President-elect Joe Biden announced a plan on Friday for what will likely be his most pressing challenge when he takes the White House next week: fixing America’s messy Covid-19 vaccine rollout. The plan builds on Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic stimulus proposal, which included a $400 billion Covid-19 plan, announced on Thursday. It seeks more support…

There’s a reason why a new, more contagious variant of SARS-CoV-2 appeared first in the UK: The country does a lot of viral genetic sequencing. Since the start of the pandemic, researchers in the UK have uploaded 151,859 individual SARS-CoV-2 sequences to GISAID, an international platform for sharing viral genomic data. That’s the highest number…

For the nearly 100 million people around the world who’ve been infected with the coronavirus, new science offers some comfort: Reinfections appear to be rare, and you may be protected from Covid-19 for at least five months. The study, the largest of its kind, followed more than 20,000 health workers in the UK, regularly testing…

We knew it was going to be a long, dark winter. But unfortunately, it’s now looking even more grim. Just as the first coronavirus vaccines began rolling out in the US and countries around the world in December — offering hope for the end of the Covid-19 pandemic — two fast-spreading variants of the SARS-CoV-2…

The number of confirmed Covid-19 deaths in the United States has now surpassed 400,000, and that devastating toll is set to grow in the coming weeks with the US still averaging more than 3,300 deaths every single day. In just the 11 months since the country’s first confirmed death from Covid-19, the disease has killed…

THE TWO SIDES beaten in the 2021 All-Ireland series by the eventual champions Tyrone, met in Tralee on Saturday night. Kerry and Mayo both entered the game unbeaten in the league to date, and while the spoils went to the home team, both remain in the top two spots in Division 1. Part of the…

People who are pregnant are now eligible to get the coronavirus vaccine in more than 40 states — typically ahead of their lower-risk peers. And more than 60,000 of them have already rolled up their sleeves, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although the Covid-19 vaccines authorized in the US were not…

President Joe Biden on Thursday set a new goal for Covid-19 vaccines in the US: 200 million shots in his first 100 days in office. That’s up from Biden’s original goal of 100 million in 100 days. “I know it is ambitious — twice our original goal,” Biden said. But the goal of 200 million…

The rapid spread of new variants of the coronavirus, some of which seem to be more contagious than older versions, has experts in the US calling for stricter social distancing and better masking to avoid yet another big surge of new Covid-19 cases and deaths. Health advocates and epidemiologists are particularly concerned about what will…