive, according to Caixin, a Chinese business media outlet. Buildings where cases have been found sealed up their main entrances, with a small opening for pandemic prevention workers to pass through. China reported 21,796 new community transmitted COVID-19 infections on Sunday, with the vast majority being asymptomatic cases in Shanghai. Across the country, many cities and provinces have enforced some version of a lockdown in an attempt to slow the spread of the virus.
By HUIZHONG WU and DAKE KANG

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Lu Muying died on April 1 in a government quarantine facility in Shanghai, with her family on the phone as doctors tried to resuscitate her. She had tested positive for COVID-19 in late March and was moved there in line with government policy that all coronavirus cases be centrally isolated. But the 99-year-old, who was just two weeks shy of her 100th birthday, was not counted as a COVID-19 death in Shanghai’s official tally. In fact, the city of more than 25 million has only reported 25 coronavirus deaths despite an outbreak that has spanned nearly two months and infected hundreds of thousands of people in the world’s third-largest city. Lu’s death underscores how the true extent of the virus toll in Shanghai has been obscured by Chinese authorities. Doctors told Lu’s relatives she died because COVID-19 exacerbated her underlying heart disease and high blood pressure, yet she still was not counted.
By Nectar Gan and CNN's Beijing Bureau

(CNN) The men came after 2 a.m. on Tuesday in the dead of the night, banging on an apartment door in a rundown housing complex in Shanghai. When nobody answered, they pried open the lock and barged in, rousing a 92-year-old woman from her bed. The visitors demanded to take the woman and her 74-year-old son to a quarantine center, because, according to their records, both had tested positive for Covid-19 five days earlier on April 14. When the old woman refused to go -- both she and her son had since tested negative -- she was allegedly pulled out of bed and dragged onto the floor. Fearing the worst, her son helped her dress and agreed to comply. The account of events, as told in a series of online posts by the woman's granddaughter Zhi Ye, a former journalist born and raised in Shanghai, has sparked shock and fury across Chinese social media.
Experts say volume of dissent from Shanghai over zero-Covid measures challenging attempts to control information
Helen Davidson

China’s strict system of censorship is struggling against the onslaught of complaints from Shanghai, as residents find creative ways to get around bans on words, hashtags and even lyrics from the national anthem. As the weeks-long lockdown in the city of 25 million prompted widespread food shortages, delivery failures and fatal healthcare disruptions, the government has urged residents to harness “positive energy”. Dystopian banners warn people to “watch your own mouth or face punishment” and drones admonish apartment dwellers. But far from inspiring residents to fall in line, the methods have made tensions grow. On WeChat, groups have shared the names and stories of people who died, either with Covid or because the lockdown delayed their access to healthcare. They have criticised local authorities and China’s continued commitment to zero-Covid as the world opens up, shared videos of residents detained, bundled out of their apartments, or treated roughly by pandemic workers.
Bloomberg News

The treatment of a 92-year-old Shanghai woman who was sent to quarantine late at night has caused anger in China, underscoring the frustration that many are feeling under the nation’s strict Covid Zero rules. Police and local officials had a locksmith force open a door to the apartment occupied by the woman and her son around 2 a.m. on Tuesday when no one responded to their knocking, the local government said on an official social media account. They acted because they feared “an accident,” and said the pair “voluntarily went downstairs” so they could leave for an isolation facility.
Reuters

DAKAR, April 14 (Reuters) - Africa is experiencing its longest-running decline in weekly COVID-19 infections since the start of the pandemic, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.
Authorities say they’ve arrested four people who were part of an elaborate scheme to kidnap a top health official and spike a national power grid to “take back the country.”
Barbie Latza Nadeau

German police are searching for a fifth suspect after four people were arrested for what’s described as an elaborate plot to cripple the country and spark a civil war over COVID restrictions. The alleged scheme is said to have included a plan to kidnap Health Minister Karl Lauterbach and sabotage utility facilities to cause a nationwide power outage. Police on Thursday searched 20 residential properties and confiscated dozens of weapons, including a Kalashnikov assault rifle and weapons. They said they also found foreign currency, gold bars, and silver coins to be used to fund the foiled plan that was “intended to cause civil war-like conditions and ultimately overthrow the democratic system in Germany,” the state prosecutor said in announcing the arrests.
Scott Gleeson | USA TODAY

Two new omicron coronavirus subvariants are spreading fast in New York as the Easter holiday nears, and state health officials have announced precautionary measures. Omicron BA.2, the coronavirus variant that has been spreading around the globe since December, has morphed into two new subvariants, BA.2.12 and BA.2.12.1. They're being cited as a leading contributor to rising infections in New York, according to state health officials. The New York State Department of Health announced Wednesday a statewide emergence of the subvariants and urged a "continued vigilance" against COVID-19.
Zachary Snowdon SmithForbes Staff

