The Latest Breaking News from Lawrence Gostin

LOS ANGELES — The United States has the dubious distinction of suffering the highest COVID-19 mortality rate among the world's high-income countries. But that national average — 372 deaths per 100,000 people as of last summer — hides the fact that pandemic outcomes differed greatly from state to state.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is taking aim at a new health hazard: online misinformation

Some of the most high-profile health care battles are being decided at the state level on Tuesday.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is urging a vaccination push as he braces for a winter wave of COVID-19 cases that could again drive up hospitalizations and deaths, but this time without a blank check to fight the surge.

While Tedros has yet to catch the virus, his life, at the centre of the pandemic, has been infected by the chaos and conspiracy Covid-19 has created, writes Adam Taylor

The World Health Organization’s top director in the Western Pacific, Dr. Takeshi Kasai, has been indefinitely removed from his post, according to internal correspondence

Vanquishing disease is in the DNA of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the federal agency that in its first decade of existence oversaw the eradication of smallpox, the elimination of malaria and the stamping out of polio as threats to Americans' health.

Social media users shared a range of false claims this week

WHO declares monkeypox outbreak in more than 70 countries a ‘public health emergency of international concern’.

The US President signs an executive order designed to protect millions of American women's access to abortion in states where the procedure remains legal, and becomes emotional while speaking about the reported experience of a 10-year-old rape victim forced to travel interstate for the procedure.

The actions are intended to mitigate some potential penalties that women seeking abortion may face after the ruling, but his order cannot restore access to abortion in states where limits or bans have gone into effect.