Adults and children in the United States have been blinded, hospitalized, and, in some cases, even died after drinking hand sanitizers contaminated with the extremely toxic alcohol methanol, the Food and Drug Administration reports.

In an updated safety warning, the agency identified five more brands of hand sanitizer that contain methanol, a simple alcohol often linked to incorrectly distilled liquor that is poisonous if ingested, inhaled, or absorbed through the skin.

The number of newly reported coronavirus cases worldwide hit a daily record this week with more than 100,000 new cases over the last 24 hours, according to the World Health Organization.

Almost two-thirds of the cases were reported in just four countries, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference Wednesday at the agency’s Geneva headquarters. “We still have a long way to go in this pandemic.”

The majority of new confirmed cases are coming from the Americas, followed by Europe, according to WHO’s daily report. The U.S. reported 45,251 new cases on Tuesday, according to the agency. Russia had the second-most reported cases Tuesday at 9,263, according to WHO.

A video of a giant hornet attacking a mouse has emerged following news a "murder" species has invaded the U.S.

In the clip, the hornet pursues the mouse for roughly a minute, remaining attached as the mouse attempts to bat it off. The mouse gets weaker and eventually gives up. At which point the hornet flies off and the mouse lies still breathing heavily.

Oprah Winfrey has warned African Americans to take the coronavirus outbreak seriously because it is 'ravaging our community' and 'taking us out'.

The TV mogul said the coronavirus outbreak continued to have a devastating impact on black communities across the United States but that people weren't getting the message about the risk of asymptomatic carriers.

Speaking to CBS This Morning on Tuesday, Winfrey said it was important for black people to understand that pre-existing conditions including diabetes and asthma put them at greater risk if they contracted the virus.

She also voiced concerns for her own health, saying she was staying indoors because she suffered from pneumonia last year and that her 'lungs never really fully cleared'.

Hello, lost generation.

The Millennials entered the workforce during the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Saddled with debt, unable to accumulate wealth, and stuck in low-benefit, dead-end jobs, they never gained the financial security that their parents, grandparents, or even older siblings enjoyed. They are now entering their peak earning years in the midst of an economic cataclysm more severe than the Great Recession, near guaranteeing that they will be the first generation in modern American history to end up poorer than their parents.

Recessions are not good for anyone, from infants to the elderly. Nor are pandemics. Americans born during this calamity will be more likely to have low birth weights and to be in poor health generally, with lifelong effects. Children will not just endure this trauma—manifested in lost months of schooling, skipped meals, housing volatility, and increased abuse—but will carry it with them. Zoomers graduating into the recession will die sooner because of it, suffering increased incidence of heart disease, lung cancer, liver disease, and drug overdoses in the coming decades; they will also earn less over the course of their lives. The elderly are likely to be the most economically insulated group but are facing the most terrifying health consequences.

Among adults the news isn’t good, either. And particularly not for those youngish-but-no-longer-young adults who came into this crisis already vulnerable, already fragile, already over-indebted and underpaid. The Millennials were left with scars during the Great Recession that never quite healed, and inherited an economy structured to manufacture precarity for the young and the poor and black and brown, and to perpetuate wealth for the old and the rich and white.

As much of the world settles into a new routine of social distancing, couples are likely to have a lot more free time at home to snuggle together.

At first blush, you might think couples with some extra time on their hands would do things that could lead to a stork visiting nine months from now.
Yet with US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin warning of dire scenarios and a possible 20% unemployment rate, couples whose jobs are vulnerable in this economy are likely to think again about kicking off their parenting journeys this spring.

Then there's the possibility of more couples splitting up. One marriage registry official in China said he saw a quarantine-related spike in divorces, showing that more time in closed quarters may be doing some couples more harm than good.

But for couples weathering this storm together, is this a time when many will choose to add to their brood?

San Francisco, which once championed reusable shopping bags to reduce plastic waste, has banned the environmentally friendly totes in an effort to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

An amendment to the city’s Department of Health’s social-distancing protocols requires that stores restrict customers from bringing their own bags, mugs or other reusable items from home.

How the ban affects city's prohibition on plastic bags is not clear — the ordinance did not address that regulation. In 2007, San Francisco became the first major city in the nation to outlaw single-use plastic bags.

For parasitic worms of the genus Anisakis, life typically goes like this: after floating through the ocean in an egg, they hatch as wriggling larvae with a peculiar desire—to be eaten. Small crustaceans like krill gobble up the larvae, and those infested krill are then eaten by squid or small fish, which are devoured by bigger fish until they finally earn their nickname, whale worms, and end up in the bellies of whales or dolphins where they complete their life cycle by laying eggs that are subsequently ejected in the hosts’ feces.

But sometimes, those big fish full of the worms—like salmon or herring—get intercepted by fishers and end up in markets. Although fish suppliers and sushi chefs diligently remove parasite-infected fish from their wares, occasionally one of those little buggers may wind up in your sushi roll.

