Restaurants, gyms, cafes and other crowded indoor venues accounted for some 8 in 10 new infections in the early months of the U.S. coronavirus epidemic, according to a new analysis that could help officials around the world now considering curfews, partial lockdowns and other measures in response to renewed outbreaks. The study, which used cellphone…
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In July, Pfizer and BioNTech initiated a late-stage clinical trial on a coronavirus vaccine. Half of the people got the vaccine, while the other half got a placebo of salt water. The companies then waited for people to get sick to determine if the vaccine offered any protection. So far, 94 participants out of nearly…
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Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together. For the last few months, I’ve started my mornings with the same routine: reviewing New York Times readers’ medical bills over coffee. The documents are part of a project I began in August, asking readers…
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Beth Harmon was facing a “sudden death” of sorts. The fictional chess star overcame her childhood as an orphan, she battled her addiction to pills and alcohol, and she managed to make it into the world championship in Russia. The problem now? She had spent all her money on clothing and couldn’t afford her $3,000…
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Just Me and My Sea Monkeys I was in love and in lockdown in a small flat in Leith, Scotland. I had a lot of feelings and nowhere to put them. So I bought sea monkeys. I poured in the powder and checked the water temperature. For weeks, nothing. My last-ditch effort at finding something…
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People with intellectual disabilities and developmental disorders are three times more likely to die if they have Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, compared with others with the diagnosis, according to a large analysis of insurance claims data. The finding raises complex questions about how to allocate new vaccines as they become available in…
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Six months into his bid for the presidency, Joseph R. Biden Jr. made his position on pets abundantly clear. “Some Americans celebrate #NationalCatDay, some celebrate #NationalDogDay,” he wrote in a tweet. “President Trump celebrates neither. It says a lot. It’s time we put a pet back in the White House.” In January, when President-elect Biden…
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On Monday, Vice President Mike Pence said on Twitter that the news came “thanks to the public-private partnership forged” by Mr. Trump. In July, Pfizer got a $1.95 billion deal with the government’s Operation Warp Speed, the multiagency effort to rush a vaccine to market, to deliver 100 million doses of the vaccine. The arrangement…
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Rebecca Sussman got a coronavirus test because town officials in Bedford, N.Y., encouraged her to. “If you haven’t gotten your test yet, please do so for yourself, your family and our community,” Chris Burdick, the town supervisor, said in an email. More tests would mean a lower positivity rate, he said, and a faster path…
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It’s been a big puzzle of the pandemic: Why are children so much less likely than adults to become infected with the new coronavirus and, if infected, less likely to become ill? A possible reason may be that many children already have antibodies to other coronaviruses, according to researchers at the Francis Crick Institute in…
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