When schools open their doors this fall, teachers and students who are vaccinated can enter without masks, according to a new guidance issued Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The relaxed recommendation comes as a national vaccination campaign in which children as young as 12 can get COVID-19 shots unfolds, accompanied…  read on >  read on >

COVID-19 vaccines have prevented at least 279,000 deaths and 1.25 million hospitalizations in the United States, but the Delta variant poses a significant threat to that progress, researchers say. “The vaccines have been strikingly successful in reducing the spread of the virus and saving hundreds of thousands of lives in the United States alone,” said…  read on >  read on >

(HealthDay News) – The air people breathe – and how much pollution is in it – may make a difference in their outcomes when infected with COVID-19, a new study finds. Researchers found that living in more polluted areas — including near sewage water dischargers and in close proximity to heavy traffic — was linked…  read on >  read on >

Americans’ overall death rate from cancer continues to fall — but rising rates of certain cancers and ongoing racial disparities linger. Those are among the findings of an annual report to the nation from several major cancer organizations. The good news includes an accelerating decline in the overall cancer death rate, among both women and…  read on >  read on >

A longer prison sentence has been handed to the founder of a now-closed Massachusetts pharmaceutical facility responsible for the 2012 meningitis outbreak that killed 100 people and sickened hundreds of others. Barry Cadden, who was president and co-owner of the New England Compounding Center (NECC), received a 14-and-a-half year sentence from a federal judge Wednesday.…  read on >  read on >