The new approach would simplify vaccination guidance so that, every fall, people would get a new shot, updated to try to match whatever variant is dominant.

U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc said on Tuesday it will offer its full portfolio of drugs, including off-patent medicines such as chemotherapies and oral cancer treatments, on a not-for-profit basis to 45 low-income countries in the world.

Individuals with long COVID, sometimes referred to as “long-haulers,” experience symptoms that may persist for weeks, months, or even years after their acute viral infection. While symptoms vary widely, a common complaint among patients is “brain fog”—a colloquial term for significant, persistent cognitive deficits, with consistent impairment of executive functioning and working memory.

Genome analysis finds SARS-CoV-2 and bat coronaviruses shared an ancestor just a few years ago, but extensive recombination has muddied the picture.

A string of about 30,000 genetic letters were all that it took to start the nightmare of covid-19, the death toll from which is likely to be more than 20m. Exactly how this story began has been hotly contested. Many think that covid-19’s emergence was a zoonosis—a spillover, as so many new pathogens are, from wild animals, for it resembles a group of coronaviruses found in bats.

When COVID-19 was filling emergency rooms, shuttering businesses, and turning parents and teachers into experts in Zoom, everyone hoped for a cure — or, if that wasn't possible, at least a way to avoid getting it. However, when a vaccine became available, many were wary of it. Rumors quickly spread about "the jab": It gives you cancer. It was approved before enough research could be done. It restructures your DNA. All these are false, according to Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, but that hasn't stopped the rumor mill from grinding.

Drugmaker Pfizer said Friday that as government contracts come to an end, possibly by early next year, its Covid-19 vaccine will be sold for $110 to $130 per dose.

The pandemic coronavirus' debut wrought universal havoc—not even seasonal flu viruses were spared. Amid travel restrictions, quarantines, closures, physical distancing, masking, enhanced hand washing, and disinfection, the 2020-2021 flu season was all but canceled. That meant not just an unprecedented global decrease in the number of people sick with the flu but also a dramatic collapse in the genetic diversity of circulating flu strains.

A new SARS-CoV-2-like virus discovered in Russian bats is capable of infecting humans, and is resistant to current vaccines against COVID-19, a study has found. A team led by researchers at Washington State University (WSU), US, found spike proteins from the bat virus, named Khosta-2, can infect human cells and is resistant to both the antibody therapies and blood serum from people vaccinated for SARS-CoV-2.

Although the daily death rates have ticked down slightly from August, updated federal data shows that the U.S. is still losing hundreds of Americans to COVID-19 every day, and 225,000 people in the U.S. have been lost to the virus since the start of 2022. On average, more than 350 American deaths related to COVID-19 are still reported each day, and over the last seven days, the U.S. has reported nearly 2,500 deaths, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The virus was found in a population of bats in Russia.

If a woman contracts COVID-19 during her pregnancy, the infection, even if it’s mild, damages the placenta’s immune response to further infections, a UW Medicine-led study has found. The study was published Sept. 17 in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

A sensor built into a mask was able to detect the COVID-19, H5N1 and H1N1 influenza viruses in the air within 10 minutes and send notifications to a device, according to the study led by six scientists working with Tongji University in Shanghai.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has suggested that the isolated country could begin COVID-19 vaccinations in November, state media reported on Friday.

The nation’s top public health agency on Thursday relaxed its Covid-19 guidelines, dropping the recommendation that Americans quarantine themselves if they come into close contact with an infected person. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also said people no longer need to stay at least 6ft (about 2 metres) away from others.

Original court documents tell a different story than the one contained in a viral blog post from a convoy-friendly National Post columnist.

Regardless of disease severity, people who have lingering smell loss after covid-19 are more likely to have cognitive problems than those who regain or never lose their sense of smell  

Some of the thermal scanners and cameras sold to schools to detect fevers would regularly fail if someone walked in with a hot coffee or after spending too much time in the sun.

Apple will no longer require corporate employees to wear masks at "most locations," according to an internal email from the company's COVID-19 response team seen by The Verge. "We are writing to share an update to our current protocols," the email reads. "In light of current circumstances, wearing a face mask will no longer be required in most locations."

North Korea has reported no new “fever” cases for the first time since mid-May when it abruptly announced its first domestic outbreak of COVID-19, and imposed tough measures to curb the spread of the virus. The North’s state emergency anti-epidemic centre said it had found zero fever patients in the most recent 24-hour period, state media reported on Saturday.