Melissa Healy is a health and science reporter with the Los Angeles Times writing from the Washington, D.C., area. She covers prescription drugs, obesity, nutrition and exercise, and neuroscience, mental health and human behavior. She’s been at The Times for more than 30 years, and has covered national security, environment, domestic social policy, Congress and the White House. As a baby boomer, she keenly follows trends in midlife weight gain, memory loss and the health benefits of red wine.
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Evusheld was designed to protect immunocompromised people from serious cases of COVID-19, but the latest Omicron variants have rendered the drug useless.
Suicides tend to occur in clusters that suggest contagion, but there is little evidence that murders or mass shootings follow the same pattern, experts say.
Using machine learning, scientists have trained computers to comb the internet and recognize the early signs of a COVID-19 surge up to 6 weeks in advance.
A preliminary study in Israel finds that seniors who received an Omicron-targeting booster shot were 81% less likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than those who skipped it.
After Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest on the football field, speculation arose asking whether COVID-19 vaccines may have played a role. Medical experts say the answer is almost certainly no.
The CDC has a new plan to get a jump on new coronavirus variants — asking LAX passengers arriving from overseas to swab their noses for the sake of science.
Fauci speaks with The Times days before he steps aside from his role as the U.S. government’s top expert on COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.
U.S. life expectancy, already declining since the onset of the pandemic, fell further in 2021, according to the CDC’s final accounting of death certificates.
Long COVID illnesses contributed to about 3,500 deaths in the U.S. through the end of June 2022, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
An experimental decoy drug that’s designed to lure the coronavirus away from cells is being readied for tests in humans.