(HealthDay News) — As the number of U.S. coronavirus cases surged past 200,000 and deaths neared 5,000 on Wednesday, Americans braced for bad news on unemployment claim numbers due out Thursday morning. Several estimates put the unemployment claims figure at roughly 5 million, the Washington Post reported. That would come on top of the more…  read on >

(HealthDay News) — The White House coronavirus task force delivered a tough statistic to Americans late Tuesday, warning that the U.S. death toll from COVID-19 could climb to 240,000, even with social distancing policies in place. During a media briefing Tuesday evening, President Donald Trump warned citizens to brace for a “hell of a bad…  read on >

The coronavirus pandemic is spreading across the United States at the same time that millions have been laid off from their jobs. That raises the obvious question — how will those newly unemployed folks pay for medical care if they become infected with the coronavirus? Recent bills passed by Congress ensure that people won’t have…  read on >

New research suggests that having an underlying health condition might be one of the most significant risk factors for developing a severe case of COVID-19. Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took a look at a group of U.S. adult COVID-19 patients and found roughly three-quarters of those who wound up…  read on >

Folks with clogged arteries do as well with medication and lifestyle changes as they do after undergoing invasive procedures to reopen their blood vessels, a major new clinical trial reports. Bypass surgery, balloon angioplasty and stenting are no better than drugs, eating right and exercising at reducing the risk of heart attack and death in…  read on >

Thousands of elective and semi-elective surgeries — including heart and chest operations — are on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. If your heart or chest surgery has been postponed, Dr. Robbin Cohen and Dr. Elizabeth David of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons offer some advice. “We especially don’t want to turn postponed elective or…  read on >

Artificial intelligence (AI) may be able to identify people who will develop type 2 diabetes, researchers say. For the study, the researchers used machine learning AI to analyze more than 509,000 annual health checkup records of more than 139,000 people in Japan from 2008 to 2018. They included more than 65,000 who did not have…  read on >