COVID

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Friday ignored shouted questions from reporters about whether he’ll sign legislation that unanimously passed Congress last week calling for declassification of information on the origins of COVID-19. On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karine... Read More

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration has amended its emergency use authorization of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Bivalent vaccine, authorizing its use as a single booster dose for children 6 months through 4 years who’ve completed their primary vaccinations with... Read More

WASHINGTON — The United States supports an international effort to reach an accord based on lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, but will resist an agreement that in any way undermines U.S. sovereignty or national security, the State Department said... Read More

WASHINGTON — Suspicions shifted sharply Wednesday at a congressional hearing toward a lab leak as the source of the COVID-19 pandemic. The bigger question confronted by the House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee was what can be done to stop the... Read More

WASHINGTON — The Dept. of Veterans Affairs is relaxing COVID-era masking rules at its medical facilities in an attempt, it says, to better accommodate individual preferences. Moving forward, the department said it will base its masking guidelines on the Veterans... Read More

NEW YORK — More than 7,000 nurses at Mount Sinai Medical Center and Montefiore Medical Center walked off the job this morning after talks to avert a strike fell apart overnight. The nurses are seeking better wages and working conditions.... Read More

WASHINGTON — The Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Inspection Service is developing new tests and tools to identify and track the coronavirus and its variants in wild and domestic animals. The initiative, part of a $300 million provision in the... Read More

The incidence rate of infective endocarditis — a rare but often fatal inflammation of the heart valves — among patients with cocaine use disorder or opioid use disorder increased from 2011 to 2022, with the steepest increase occurring from 2021... Read More

WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday amended its emergency use authorizations for the updated (bivalent) Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines, saying the shots are safe to administer to children as young as 6 months old. “More children... Read More

WASHINGTON - When an 11-year-old girl recently went to an emergency room in Connecticut, she was asked if she had been thinking about killing herself as part of a suicide screening. To her mother's shock, since they were there about... Read More