Now, new research finds the global population of those parasitic worms, commonly found in sushi and other kinds of uncooked fish, has exploded in recent decades. The worms are 283-times more common than they were roughly 40 years ago, according to a new paper published in Global Change Biology.

The Trump administration’s goal of halting HIV transmission by 2030 is being swamped by the coronavirus crisis, with many sexual health clinics closing their doors and local health departments' infectious disease staff being redeployed to emergency response roles.

That's raising concern about the large population of people living with undiagnosed and untreated HIV, whose compromised immune systems could put them at higher risk of succumbing to coronavirus.

“Those individuals are going to be susceptible to opportunistic infections and would be at considerable risk if they are exposed to Covid-19,” said Christopher Hall, an infectious disease physician in San Francisco and the chairman of the clinical advisory council for the National Coalition of STD Directors.

It's an especially vulnerable population, Hall said. Nearly half of people living with HIV in the U.S. are over 50 years old. Up to half smoke cigarettes, potentially worsening their outcomes from respiratory infections like the coronavirus. And many have preexisting health conditions like diabetes and hypertension that dramatically increase the odds of mortality.

Should we all be wearing masks? That simple question is under review by officials in the U.S. government and has sparked a grass-roots pro-mask movement. But there’s still no consensus on whether widespread use of facial coverings would make a significant difference, and some infectious disease experts worry that masks could lull people into a false sense of security and make them less disciplined about social distancing.

In recent days, more people have taken to covering their faces, although it remains a scattershot strategy driven by personal choice. The government does not recommend it.

That may change. Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are considering altering the official guidance to encourage people to take measures to cover their faces amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to a federal official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because it is an ongoing matter of internal discussion and nothing has been finalized.

There’s a lot of anxiety about grocery shopping these days, and one very visible manifestation of it is the number of people in the aisles wearing gloves. Rubber gloves, dishwashing gloves, regular winter gloves—“I actually witnessed people earlier this week wearing plastic bags on their hands,” says microbiologist Kelly Reynolds, Ph.D., director of the environment, exposure science and risk assessment center at the University of Arizona.

Does wearing gloves make grocery shopping safer? First of all, grocery shopping, if you observe the current novel coronavirus safety recommendations, isn’t ask risky as some parts of the internet have made it out to be (get point-by-point clarity on that here).

Second, and more importantly, “it could be causing a lot more harm than good,” explains Reynolds. There are a number of issues:

Gloves are like hands when it comes to spreading viruses; maybe even worse.

The woman from Illinois wrote to the Santa Rosa’s Press Gazette’s ‘Dear Abby’ column to explain her dilemma.

She said she had previously been in an abusive relationship, but broke it off 14 years ago and stayed single to raise her “small son to adulthood”.

She finally found someone she had “strong feelings” for, and who felt the same about her, around seven months ago.

The woman wrote: “My feelings for my boyfriend are strong, and it’s mutual. He is giving, kind, caring, hardworking and protective. We are very much in love.

Focus on this, contact lens wearers of the world: To reduce the spread of the pandemic virus that causes Covid-19, experts suggest it's time to put your contact lenses on the shelf and dazzle the world with your frames.

That's because wearing glasses can help you stop touching your face, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, a key way any virus is spread, including the novel coronavirus currently spreading across the world.

Why contact lens?

Contact lens users not only touch their eyes to put in and remove their lens twice or more a day, they also touch their eyes and face much more than people who don't wear contacts, said Dr. Thomas Steinemann, a clinical spokesperson for the American Academy of Ophthalmology.

"You touch your eye and then you touch another part of your body," said Steinemann, an ophthalmologist at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio.

“You are your safest sexual partner right now.”

The Terrence Higgins Trust has advised those in lockdown to not seek hook ups.

Due to the misinformation online about sex and the coronavirus, medical director Dr. Michael Brady has written an educational blog post clarifying the NHS and government’s guidelines on how to keep safe during this pandemic.

“This follows the new measures which have been announced by the Government telling everyone to stay at home, to stop face-to-face socialising, to stop all non-essential journeys and to limit our movement,” he writes.

“Unless you have sex with someone within your household, it’s important to find sexual pleasure in other ways. Sex is an important part of life, but right now we have to find other ways to achieve sexual pleasure and satisfaction.”

Although there is no evidence to suggest that the coronavirus can be transmitted through sexual contact, Brady stresses that it can be spread through close physical contact, rimming and kissing because of saliva and mucus.

At least one person in Kentucky is infected after taking part at a "coronavirus party" with a group of young adults, Gov. Andy Beshear said Tuesday.

The partygoers intentionally got together "thinking they were invincible" and purposely defying state guidance to practice social distancing, Bashear said.
"This is one that makes me mad," the governor said. "We have to be much better than that."

While Covid-19 has been more deadly and severe for people older than 60 and those with underlying health issues in data from China, health officials and leaders around the country have been imploring millennials and other young people to practice social distancing, because even people who are infected but without symptoms can transmit it to other people.

In fact, recent modeling based on Chinese data shows that asymptomatic carriers of the virus may have been responsible for its initial rapid spread there.