MOSCOW - The Delta COVID-19 strain spreads as easily as chickenpox, with fully vaccinated people also transmitting the virus, The Washington Post has reported, citing an internal document from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), expected to be published later on Friday. The transmissibility of the Delta variant is almost as high as chickenpox, with each infected perso [...]

The CDC has released a study backing up its decision to recommend indoor masking for both vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans. The study examined one outbreak and found three-quarters of people testing positive were vaccinated. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revised its masking guidelines on Tuesday, urging all Americans in areas with high Covid-19 transmission to mask [...]

Q: What’s the only pandemic idea worse than sending teams of do-gooding liberal strangers into Middle America to surprise the locals with door-to-door Covid-19 vaccinations? A: Declaring war on the Second Amendment first. The Biden administration’s new plan to boost vaccination numbers by sending “surge teams” into Covid-19 “hotspots” has the potential to go down in history as [...]

While waiting for the final decision on the controversial vaccine, Norway has decided to distribute its stock of AstraZeneca to fellow Nordic countries that actually want to use them despite the associated risks. Norwegians run a greater risk of dying from being inoculated with AstraZeneca's vaccine than from COVID-19, the National Institute of Public Health (FHI) concluded in its analysi [...]

The majority of Russians believe they haven’t yet had Covid-19, new research reveals, but more than half of people say they aren’t actually worried about catching the virus and far fewer say they’ve signed up for a vaccine so far. That’s according to a new survey conducted by Moscow’s Levada Center, a pollster registered as a foreign agent by Russia’s Justice Ministry over links to [...]

About 60% of Germans would like to get vaccinated with the Russian-made Sputnik V vaccine if they were presented with such an opportunity, a fresh poll has shown. The survey, conducted by the pollster Forsa, was commissioned by the German Eastern Business Association, a group focusing on economic cooperation between Germany and countries located in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, as [...]

Those of us who put forward an alternative view to the prevailing orthodoxy on the virus or on vaccinations are being vilified, threatened and cancelled. This is not how science, or a functioning democracy, works. I haven’t written for a while, sorry. Instead, I have been sorting out two complaints about my writing made to the General Medical Council (GMC). Also, a complaint from NHS England, an [...]

With the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing almost 3 million deaths worldwide, researchers have been scrambling to learn more about the deadly COVID-19 disease that has threatened global public health and world economies. A new study, published on preprint server bioRxiv last week, suggests that a cannabis plant compound inhibited infection with SARS-CoV-2 in human lung cells. [...]

Once again, the world has failed to unite when faced with a common threat. The response to the Covid-19 pandemic proves that much of the West, especially the US, is committed to bloc politics, no matter the real-world human cost. It was revealed in the annual report of the US Department of Health and Human Services that the US government worked towards convincing Brazil to reject Russia’s Spu [...]

Brussels’ beleaguered coronavirus vaccination program could be poised to get a shot in the arm as the EU’s central regulator completes its initial stage in appraising Sputnik V, the vaccine developed by Moscow’s Gamaleya Center. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) told Russian media on Tuesday that the scientific consultation process was now finalized. “As a next step, the company ca [...]

Wuhan, where the Covid-19 pandemic began, has now returned to a life resembling that before the virus swept in, after China was able to control the outbreak of the disease with strict but necessary lockdown measures. Seeing Wuhan’s success ought to bring a ray of hope to those around the world facing the worst of their country’s outbreaks; yet, in their annual retrospectives, American med [...]

After a video of his mother’s condition went viral, the son of a woman who was hospitalized after receiving Pfizer’s Covid jab told RT that, even though he was not an anti-vaxxer, he had serious doubts about the drug’s safety. Brant Griner issued an appeal on Facebook last week, after his mother began experiencing serious medical issues several days after taking the vaccine. In a now-vi [...]

With the vaccine not providing immediate immunity to the coronavirus, over two hundred Israeli citizens have been diagnosed with the disease days after getting the Pfizer/BioNTech jabs, local media reported. The number of those who got Covid-19 despite being vaccinated was at around 240 people, according to data from Channel 13 News. The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, which the Israeli health au [...]

Side-by-side comparisons of how New York City and Wuhan, China rang in the new year have sparked a heated debate on social media about whether the US should have embraced Beijing’s approach to handling the coronavirus pandemic. Photographs showing empty streets on Times Square, typically a hub of merry-making on New Year’s Eve, spread across social media on Thursday night, with several co [...]

Four trial participants who received the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine experienced facial paralysis, according to the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA said the issue should be monitored as the jab becomes more widely available. The potentially concerning cases were revealed after the US drug regulator published an analysis of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine ahead of a meeting to consider emergency [...]

The global death toll from the coronavirus is now over 1.5 million, while the overall tally is more than 65 million, according to Johns Hopkins University. The spike in the number of infections caused several countries to impose quarantines in November, however, most are expected to end their lockdowns this month, before Christmas. Among the most affected nations are the US (14.1 million [...]

Debates in Congress over a new COVID-19 relief bill have dragged on for months, even as new coronavirus cases have hit record highs. A slew of federal programs designed to alleviate the economic impacts of pandemic shutdowns will expire in weeks, setting the stage for a series of crises that could leave millions more in the US hungry and homeless. As the COVID-19 pandemic and its associat [...]

Donald Trump’s lack of input at the G20 summit made it easy to ignore him. While Joe Biden will play more of a role globally, the rest of the world should not look to him for leadership given the turmoil America is in at present. The 2020 G20 Riyadh summit took place over the weekend with participating nations discussing greater cooperation in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, the global econ [...]

The Covid-19 virus had been active in Italy months before it was first officially detected, new research has found, raising further questions about the true origins, extent and actual duration of the ongoing pandemic. The new groundbreaking study, conducted by scientists with Milan Institute of Cancer and the University of Siena, was published this week by the Tumori Journal. The research is based [...]

Russia was widely criticized when it became the first country in the world to register a coronavirus vaccine in August. It was accused of rushing through the approval of the ‘Sputnik V’ formula for political or propaganda gain. Since then the whole development of the vaccine has been dogged by Schadenfreude as the press leapt on signs of impropriety in the data, and Russia has even been acc [...]

Given the continued disruptions caused by the pandemic and uncertainty about a vaccine, it would behoove the countries of the world to dial down tensions and expand collaborations, writes Vijay Prashad. In mid-October, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released its World Economic Outlook report, which offered some dizzying data. For 2020, the IMF estimates that the global Gross Domestic P [...]

The announcement on Monday that the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid vaccine was 90% effective injected rocket fuel into the stock market and hope into hearts everywhere. But the vaccine’s cold-storage requirements present huge problems. Immediately after the announcement, politicians began falling over themselves to hand fat checks over to the Big Pharma giants, hoping that the news would inspire hop [...]