Cost-effective ways exist to improve your indoor air quality that will reduce your COVID and flu risk, lower your cancer and lung disease risk, and eliminate headaches and sleepiness caused by poor ventilation.

Maybe you’ve been sitting in church or listening to a lecture that, though provocative, sends you into a dozing dreamland, despite getting plenty of sleep the night before. Or maybe you’ve fought to stay awake during a long car ride. These experiences often have as their root cause a common factor – poor indoor air quality caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide because of poor ventilation.

The U.S. reportedly plans to overhaul the country’s childhood vaccine schedule. The move, first reported by CNN, would change how many vaccines to protect against various diseases children get and when they receive those immunizations.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., secretary of health and human services, is a longtime vaccine skeptic and supports altering the vaccine schedule. Recommendations for several vaccines that are currently given routinely to children in the U.S.—including shots for rotavirus, varicella (chickenpox), hepatitis A, meningococcal bacteria, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)—could be scrapped entirely under the plans, according to CNN.

Flu season comes around every year, but a new strain is leading many global health experts to worry that this round may be particularly severe. The strain—a version of the influenza A(H3N2) virus—first appeared in surveillance reports in June, 4 months after the 2025-2026 influenza vaccine formulation had already been determined, and has been associated with earlier waves of influenza outbreaks in Canada, Japan, and the UK.

The latest data on respiratory illness in the United States shows that shoppers and merry-makers are spreading more than just holiday cheer: They’re also passing around germs. In many cases, it’s a new virus variant that’s been causing early and busy flu seasons in Asia, Australia and Europe.

The US is on the cusp of finding out what this flu variant, called subclade K, will do. For the week ending December 6 — the first full week after the Thanksgiving holiday — the proportion of doctor’s visits for symptoms including fever plus a cough or sore throat rose to 3.2%, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When Susan Monarez was sworn in to lead the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the country’s premier public-health agency, many researchers across the country breathed a sigh of relief.

Trained as a microbiologist and immunologist, Monarez had been a non-partisan government scientist for nearly 20 years. She was an unexpectedly uncontroversial choice by US President Donald Trump, who had previously put forward (but later withdrew the nomination for) Dave Weldon, a physician and vaccine sceptic who worked as a Republican member of Congress from 1995 to 2009.

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Dr. Brian Chow, an infectious disease specialist, is among the most qualified people in the country to speak about the importance of hepatitis B vaccinations.

He received advanced training at Brown University and was an attending physician at Tufts Medical Center. While there, he witnessed a young patient die of liver cancer that stemmed from a hepatitis B infection, a death that could have been prevented had the man received a common vaccine for the disease as a baby.

Prof Wilmot James during a meeting in Mexico with the Helena Group on the intersections between synthetic biology and artificial intelligence. Wilmot has been at the forefront of the fight pandemics, catastrophes and biological warfare.

In the 1980s, researchers tested a new hepatitis B vaccine candidate on over 10,000 people, finding it well tolerated with no reports of serious adverse events. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Engerix-B to prevent potentially deadly hepatitis B infections in 1989. In 1986, it had approved another vaccine Recombivax HB; its label points to studies involving more than 1,000 people. The US government has been recommending these vaccines for all newborns since 1991 and cases of hepatitis B in people 19 years old and younger have dropped 99 percent since it did. Yet despite this efficacy and the numerous safety studies conducted before after the vaccines were licensed, anti-vaccine activists have targeted the long-used immunizations as inadequately researched. The lawyer Aaron Siri, who has worked closely for and with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for years, sought in 2020, for instance, to have the licenses for the vaccines suspended or withdrawn.

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Hear from the co-chairs of the G20 High-Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (HLIP) as they share insights from their new report, Closing the Deal: Financing Our Security Against Pandemic Threats, which outlines practical and bold steps to take pandemic threats off the table.

The G20 first established the Panel in 2021 to rethink how global preparedness is financed. This year, the Panel was reconvened by the South Africa G20 Presidency under the Joint Finance and Health Task Force to address the global pandemic financing gap at a time of profound challenges for global health and health security. The U.S. National Academy of Medicine served as the Panel’s Secretariat.

As the global health architecture undergoes major changes, drivers of pandemic risk continue to rise. The next pandemic is not a theoretical concern—it could happen at any time. Yet, despite mounting threats, countries remain severely underinvested in pandemic preparedness and response. The Panel’s new report serves as a blueprint for rapid, coordinated action.

In this virtual public briefing, hear about the Panel’s five key recommendations and learn what actions can be taken now to prevent biological catastrophe and achieve a high return on investment in global health security.

Vaccines have greatly improved public health, but their continued use is being hampered by misinformation, distrust, and inequity. On this episode, Dr. Seth Berkley discussed his book, Fair Doses.

COVID-19 cases are on the rise in 17 states, according to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The states with either "growing" or "likely growing" cases of COVID-19 were situated in the Midwest and Northeast of the country.

The CDC noted in its report though that its current estimates may be impacted by "holiday reporting effects and should be interpreted with greater uncertainty."