Lawmakers in Nassau County, N.Y., have enacted a law that prohibits the use of masks or facial coverings in public. While the law includes exemptions for medical reasons, critics of the ban argue it could still create health risks, USA Today reported Aug. 14.

The New York State Department of Health issued an advisory Aug. 14 asking providers to discontinue use of ciprofloxacin as a post-exposure prophylaxis for close contacts of patients with meningococcal disease.

World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, PhD, has declared the mpox outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and other African countries a public health emergency of international concern.

Human parvovirus B19 activity is on the rise in the U.S., particularly among children, the CDC said in an Aug. 13 health alert. 

The CDC slightly raised its risk assessment of the H5N1 bird flu virus in an Aug. 9 update, noting it poses a future "potential public health risk."

The CDC now considers COVID-19 to be endemic, though not all health experts agree with this classification, NPR reported Aug. 9.

A more severe strain of mpox is circulating in Central Africa, the CDC said in an Aug. 7 outbreak alert. 

A SARS-CoV-2 protein and multi-inflammatory syndrome in children might be connected, said researchers at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. 

Emergency department visits involving a COVID-19 diagnosis have been on the rise for several consecutive weeks. For the week ending July 27, 2.2% of ED visits at U.S. hospitals were positive for the virus, marking a 12.1% jump from the week prior. 

Emergency department visits related to vaping have more than doubled across Virginia since 2020, WTOP News reported Aug.1.

Public trust in physicians and hospitals has sharply declined from 71.5% in April 2020 to just 40.1% in January 2024, according to results of a study published July 31 in JAMA Network Open.

A seventh person has been deemed HIV-free following a stem cell transplant, but he's only the second to be treated with stem cells not resistant to the virus, according a July 26th report from Nature.

Leaders at Butler (Pa.) Memorial Hospital had a very "compacted timeframe" to prepare for its role in treating former President Donald Trump after an assassination attempt July 13, Thomas Chakurda, chief marketing officer of Independence Health, the system that owns the hospital, told Becker's. 

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been 1,277,697 more deaths in the U.S. than anticipated, and almost 90% of these excess deaths were directly attributable to COVID infections, according to a study published July 18 in the American Journal of Public Health.

Patients vaccinated against COVID-19 were less likely to develop long COVID following infection, regardless of changes in the virus over time, according to a study published July 17 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Prevalence of infections like asthma, COPD and pneumonia fell in 2023 compared to 2019, suggesting that there was no increased susceptibility in catching these infections post-pandemic, according to new findings published July 16 in Epic Research.

A summer wave of COVID-19 continues to make its way throughout the country, increasing the number of emergency department visits in more than half of the U.S. substantially, according to CDC data published July 12. 

Five viruses and infections are on the rise in 2024, according to the CDC.

For the week ending July 6, about 1.3% of emergency department visits in the U.S. involved a COVID-19 diagnosis at discharge — a nearly 24% increase from the previous week,  according to the latest updates on respiratory virus activity from the CDC.

Former President Donald Trump was transported 11 miles from a July 13 rally in Pennsylvania to Butler (Pa.) Memorial Hospital, part of Independence Health, for treatment after being shot in the right ear during a political rally in Butler, Pa., CBS reported.