News Center

As hospitals and health care workers grapple with a shortage of supplies, some doctors are raising questions about how ventilators are currently being used on coronavirus patients — and whether they may actually be doing more harm than good.

POSTED APRIL 08, 2020 8:37 AM

The new survey found that Americans increasingly blame Trump for the vast scale of the U.S. coronavirus outbreak.

POSTED APRIL 08, 2020 4:13 PM

Federal agencies are concerned that domestic extremists could use the coronavirus pandemic to attack Asians and Jews, according to a joint intelligence bulletin obtained by Yahoo News. That bulletin mirrors what organizations that monitor online hate content are also finding.

POSTED APRIL 08, 2020 10:46 AM

A California woman has been arrested after licking $1,800 worth of groceries and other items at a supermarket in the northern part of the state, police said Wednesday. Chris Fiore, spokesman for the South Lake Tahoe police department, near the border with Nevada, told AFP that officers were called to the Safeway store on Tuesday following reports of "a customer licking groceries" at a time of heightened fears over the spread of the highly contagious novel coronavirus. "When officers arrived on the scene, a Safeway employee informed them that the suspect put numerous pieces of jewelry from the store on her hands," he said.

POSTED APRIL 08, 2020 9:47 PM

Representative Jim Banks (R., Ind.) is calling on the State Department and Department of Justice to bring a case against China to the United Nations International Court of Justice for damages stemming from the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, joining the growing number of lawmakers who want to see China held responsible.“If China’s leaders hadn’t become embarrassed by the outbreak and tried to cover up its spread, the world may have had a better chance to prepare for this or even contain it in Wuhan or China,” Banks said in a statement. “Instead, we have a pandemic. China shoulders most of that blame. Rather than succumb to the propaganda and spin of Chinese officials, the world must hold them accountable for mishandling this outbreak. If the United Nations cannot even do that, it has completely lost its purpose.”If China refuses a trial in the International Court of Justice, Articles 49-51 of the United Nation's Charter hold that the U.S. and other states could suspend their international obligations to China in order to force Beijing to accept responsibility, including by reversing China’s membership in the World Trade Organization, and by suspending air travel to China.Banks is currently circulating a letter addressed to Attorney General William Barr and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to gather congressional support for his effort. He also co-sponsored a resolution last month that condemned the Chinese Communist Party’s handling of the initial outbreak.The Indiana Republican is not the only member of Congress who has called for an international investigation of China. In March, Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) and Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) proposed a bicameral resolution that called for an international investigation to determine to what extent China’s coverup helped produce a global pandemic.Recent reports have documented how China failed to take the threat seriously and silenced early warnings that the outbreak could turn into a major problem.China has also used propaganda to push a conspiracy theory that the virus originated in the U.S., which experts have called “a counteroffensive” and “a kind of blame-shifting."

POSTED APRIL 08, 2020 3:24 PM

Photos emerge of workers in hazmat outfits stacking coffins in a mass grave in New York City.

POSTED APRIL 09, 2020 11:29 PM

A crew member who was hospitalized for days after two ill-fated cruise ships with coronavirus patients were finally allowed to dock in Florida has died, officials said. Broward County Medical Examiner Craig Mallak on Thursday confirmed the death of Wiwit Widarto, 50, of Indonesia. The man died Wednesday, six days after the Zaandam and a sister ship docked in the Fort Lauderdale port after spending two weeks at sea rejected by South American ports, said Holland America Line spokesman Erik Elvejord.

POSTED APRIL 09, 2020 5:19 PM

COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. surpass 16,000. In New York, new hospitalizations slow, affirming signs that stay-at-home orders are slowing coronavirus spread.

POSTED APRIL 09, 2020 2:13 PM

Beyond the daily casualty statistics, the big, sobering economic number of the week lands on Thursday at 08.30 ET (1230 GMT): New U.S. jobless claims will likely reveal that the number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits in the last three weeks has now hit a staggering 15 million. The speed with which patients are declining and dying from the new coronavirus is shocking even veteran doctors and nurses as they scramble to try to stop such sudden deterioration. The quick turns for the worse are likely products of an "overly exuberant" reaction by the immune system as it fights the virus, said Dr Otto Yang, an infectious disease specialist at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles.

POSTED APRIL 09, 2020 3:20 AM

As a frontline infectious diseases doctor, this is what I want my friends and neighbors to do if they have COVID-19 symptoms and are asked to go to the emergency room.

POSTED APRIL 08, 2020 9:20 AM