China rejected on July 22 a World Health Organization (WHO) plan for a second phase of an investigation into the origin of the coronavirus, which includes the hypothesis it could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory, a top health official said.
Two doses of Pfizer or AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine are nearly as effective against the highly transmissible Delta coronavirus variant as they are against the previously dominant Alpha variant, a study published on July 21 showed.
U.S. President Joe Biden said the Centers for Disease Control is likely to advise that kids who have not been vaccinated against Covid-19 should wear masks when they return from summer holidays to school in the fall.
As part of a nationwide response to the threat posed by the more contagious Delta coronavirus variant, New York City will require Covid-19 vaccinations or weekly tests for workers at city-run hospitals and clinics.
The Delta variant of the coronavirus is the cause of more than 80 percent of new U.S. Covid-19 cases, but the authorized vaccines remain more than 90 percent effective in preventing hospitalizations and deaths, said top U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci during a U.S. Senate hearing on July 20.
Life expectancy in the United States fell by a year and a half in 2020 to 77.3 years – the lowest level since 2003 – primarily due to the deaths caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, a U.S. health agency said on July 21.
Sinopharm’s Covid-19 vaccine elicited weaker antibody responses against the Delta variant, based on the first published study of its effect against the more contagious version.
Scientists are working on a benchmark for Covid-19 vaccine efficacy that would allow drugmakers to conduct smaller, speedier human trials to get them to market and address a huge global vaccine shortage.
Swiftly rising coronavirus cases across the United States and abroad fueled fears of a pandemic resurgence on July 19 and sent shockwaves through stock markets as the highly contagious Delta variant appeared to be taking hold.
In a roundup of scientific studies on the novel coronavirus, a small study suggests no traces of mRNA vaccines end up in mothers’ breast milk and a gene called IFI27 that becomes activated early in Covid-19 might help identify people most likely to have contracted the virus after coming in contact with an infected person.
