As you surely know, this country’s covid vaccination effort has been plagued by major birth pangs: registration snafus, poor communication, faulty data and a scant supply of vaccine — all exacerbated by inequitable allocation, alleged political favoritism and unseemly jockeying for shots. Still, as of Friday, over 118 million shots had gone into arms, and […]

In North Carolina, the nation’s leading tobacco producer, any adult who has smoked more than 100 cigarettes in their lifetime can now be vaccinated against covid. In Florida, people under 50 with underlying health conditions can get vaccinated only if they have written permission from their doctor. In Mississippi, more than 30,000 covid vaccine appointments […]

Hawaii, Florida, Seattle and the South of France are on the minds of New York City college students. Those are some of the destinations that undergrads mentioned when asked where they’d go for spring break, if they weren’t grounded by covid-19. “I’d be getting a house with 10 people, with a pool, and we’d be […]

Six months after it was controversially hailed by Trump administration officials as a “breakthrough” therapy to fight the worst effects of covid-19, convalescent plasma appears to be on the ropes. The treatment that infuses blood plasma from recovered covid patients into people newly infected in hopes of boosting their immune response has not lived up […]

A Senate committee grilled federal officials about the shortage of vaccines to protect Americans against a pandemic virus. Two months later, the U.S. public had lost interest in the virus, and millions of vaccines were sitting in warehouses — although poor countries still needed them. This happened during the 2009-10 swine flu pandemic. One official […]

SACRAMENTO — Gavin Newsom was just making a name for himself as mayor of San Francisco in 2005 when Blue Shield of California wrote him its first major check. The young, business-friendly Democrat had exploded onto the national scene the year before by issuing same-sex marriage licenses in San Francisco, and he was pushing his […]

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Cristina Davila wasn’t used to being happy about waiting in line. As a server at the Navy Proof Restaurant and Bar, the specter of covid has weighed heavily on her mind for the past several months. Davila has been especially worried about the possibility of bringing the virus home to her […]

Acknowledging that chronic underfunding of public health contributed significantly to the nation’s fragmented response to the coronavirus pandemic, Democrats included more than $100 billion in the recently enacted relief package to address urgent needs and enhance future efforts. “The pandemic has given us possibly the best chance we’ve ever had of getting on the right […]