Covid-19 infections are tied to damage in the part of the brain associated with smell, according to a study published Monday by JAMA Neurology, offering a possible explanation for the long-term Covid-induced smell loss that afflicts up to 1.6 million Americans. Covid-19 patients were more likely to have damaged blood vessels and axons—the parts of nerve cells that transmit signals to other cells—in their olfactory bulb, the region of the brain that processes smells, according to the study, which looked at 23 deceased Covid-19 patients and a control group of 14 deceased people without Covid-19. Axon degeneration was about 60% more severe and damage to microscopic blood vessels was about 36% more severe in patients with Covid-19 than among those without the disease, and Covid-19 patients who reported smell changes were most severely affected overall, according to the study.
Despite having a stricter vaccine mandate than the Biden administration, Fox continues to spread misinformation about the coronavirus. A study finding that 59 percent of Fox vaccine segments this summer included claims undercutting immunization. This comes as COVID infections among children are exploding nationwide.
Ailsa Chang

The U.S. could follow the trend of the United Kingdom and see a surge in COVID-19 cases driven by the BA.2 subvariant of the coronavirus, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci. The chief medical adviser to President Biden said that though cases are still trending down across the U.S., some states are seeing a rise. "I think without a doubt that we are going to see a turnaround as people get out more and into the inside venues without masks," he said. "That's going to be certainly resulting in infections, even in people who are vaccinated."
Michaeleen Doucleff

The first time my daughter, Rosy, was exposed to SARS-CoV-2, I panicked. It was November 2020, before vaccines were available. Someone in Rosy's class had tested positive and been contagious in the classroom for two days. So we all quarantined at home and braced ourselves for a horrible few weeks of sickness. But after 10 days, nothing had happened. Rosy never showed signs of an infection and never tested positive. She had dodged the coronavirus. Then about 10 months later, the same thing happened. And again two weeks later. And four months later. After each exposure, we did the same routine: Quarantine. Wait. And test repeatedly. Over the course of the pandemic, my daughter has been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19, at least four times. Mostly at school. Once at a party. Every time, somehow, she seems to have escaped an infection.
Blood clots remain a massive potential side effect from COVID-19 months down the line
By Herb Scribner

An infection from the novel coronavirus increases your risk of serious blood clots months down the road, a new international study suggests. Driving the news: International scientists from the United Kingdom and Finland recently compared more than 1 million people in Sweden who caught COVID-19, per ABC News. What they found: The team of researchers discovered that patients who had COVID-19 were at an increased risk of blood clots in their legs or lungs about three to six months after infection. “Specifically, patients had a significantly increased risk of deep vein thrombosis, a blood clot that forms deep in the thigh or the lower leg,” ABC News reports. There was also an increased chance of experiencing a pulmonary embolism, which is when a blood clot develops in a blood vessel and travels to the arteries in your lungs.
The risk of a blood clot was 290 times higher in people who had severe cases of COVID-19, and 7 times higher in people with mild cases
By Julie Mazziotta

People infected with COVID-19 — even in mild cases — are at a higher risk of developing blood clots in the three to six months after their illness, a large study found. The risk was much higher in people who had severe cases of COVID-19, the researchers, from Sweden, found. In people who were seriously ill, their chance of developing a blood clot was 290 times higher than normal. That risk went up in people with mild cases as well, at 7 times higher. For the study, published in the journal BMJ, researchers tracked more than 1 million people who tested positive for COVID-19 between Feb. 2020 and May 2021, and compared them to 4 million people of the same demographics who hadn't gotten the virus.
By Megan Cerullo

Overseas airlines are having to cancel hundreds of flights as they grapple with coronavirus-related staffing shortages weeks after they ditched rules requiring passengers and staff to mask up in the air. The disruptions also come as the CEOs of leading U.S. airlines urge the Biden administration to roll back a federal rule requiring that masks be worn in the sky. Masks have not been required on flights operated by budget-friendly, Swiss airline EasyJet since March 27, the airline said in a statement. The move came after the UK removed all travel restrictions earlier in March.
As countries have struggled with disease and death throughout the coronavirus pandemic, one part of the world seems to have been mostly spared: central and western Africa.
CBS News

Shanghai — Health officials in China's most populous city have defended a policy of separating babies and young children from their parents if they test positive for COVID-19, as frustration at the city's tough virus controls builds. Around 25 million people in Shanghai, China's financial center, remained locked down on Monday as authorities try to snuff out the country's most severe coronavirus outbreak since the end of the first pandemic wave in early 2020.
By James Gallagher

The official list of Covid symptoms has been expanded to include another nine signs of a coronavirus infection. The UK Health Security Agency's updated guidance now lists symptoms including a sore throat, muscle pains and diarrhoea. The move comes more than two years into the pandemic, and just days after free testing ended in England. However, the NHS cautions that many of the new symptoms "are very similar" to those for colds and flu. The original signs of a Covid infection that were recognised in the UK were:
AFP

