Articles

As rich people plough money into ventilation to protect themselves, those with long Covid are treated as an embarrassment.

You could see Covid-19 as an empathy test. Who was prepared to suffer disruption and inconvenience for the sake of others, and who was not? The answer was often surprising. I can think, for instance, of five prominent environmentalists who denounced lockdowns, vaccines and even masks as intolerable intrusions on our liberties, while proposing no meaningful measures to prevent transmission of the virus. Four of them became active spreaders of disinformation.

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Although China has largely abandoned COVID-19 case reporting, evidence of its massive wave of infection readily shows up in airports outside its borders.

On a December 26 flight from the southeastern city of Wenzhou to Milan, Italy, 42 percent of the 149 passengers on board tested positive for COVID-19 upon arrival, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Eurosurveillance.

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New York COVID hospitalizations are at their highest level in nearly a year just after a new, ultra-transmissible COVID variant XBB.1.5, known as Kraken, achieved dominance in the northeast U.S. 

Current in-state COVID hospitalizations are near 4,000—the highest level since February, according to the New York State Department of Health.

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Three years after the novel coronavirus emerged, a new variant, XBB.1.5, is quickly becoming the dominant strain in parts of the United States because of a potent mix of mutations that makes it easier to spread broadly, including among those who have been previously infected or vaccinated.

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A Beijing hospital has run out of beds, forcing patients to rest on stretchers or lay on the hallway floors as COVID-19 infections run rampant in the country and stretch thin the public health sectors’ resources.

"We have no beds, we have no oxygen, and we have a room full of sick people waiting," a health care worker in Beijing Chaoyang Hospital’s emergency room told the Financial Times ahead of Christmas.

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Several New Jersey school districts are once again requiring masks in an effort to fight rising Covid rates. WNBC's Brian Thompson reports.

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The omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 has rapidly spread to become the dominant COVID-19 mutation in the U.S., now accounting for 40.5 percent of all cases.

The XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant as of this week has pushed out the BQ.1 and the BQ.1.1 subvariants from their previous positions as the most detected coronavirus mutations, according to surveillance conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

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State health officials are warning people that time is running out to get vaccinated before gathering with family over the holidays as Covid-19 cases surge nationwide alongside unseasonably severe waves of flu and respiratory syncytial virus.

The guidance comes after two excruciating holiday seasons that sent Covid-19 cases and deaths skyrocketing. And it underscores the ongoing struggle of public health officials at the state and federal level to get Americans vaccinated against the flu and Covid.

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For the past two years, social distancing kept seasonal viruses at bay. Now they’re roaring back.

IF COLD AND flu season seems to be hitting your household harder this year, you’re not alone. This is the year when common viruses that took a backseat to Covid-19 finally return.

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A post-Thanksgiving uptick in covid-19 patients at U.S. hospitals is arriving even as health systems contend with waves of feverish, coughing people stricken with RSV and influenza infections.

Covid hospitalizations last week reached their highest level in three months, with more than 35,000 patients being treated, according to Washington Post data tracking. National hospitalizations had stagnated throughout fall but started rising in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. All but a few states reported per capita increases in the past week.

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