Browsing: Covid

[ad_1] WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will end most federal Covid-19 vaccine requirements next week, rolling back a vast assertion of government power that helped bring an end to the worst public health threat in 100 years but roiled American politics in the process.The White House announced the shift in policy on Monday, roughly three years after the start of a pandemic that eventually prompted the United States and nations around the world to require hundreds of millions of people to be vaccinated against the fast-moving and rapidly changing coronavirus.But on May 11, those requirements will end for federal workers,…

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[ad_1] A new study of genetic data from a market in Wuhan, China, said the data did not support the case that the pandemic had started with illegally traded animals, touching off fresh debate about samples that other scientists see as critical pieces of the puzzle of how the coronavirus reached humans.The new study, which examined the relative amounts of animal and viral material in swabs taken from surfaces at the market in early 2020, said it was difficult to draw conclusions about whether given samples of the virus had come from infected live animals or were simply from incidental…

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[ad_1] Three years in, the pandemic mania has settled to a rumbling hum. We’re back to sweating on each other in nightclubs, spluttering out birthday candles, and sharing firm handshakes. Covid-19, while still very much alive, has for most people diminished to an everyday threat, thanks to vaccines and treatments.The same can’t be said of long Covid, the mysterious, life-limiting ailment that lingers on after an initial Covid infection. For the millions besieged by it, their situation has remained much the same. “We still have no established tools to help treat patients,” says Linda Geng, codirector of the Post-Acute Covid-19…

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[ad_1] Within weeks of Covid-19 shutting down the world in 2020, teams at archrivals Apple and Google partnered on a rare joint project. They developed a way to log people’s proximity using Bluetooth chips in iPhones and Android phones, enabling the creation of apps that let someone who tested positive for the virus to anonymously notify fellow users whom they’d been near in the preceding few days. Those alerted to the exposure could then isolate, test, and quarantine, hopefully slowing the spread of Covid.Covid is still around, but the grand experiment in semi-automated contact tracing by smartphone is now nearing its end in…

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