A new forecasting center for infectious diseases was officially launched by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday. The goal of the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics is to act as a “National Weather Service” for infectious disease outbreaks, and to guide public health decisions during outbreaks. These can include developing…  read on >  read on >

Moderna Inc. announced Tuesday that an updated COVID booster shot that combines Moderna’s original vaccine with protection against the Beta variant appears more effective than current booster shots against Omicron and a number of other variants. Before the highly transmissible Omicron variant surfaced, Moderna was tweaking its original vaccine to provide added protection against the…  read on >  read on >

Fitness trackers can tell you how well you’re sleeping, how fast you’re walking and, of course, how many steps you’ve taken. But during the pandemic, researchers have also investigated the ability of smart watches to help detect COVID-19 or provide data on recovery. The latest study uses several measures of heart rate data to help…  read on >  read on >

Marijuana edibles that mimic the packaging of popular snack foods pose a risk to children, a new study warns. Researchers looked at the packaging of more than 200 types of edible marijuana products and found that nearly one in 10 resembled commercial snack foods, including candies and chips. “At first glance, most of the packages…  read on >  read on >

The heart inflammation that followed COVID-19 shots in some teens and young adults is rare and a new study affirms that your risk is extremely low. Inflammation of the heart muscle (myopericarditis) is most often caused by viruses but can also occur after vaccination in rare cases. Safety concerns arose after reports of myopericarditis in…  read on >  read on >