(Reuters) – Becton Dickinson and Co has partnered with Amazon.com Inc to begin shipment of a new at-home rapid COVID-19 test that can confirm results using an entirely automated smartphone app. The BD Veritor At-Home COVID-19 Test, which was authorized by U.S. regulators in August, also automatically reports results to federal and state public health […]

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Pregnant women with symptomatic COVID-19 are more likely to have emergency deliveries, compared with peers with COVID but no symptoms, and their newborns are more likely to require oxygen support and a stay in the neonatal intensive-care unit (NICU), according to a single-center experience. “The results were pretty surprising and […]

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – Brazil was set on Friday to become the second country in the world to pass 600,000 COVID-19 deaths, a dark milestone for a government that has been sharply criticized by health experts for mismanaging the outbreak. The country has ramped up vaccinations after a slow start, however, and there are […]

MILAN (Reuters) – Italy’s medicines agency AIFA warned on Friday against the misuse of an unlicensed antiviral drug as a COVID-19 therapy, calling it a potential danger to people’s health. Regulators said the Ministry of Health had alerted them of a high number of requests to import Parvulan, an antiviral drug used as treatment for […]

(Reuters) – A White House plan to mandate COVID-19 vaccination or repeated testing for around two-thirds of U.S. workers announced on Thursday could be hampered by supply challenges as COVID-19 test manufacturers strain to keep pace with demand. U.S. President Joe Biden will require all federal employees to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and the U.S. […]

(Reuters) – People with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 who were treated with a monoclonal antibody “cocktail” had lower hospitalization rates than similar people who did not receive the treatment, researchers reported in EClinicalMedicine. They looked at nearly 1,400 such patients, roughly half of whom had received Regeneron Pharmaceutical Inc’s casirivimab–imdevimab monoclonal antibody therapy. Among those who received […]

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – People with mild to moderate COVID-19 who were treated with casirivimab and imdevimab – two monoclonal antibodies with emergency-use authorization for COVID-19 in the U.S. – had lower hospitalization rates than untreated counterparts in a retrospective study. Dr. Raymund Razonable of Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota, and colleagues took a […]

KINSHASA (Reuters) – A third wave of COVID-19 infections in Africa has stabilised and the continent’s slow vaccination drive has picked up pace, the World Health Organisation said on Thursday. Some 248,000 new cases were reported in the past week, down from 282,000 in mid-July, while the number of vaccinations tripled to 13 million, Matshidiso […]

(Reuters) – The Florida Board of Education on Friday told two school districts they would have some of their state funding withheld if they failed within the next 48 hours to provide parents with a way to opt out of a requirement that their children wear masks. School boards in Broward and Alachua counties have […]

(Reuters) — How cells lining the nose respond to the coronavirus might someday be used to predict how sick a person will become with COVID-19, according to a new study. Researchers analyzed immune activity in cells taken from patients’ nasal swabs at the time of COVID-19 diagnosis, comparing those who became only mildly ill to […]