1.5 million children have lost parents to pandemic; potential brain gateway for virus found - Yahoo News

  During the first 14 months of the pandemic, an estimated 1.5 million children worldwide experienced the death of a parent, custodial grandparent, or other relative who cared for them, as a result of COVID-19, according to a study published in The Lancet https://bit.ly/3wW1wqg on Tuesday.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 Response Team, who led the study, said in a statement.

  Researchers have found a potential route of entry for the coronavirus into the human brain that may help explain the effects of COVID-19 on the brain and nervous system that have plagued many patients.

In a new study, experimenting with an artificially grown mass of cells created to resemble the brain, researchers found that neurons seemed "impervious" to the coronavirus, said Joseph Gleeson of the University of California, San Diego.

When researchers added pericytes to their artificial brain and then added the virus, "we found incredibly robust infection," not just of the pericytes but also of the neurons, Gleeson said.

  Two doses of an mRNA vaccine from Pfizer/BioNTech or Moderna are effective at neutralizing the highly contagious Delta variant of the coronavirus that is or will soon be dominant in most places, suggesting immediate booster doses are not likely needed, researchers said.

Mutations in the less prevalent Beta and Gamma variants reduced antibody neutralization capacity more significantly, but not to a point where vaccine recipients would appear to be unprotected, the researchers reported on Sunday in a paper posted on medRxiv https://bit.ly/3iB4HhV ahead of peer review.

Her team also found that overall, neutralizing antibody levels after vaccination were higher in COVID-19 survivors than in uninfected vaccine recipients.

As many remain unvaccinated and coronavirus cases rise amid the delta variant, some of the vaccinated will get infected, but serious illness is rare.

Sejal Hathi, Physician & Clinical Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital & host of “Civic Rx” podcast, joined Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the surge in COVID-19 cases across the country. .

Two Tennessee Republican lawmakers said Wednesday they received assurances that the state's health agency won't vaccinate minors for COVID-19 without parental consent, doubling back on a decades-old provision about children's vaccination rights that was a lightning rod in the firing of the state's top vaccine official.

Speaking at a coronavirus media briefing on Tuesday, Nicola Sturgeon refused to give a date for when a decision will be taken on vaccine passports North of the Border after Boris Johnson announced that nightclubs in England would require them for entry by the end of September.

After the far-right lawmaker said COVID-19 only threatened seniors and the obese, she burst into laughter when a reporter pointed out deaths in other populations

The surge in COVID-19 cases from the Delta variant is not yet substantial enough to darken the U.S