JERUSALEM — Israel, whose aggressive response to the coronavirus has held its fatality rate to a fraction of those of the United States and other hard-hit nations, is readying a nationwide serological test of 100,000 citizens to see how widely the virus has spread across its population and how vulnerable it may be to a…
A team of scientists has developed an experimental prototype for a fairly quick, cheap test to diagnose the coronavirus that gives results as simply as a pregnancy test does. The test is based on a gene-editing technology known as Crispr, and the researchers estimated that the materials for each test would cost about $6. “We’re…
Among the most important unanswered questions about Covid-19 is this: What role do children play in keeping the pandemic going? Fewer children seem to get infected by the coronavirus than adults, and most of those who do have mild symptoms, if any. But do they pass the virus on to adults and continue the chain…
One of the mostly forgotten chestnuts of the newspaper racket was the photograph, always on the first snowy day of the year, of some frozen formation that resembled a human face. After seeing those pictures year after year, it was hard to shake the suspicion that news photographers were sculpting on the fly, and under…
Researchers at two Harvard-affiliated hospitals are adapting a proven form of gene therapy to develop a coronavirus vaccine, which they expect to test in people later this year, they announced on Monday. Their work employs a method already used in gene therapy for two inherited diseases, including a form of blindness: It uses a harmless…
As I wait for the interpreter to call the mother and then connect me into our three-way call, I berate myself for how bad my Spanish has become. I imagine it will continue to get worse. But what I am also realizing in this 30 seconds of dead airtime is that my overall communication skills…
Pfizer and the German pharmaceutical company BioNTech announced that their potential coronavirus vaccine began human trials in the United States on Monday. If the tests are successful, the vaccine could be ready for emergency use here as early as September. The two firms are jointly developing a vaccine candidate based on genetic material known as…
Here’s what you need to know: ImageA burial in New Jersey last week.Credit…Todd Heisler/The New York Times A Trump administration projection and a public model predict rising death tolls. As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths…
Crises have a way of shining a klieg light on the quality and depth of one’s relationships. Following major hurricanes, severe winter storms, electrical outages and terrorist attacks such as 9/11, there tends to be an uptick in divorces and breakups, as well as marriages and pregnancies. Lawyers and demographers are already predicting a wave…
TOKYO — As President Trump was extolling the promise of a malaria drug in the desperate hunt for coronavirus treatments, one of his top global allies was selling the world on his own “trump card,” a pale yellow pill that he said could be crucial to fighting the pandemic. This supposed beacon of hope is…