Tag: COVID-19

The U.S. government will spend $470 million to learn more about long COVID-19, its causes and potential treatments. The National Institutes of Health announced the plans Wednesday with a grant awarded to New York University and a goal of enrolling up to 40,000 adults and children nationwide. The effort, dubbed RECOVER, will involve researchers at more than 30 U.S. institutions.

About 3,000 Los Angeles Police Department employees are citing religious objections to try to get out of the required COVID-19 vaccination. In Washington state, thousands of state workers are seeking similar exemptions.

COVID-19 deaths and cases in the U.S. have climbed back to levels not seen since last winter, erasing months of progress and potentially bolstering President Joe Biden’s argument for his sweeping new vaccination requirements.

Racial disparities narrow on vaccines Since vaccines became available last winter, they’ve gone disproportionately to white people over Black and Hispanic people. But that may be starting to change, writes Nada Hassanein in USA Today. In recent weeks, as cases have soared, more people of color received a first shot, compared to their overall population share, than white people. “It shows a glint of promise,” experts told Hassanein. In Southern states where the delta variant is raging, Black and Hispanic vaccination rates are rising particularly fast, according to Bloomberg Equality’s COVID-19 tracker — but, “overall, states are still generally lagging in vaccinating Black and Hispanic people.” Those analyses are based on government data, which are incomplete, but an NBC News poll suggests a different picture: When asked, 76% of Black respondents said they’d been vaccinated, along with 71% of Latinos and just 66% of whites.

As travelers prepare for their next vacation, among the essentials to take along — like a toothbrush, wallet and phone charger — could be proof of vaccination for Covid-19, depending on where they are booked to sleep.