In the News

U.S. health officials on Tuesday authorized a plan to stretch the nation’s limited supply of monkeypox vaccine by giving people just one-fifth the usual dose, citing research suggesting that the reduced amount is about as effective.
 

Scientists and economists look at what learning loss and disruption could bring for a generation of students—and what can be done about it.
 

How many species have been affected? And how many cases have there been in the animal kingdom? Those are difficult questions to answer. Yet it's an important task, say researchers, because of the possibility that the virus could mutate into a perhaps more transmissible or virulent strain in animals and then pass back to humans.
 

Officials have declared monkeypox a public health emergency, but school leaders shouldn't panic, experts say.
 

Some experts think it might be worth getting a second booster now if you face a high risk of COVID-19 exposure or if your previous dose was ages ago. The rise of BA.5 has spooked many of them, despite evidence the virus causes less severe disease now than at any other point during the pandemic.
 

The designation will free up emergency funds and lift some bureaucratic hurdles, but many experts fear containment may no longer be possible.
 

While the BA.5 variant of COVID-19—the most transmissible version of the virus to date—spreads quickly around the country, many school and district leaders plan to start the 2022-23 school year with fewer pandemic precautions in place.
 

President Biden testing positive for COVID-19 again days after completing a course of Paxlovid has raised the question of whether the length of the antiviral treatment should be reconsidered.
 

Most Americans who died of COVID-19 were immunocompromised or older than 75, experts said. These patients ranged in vaccination status – from being unvaccinated to receiving all their recommended vaccines and boosters.
 

Four fatalities from the escalating global monkeypox outbreak have been confirmed since last week: two in Spain, one in India, and one in Brazil, according to public health authorities in those countries. Should U.S. clinicians start worrying? Not yet, according to public health experts.
 

The new booster shot could be a game changer in the fight against COVID-19. The booster, designed to target the omicron variants, is expected to be approved as soon as September.
 

Testing has since expanded to around 80,000 tests per week, after five large commercial laboratories partnered with the federal government to boost the nation’s testing efforts. But while the ability to run more tests has improved, there are still barriers that prevent people from accessing them.