Editor’s note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center. President Joe Biden signs the American Rescue Plan in the Oval Office. Acknowledging that chronic underfunding of public health contributed significantly to the nation’s fragmented response to the coronavirus pandemic, Democrats included more than $100 billion in the recently enacted relief […]
(Reuters Health) – The AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine developed with the University of Oxford has an efficacy of only 10.4% against the South African variant of the virus, according to data published online Wednesday by The New England Journal of Medicine. In the test on 2,026 HIV-negative volunteers, mild-to-moderate disease caused by any type of SARS-CoV-2 […]
(Reuters) – Canadian drug developer Medicago said on Tuesday it had started a late-stage study of its experimental COVID-19 vaccine combined with an adjuvant from GlaxoSmithKline. The study plans to eventually enroll 30,000 participants and initially focus on healthy adults, followed by adults over the age of 65 and those with co-morbidities. Medicago, which has […]
GENEVA/COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – The World Health Organization appealed to countries on Monday not to pause vaccination campaigns after two more European nations and one in Asia joined a handful which have suspended use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine over safety fears. Thailand announced plans on Monday to go ahead with the Anglo-Swedish firm’s shot but Indonesia […]
New pills to treat patients with COVID-19 are currently in midstage clinical trials and, if successful, could be ready by the end of the year. Only one treatment — remdesivir (Veklury) — has been fully approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for patients in the hospital and it must be administered intravenously. […]
ZURICH (Reuters) – Swiss drugmaker Roche said on Thursday adding its drug Actemra to Gilead Sciences’ Veklury medication, also called remdesivir, did not reduce hospital stays for patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia. Roche’s anti-inflammatory Actemra combined with Veklury, Gilead’s antiviral drug, failed to reduce hospitalisation durations in the REMDACTA trial, which compared the cocktail with […]
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Children hospitalized with acute COVID-19 infection and multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-C) may develop acute kidney injury, according to a new report. “In general, it seems that children get less severely ill with COVID, but if they are hospitalized, the medical community should realize that acute kidney injury can occur,” Dr. […]
MADRID (Reuters) – The coronavirus lockdown has led to a plunge in the number of monthly births in Spain to the lowest recorded level ever, preliminary statistics showed on Wednesday, matching similar signs of decline elsewhere in Europe. Only 23,226 babies were born in December, 20.4% fewer than in December 2019 and the lowest since […]
Editor’s note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center. Pregnant women can safely get vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines for COVID-19, surveillance data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggest. More than 30,000 women who received these vaccines have reported pregnancies through the CDC’s […]
Editor’s note: Find the latest COVID-19 news and guidance in Medscape’s Coronavirus Resource Center. Women are reporting more severe side effects after receiving COVID-19 vaccines, which could stem from a mix of factors, according to The New York Times. Side effects tend to differ for men and women across a broad variety of vaccines, often […]
