covid-19

Anaïs Saint-André Loughran remembers every cheese she’s ever tasted. The owner of Chantal’s Cheese Shop in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, recalls that when she decided she wanted to be a cheesemonger—at age 4—“all the doors of my memories were tied to cheese, and where and how I tasted it.” So when Loughran lost her sense of smell after she contracted COVID in March 2020, she was devastated. On the second day, she says, “I woke up, I tried to eat something, and it felt like I was eating nothing.” Since then, her career has been irrevocably changed.

Although virus sequencing is vital to detect and track new variants in the COVID-19 pandemic, sharing this information must be stepped up globally, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday in Geneva. 

The World Health Organization (WHO) is concerned about the COVID-19 surge in China, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday, in his first virtual briefing for the year. 

Governments around the world have imposed or considering restrictions on travellers from China as coronavirus cases in the country surge following its relaxation of “zero-COVID” rules.

Mandy Yang, a marketing professional in Beijing, is all set to travel abroad once China’s borders reopen on January 8. Yang, 42, and her family renewed their passports in November and have recently been looking for flights to Chiang Mai in Thailand.

At a recent checkup, my father’s primary doctor asked him if anything was giving him problems. While the doctor was talking about physical ailments, my dad said: “The biggest stressor in my life is that me or my wife have to spend half of the day on the phone dealing with these medical supply companies.” It wasn’t a stint in the hospital, physical therapy or a new dietary regimen that was bothering my dad. What was bothering him were ongoing supply chain problems that he and my mom were then navigating. Although it is not as common to hear about it on the news as it was during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, supply constraints still grip the medical field. Saline solution, tubes, vials, pipettes, ventilators, defibrillators, amoxicillin and Adderall are all in short supply. In total, some 34 product categories currently are listed in critical need, according to the Food and Drug Administration. What’s more, the agency expects these conditions to continue into the near future. Meanwhile, when people moved during the pandemic, limited housing became a national issue. According to current estimates, at least 5 million homes need to be built. Long-lasting shortages in the United States were unheard of before COVID-19. But in the last two years, scarcity has gripped countless industries. Baby formula, timber, paper products, butter, computer chips, meat and poultry, passenger cars as well as trash trucks and other commercial vehicles have all been on backorder. The same goes for many other items, including fiber optic cables, electronics, jewelry, clothing, pet supplies and garden items.

People who suffer from chronic pain at age 44 are more like to report pain, poor general health, poor mental health outcomes and joblessness in their 50s and 60s, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by David Blanchflower of Dartmouth College, US, and Alex Bryson of University College London, UK.

China’s electric carmaker Nio has suspended production due to tightened COVID-19 restrictions, while an industrial park that hosts Apple supplier Foxconn has gone into lockdown amid rising cases.

Workers are departing Apple Inc.’s biggest iPhone plant in China, seeking to escape hastily enacted Covid measures that left many of the 200,000 staff grappling with inadequate living conditions.

The number of deaths from the coronavirus pandemic in Iran increased to 143,867 with 47 more Iranians killed by the deadly disease over the past 24 hours, Iran's Health Ministry announced on Wednesday.