Health

Amid rising coronavirus cases in Hong Kong, a reporter asked a leading health official an ominous question during a press conference: “Are we going to have a normal Christmas?” Dr Chuang Shuk-kwan, the head of Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection communicable disease branch, responded, “With how long this might take, I really don’t know.”  Much of the world already knows the answer to this question: It will not be a typical Christmas in 2020.  The famous “Winter Wonders” Christmas market in Brussels, complete with a skating rink and more than 200 chalets, has been canceled.  In Poland, the government has said families can only spend Christmas with their immediate family members.  The Ma

Traveling may not look the same for years after the coronavirus pandemic, starting with the need to get a “Covid-19 passport” to fly in the future. There are several forms of digital health passes in development, the latest of which is a Travel Pass from the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade association based in Canada. The pass would serve as a “digital passport” with testing or vaccination certification for passengers.  The IATA app – which will likely include a global registry of health requirements for travel as well as testing and vaccination centers – is expected to launch at the beginning of next year, the latest effort to ensure safe travel during a global pande

American Thanksgiving is just around the corner, providing a moment for the typical US family to find gratitude amid a truly challenging moment in history. Thanksgiving (and its Canadian counterpart in October) is a uniquely American holiday. Americans living abroad or people who spent significant time in the US are typically the only people who celebrate it outside of the country.  But Thanksgiving is part and parcel with a long tradition of autumnal harvest festivals across the world.  In China, that holiday is known as Mid-Autumn Festival, or the Moon Festival.  The Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated by many east and southeast Asian people and is the second most important holiday in China

There is nothing quite like the guilt of diving down the rabbit hole, only to emerge a few hours later wondering where the time went.  But feel free to ignore that guilt when it comes to dog videos or clips of fluffy, adorable kittens on the internet.  It turns out there’s a rationale behind the addiction. A new study has found that watching such videos can lower your heart rate, blood pressure and anxiety — all health benefits we could use during the coronavirus pandemic.  The study took place in December 2019, involving 15 students who took part in a counter-intuitive exercise before exams at Britain’s University of Leeds.  Rather than doing any last-minute cramming, they watched slides a

Two pharmaceutical giants appear on the verge of deploying promising weapons in the global fight against the Covid-19 pandemic.  On Monday, Moderna announced that its experimental vaccine was 95% effective.  On Wednesday, a joint project between Pfizer and BioNTech also said their vaccine was 95% effective after conducting final efficacy analyses. Last week the project had said initial results put the number at 91%. On Thursday, the CEO of Pfizer said the company hoped to file for emergency-use authorization with the Food and Drug Administration on November 20.  But even if they are approved, it will still be months before they are available to the public in the US and other parts of the wor

Rapid economic growth in China has led to major improvements in quality of life and, according to a recent study, Chinese teenagers have achieved significant gains in height over the past 35 years. In 1985, the average height of 19-year-old women was 5.2 feet and that of 19-year-old men 5.5 feet. In 2019, the corresponding figures were 5.4 feet and 5.8 feet respectively.  According to the study, published in the medical journal The Lancet this month, the increase in boys’ height is the largest in the world. The improvement in girls’ height is the third largest. The study analyses children’s physical growth in different countries by pooling height and body mass index data from 193 countries.

When Joe Biden is inaugurated as United States president on January 20 he will inherit the legacies of Donald Trump and one of the worst will be a pandemic that is out of control during the depth of winter. Public health experts who had pinned their hopes on a Biden presidency could barely celebrate because the skyrocketing number of Covid-19 cases heralded daunting challenges ahead. The two-month wait before he takes power also means the country will not immediately get a long-overdue organized federal response to the pandemic. Experts have already seen coronavirus surging at an unprecedented rate, passing the bleak milestone of 10 million cases with the last million accumulating in just 10

US drug maker Pfizer said on November 9, 2020, that its experimental Covid-19 vaccine was more than 90 percent effective. The findings were based on the first interim analysis conducted this month. Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech SE are the first drug makers to release successful data from a large-scale clinical trial of a coronavirus vaccine. The companies said they have so far found no serious safety concerns and expect to seek US authorization this month for emergency use of the vaccine.

Every Tuesday and Thursday, Inkstone Index features one important number about China to give you insight into the rising power. $60: The cost of a new emergency use coronavirus vaccine in China.  The general public in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang can now get an “emergency use” coronavirus vaccine in the country’s first attempt to inoculate its population.  The vaccine will cost 400 yuan ($60) and will involve two shots administered 28 days apart.  The push for inoculation comes despite the fact that none of the vaccines in development have been officially approved. China currently has four vaccines that have entered phase three clinical trials, but none of them have passed. Much

Covid-19 vaccine candidates have advanced into final-stage trials faster than any in history, and projections for how many total doses could roll off assembly lines next year now top 16 billion, according to one recent calculation. But failures and setbacks are standard in the vaccine industry, and such projections could be cut by more than half, according to another estimate made last month. Which experimental vaccines eventually make it past approval and off assembly lines at scale will profoundly impact who gets vaccinated and when. Rich economies have already claimed large amounts of some companies’ supplies.  Those companies have also pledged supplies to lower and middle-income economie