It's less enchanting than reading tea leaves, but federal health officials announced Friday that they are expanding nationwide efforts to track COVID-19 by monitoring virus levels found in raw sewage.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expects to add an additional 250 surveillance sites over the next few weeks to a list of more than 400 places that already regularly test ...

A temporary falloff in the number of Americans who kill themselves and others with guns is over, newly released U.S. government data show.

"Firearm homicides and suicides are an urgent public health concern in the United States," said Scott Kegler, lead author of a new study of gun violence ...

A review of cases from 465 U.S. hospitals underscores the protection provided by COVID-19 vaccines.

The new review -- by researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health -- found that vaccinated adults who got breakthrough infections rarely got severely ill. Respiratory failure, the need for treatment i...

Three people died recently in the United States recently from rabies linked to bats, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday. They bring the total number of U.S. rabies cases in 2021 to five.

That's a sharp rise over prior years -- no reported rabies cases in people were reported in the United States during 2019 and 2020, the CDC noted. Overall, the number of rab...

Check your packaged salad greens: More than a dozen people have been infected by a strain of E. coli in six U.S. states, health officials report.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a food safety alert linking the outbreak to Simple Truth Organic Power Greens and Nature's Basket Organic Power Greens. The greens may be contaminated with E. coli and may be making peop...

At least 48 passengers and crew members on Royal Caribbean's Symphony of the Seas -- the world's largest cruise ship -- have tested positive for COVID-19 and have been quarantined, the company said Monday.

Of the 48 people who tested positive during the sailing, 98% were fully vaccinated. That's not surprising, since the overall vaccination rate among the nearly 6,100 passengers and crew ...

Unvaccinated students exposed to COVID-19 can remain in the classroom as long as they're regularly tested for the virus at school, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

The CDC pointed to two new studies from California and Illinois as evidence that school districts can...

Along with being contaminated, there was also a basic design flaw in COVID-19 testing kits created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention early in the pandemic, a new agency review shows.

It was already known that the PCR kits were contaminated, but the CDC's find...

In nearly two-thirds of U.S. states, cancer patients weren't put at the front of the line for COVID-19 vaccines in the initial phase of vaccination, a new study finds.

Many cancer patients are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 as the disease or related treatments leaves them with weakened immune systems.

Perhaps many cancer patients were skipped over for COVID shots because vaccinat...

Americans who are vaccinated and boosted against COVID-19 should have enough antibody protection to prevent severe illness if they become infected with the new Omicron variant, White House COVID response officials said Tuesday.

Omicron has caused concern among medical experts due to a "large number of mutations, around 50, much larger than previous variants," including some "anticipated t...

Nearly a third of health care staff in U.S. hospitals were not vaccinated against COVID-19 as of mid-September, a new study shows.

Researchers analyzed data on more than 3.3 million health care workers at more than 2,000 hospitals nationwide between Jan. 20 and Sept. 15.

"Our analysis revealed that vaccine coverage among U.S. hospital-based [health care personnel] stalled significan...

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday that it has lowered its limits for lead poisoning in kids.

The move is expected to more than double the number of 1- to 5-year-olds with worrisome levels of the toxic metal in their blood, according to the Associated Press. That means the number is projected to grow from 200,000 to about 500,000, AP said.

Your chances of getting COVID-19 from surfaces at the grocery store are minimal, a Canadian study reassures.

Researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario collected 957 samples at four grocery stories over a month. None tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID,