OLYMPIA — Gov. Jay Inslee announced Tuesday that Washington’s next secretary of health will be Dr. Umair Shah, the health director for Texas’s largest county. The new appointment comes as the state sees an increase in new COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations, and as Washingtonians brace for more cases, deaths and economic damage as the coronavirus surges. Shah — who replaces Secretary …

Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Drap) Chief Executive Officer Asim Rauf on Saturday said the body has granted approval to a locally invented software that can “detect the coronavirus infection in a person’s lungs within a minute”. According to the certificate of registration granted by Drap, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, the Cov-Raid — which has been developed …

Canada has granted interim authorization to Eli Lilly’s antibody drug for treating COVID-19 in patients who are not hospitalized, but are at risk of serious illness because of their age or other conditions, the drugmaker said on Friday. The news comes weeks after the treatment, bamlanivimab, was given U.S. emergency use authorization (EUA) by the Food and Drug Administration for …

LONDON: AstraZeneca started late-stage trials on Saturday of an experimental long-acting monoclonal antibody combination drug it hopes could be used as a so-called prophylactic to prevent COVID-19 infection in at-risk people for up to 12 months. The Phase III international clinical trial will recruit a total of 5,000 people across countries in Europe and the United States to assess the …

People whose immune systems responded strongly to a measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine may be less likely to become severely ill if they are infected with the new coronavirus, new data suggests. The MMR II vaccine, manufactured by Merck and licensed in 1979, works by triggering the immune system to produce antibodies. Researchers reported on Friday in mBio that among 50 COVID-19 patients …

Exposure to cigarette smoke makes airway cells more vulnerable to infection with the new coronavirus, UCLA researchers found. They obtained airway-lining cells from five individuals without COVID-19 and exposed some of the cells to cigarette smoke in test tubes. Then they exposed all the cells to the coronavirus. Compared to cells not exposed to the smoke, smoke-exposed cells were two- …

Ryan Reynolds is a doting parent and has proved his love for his family time and time again, but it appears uninterrupted time with his two young girls has gotten to him. With no schools available to split the load with, the actor expressed his growing exhaustion over it all, in a short and sweet one-liner to Hoda Kotb on The …

The explosive new season of The Crown brought with a truckload of drama that sparked a frenzy across the globe. And while the new season of the Netflix original show depicted a timeline of the British royal family from decades ago, many couldn’t help but observe how it echoed the current situation of the royal fold as well. Some social media users …

s A number of measures — including closing bars and gyms — must be enacted to prevent North Texas hospitals from reaching capacity and slow the spread of COVID-19, according to a new report by the University of North Texas Health Science Center. The report has been one in an ongoing series released throughout the pandemic. An earlier report over the …

Carroll ISD announced Lane Ledbetter as its lone finalist for superintendent in a special meeting of the school board Friday morning. Ledbetter, a former Carroll ISD student, is set to replace David Faltys, who has been superintendent for nearly 15 years. Ledbetter has strong ties to the district. His father, Bob, was a legendary Southlake Carroll football coach who was …