Emergency room visits in the United States have dropped sharply during the pandemic, underscoring concerns that people with serious medical conditions, like heart attacks, are avoiding hospitals, according to a new analysis released on Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As the coronavirus spread across the United States this spring, visits to…
The malaria drug hydroxychloroquine did not prevent Covid-19 in a rigorous study of 821 people who had been exposed to patients infected with the virus, researchers from the University of Minnesota and Canada are reporting on Wednesday. The study was the first large controlled clinical trial of hydroxychloroquine, a drug that President Trump has repeatedly…
Why do some people infected with the coronavirus suffer only mild symptoms, while others become deathly ill? Geneticists have been scouring our DNA for clues. Now, a study by European scientists is the first to document a strong statistical link between genetic variations and Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Variations at two spots…
The decision to buy a handgun for the first time is typically motivated by self-protection. But it also raises the purchasers’ risk of deliberately shooting themselves by ninefold on average, with the danger most acute in the weeks after purchase, scientists reported on Wednesday. The risk remains elevated for years, they said. The findings are…
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has selected five companies as the most likely candidates to produce a vaccine for the coronavirus, senior officials said, a critical step in the White House’s effort to deliver on its promise of being able to start widespread inoculation of Americans by the end of the year. By winnowing the…
Even before my husband started baking his own sourdough loaves, I was already the kind of cook who made crumbs out of stale bread heels. But now that his once-in-a-while pursuit has become a weekly habit, we can eat our favorite pantry pasta with garlicky bread crumbs whenever we want. And we never tire of…
The handshake came first. Then the high-five, fist bump and more recently, the elbow touch. Canadian researchers are now working on a new greeting, the CanShake. It is not a mere salutation. The CanShake — which involves people shaking their phones at each other upon meeting to transmit contact information — is one of many…
Welcome. I was talking to my colleague Kim Severson a few days ago about the strange rhythms of our lives before the coronavirus came, weeks cut up by work trips, a lot of nights away from home. “Do you miss hotel life?” she asked. I thought about it for a minute before responding, “I do,…
WASHINGTON — Americans returning from China landed at U.S. airports by the thousands in early February, potential carriers of a deadly virus who had been diverted to a handful of cities for screening by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Their arrival prompted a frantic scramble by local and state officials to press the…
VENICE — For a change, it was the Venetians who crowded the square. Days before Italy lifted coronavirus travel restrictions on Wednesday that had prevented the usual crush of international visitors from entering the city, hundreds of locals gathered on chalk asterisks drawn several feet apart. They had come to protest a new dock that…