People with the "hybrid immunity" of having been both fully vaccinated and previously infected with COVID-19 have the strongest protection against the virus, two new studies said on Friday. After two years of a pandemic that has seen nearly 500 million people infected and billions vaccinated, the studies highlighted the importance of getting jabbed for those who have natural immunity after recovering from the disease. One of the two studies published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases medical journal analyzed the health data of more than 200,000 people in 2020 and 2021 in hard-hit Brazil, which has the world's second-largest COVID death toll.
Meanwhile, they’re still pretending the drug is viable as a treatment for COVID.
by Anna Merlan

In the summer of 2021, a group of the most vociferous people online put all their energies behind the unproven thesis that ivermectin, a widely-used and effective anti-parasitic, is a cure or treatment for COVID. They were joined by a collection of fringe doctors who stood to gain money and attention from promoting that idea, and together they created a surprisingly durable little bubble, which continues to pop, over and over again, while they studiously pretend it remains intact.  
Bhavana Kunkalikar

A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine investigated the impact of ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug, as an early treatment option among coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. The widespread use of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccines has played a critical role in curbing the mortality and morbidity caused by COVID-19. However, various reports of the waning efficacy of these vaccines have necessitated the identification and development of effective COVID-19 therapeutic methods.
By SYLVIA HUI

LONDON (AP) — The prevalence of COVID-19 in the U.K. has reached record levels, with about 1 in 13 people estimated to be infected with the virus in the past week, according to the latest figures from Britain’s official statistics agency. Some 4.9 million people were estimated to have the coronavirus in the week ending March 26, up from 4.3 million recorded in the previous week, the Office for National Statistics said Friday. The latest surge is driven by the more transmissible omicron variant BA.2, which is the dominant variant across the U.K.
University of Minnesota researcher Dr. David Boulware discusses results of a new large-scale study on ivermectin in Brazil, showing the antiparasitic drug was not effective as an early treatment for COVID-19.
Deepa Shivaram

Two years into the pandemic, Black people in the U.S. still face wide health disparities in the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the economic and social fallouts, compared to other racial groups. The new report from the Black Coalition Against COVID comes as hospitalization rates for Black Americans were recently the highest they've been since the pandemic's start. "As we reflect on two years of lived experience and myriad data sources, we know COVID-19's toll on Black Americans is ongoing," Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith, the director of the Office for Health Equity Research at Yale University, said. "This report draws attention to the continued disproportionate burden experienced by members of the Black community and will help guide advocacy and policy efforts to address these inequities — both during the current pandemic and beyond," she said.
April Dembosk

For months, journalists, politicians and health officials - from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to Dr. Anthony Fauci - have invoked the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study to explain why Black Americans are more hesitant than white Americans to get the coronavirus vaccine. "It's 'Oh, Tuskegee, Tuskegee, Tuskegee,' and it's mentioned every single time," says Karen Lincoln, a professor of social work at USC and founder of Advocates for African American Elders. "We make these assumptions that it's Tuskegee. We don't ask people."
The Food and Drug Administration authorized a second COVID-19 booster shot for people 50 and older and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance on who should get the new shot.
By Luke Money, Rong-Gong Lin II

The highly contagious BA.2 Omicron subvariant is now the dominant version of the coronavirus in the U.S., including the West Coast — a development that added urgency to federal authorities’ decision Tuesday to allow a second vaccine booster shot for those age 50 and up. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health will be ready to offer second booster shots to those in that age group starting Wednesday at seven clinics.
Decision comes day after officials denied Covid-19 lockdown plans, amid a rise in mostly asymptomatic cases
By Yang Jie, Liza Lin and James T. Areddy

Shanghai imposed stringent pandemic restrictions it has long tried to avoid on its 25 million residents that are likely to disrupt commercial activity well beyond the city limits. Local authorities said on Sunday they plan to lock down the city in two phases over the next week to try to control an outbreak of the highly infectious Omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus.
By Julia Horowitz, CNN Business

London CNN Business — Many countries around the world have decided to live with the coronavirus, even as a new subvariant fuels another wave of infections. But China is an extremely important exception. What’s happening: China continues to deploy “snap” lockdowns as it tries to eliminate transmission of Covid-19 within its borders. The policy is hanging over the outlook for the global economy and financial markets, presenting more unknowns as investors scramble to assess the impacts of the war in Ukraine and surging inflation. Starting Monday, around 11 million residents in the eastern half of Shanghai will be banned from going out for four days as mass testing kicks off. The staggered lockdown will then move to the other half of the city, which has about 14 million residents, beginning Friday.
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