Young people have suffered less under the COVID-19 virus than older people medically, but experts say the gap has narrowed, and so-called superspreading among the young is a factor.“The FILE – A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, Sept. 30, 2014.A woman wearing face mask walks on a street in Hong Kong, Feb. 18, 2020. COVID-19 viral illness has sickened millions of people in China since December.In December 2019, as COVID-19 was emerging in China, colleges and universities worldwide released hundreds …

The European Union on Thursday concluded a deal with an American drugmaker to supply up to 400 million doses of its potential COVID-19 vaccine, bringing its total vaccine supply to 1.1 billion doses for the bloc’s 450 million people.To secure the vaccines, the EU made an undisclosed down payment to Johnson & Johnson, which confirmed the deal in a statement in which it reiterated plans to allocate up to 500 million additional doses to poorer countries. EU states plan to pay for those but the price and liability conditions remained …

The executive branch of the European Union announced Thursday it has signed a deal with pharmaceutical company Gilead to buy 500,000 treatment courses of Remdesivir, an antiviral drug shown to be effective in treating symptoms of COVID-19.The European Commission, which has overseen joint purchases of vaccines for the European bloc, said there were 37 signatories to the agreement, including all EU countries, six Balkan candidate and potential EU members, Britain and other European Economic Area countries of Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.No treatment has yet proved able to prevent serious illness …

Germany’s health officials said Thursday new COVID-19 cases are spreading at the fastest rate since April.Health Minister Jens Spahn joined Robert Kock Institute for Disease Control President Lothar Wieler at a news conference in Berlin, where they said the number of new cases of the coronavirus has been rising steadily in Germany since early September. Wieler told reporters, “In the last few days between 1,000 and today even more than 4,000 cases have been reported to the Robert Koch Institute every day.”Weiler said the first seven days of October had …

The world now has more than 36 million cases of the coronavirus.    According to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracking program, 36,166,574 people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, including more than 1 million deaths.  The United States leads in both categories with 7.5 million cases and nearly 212,000 deaths. India is a close second in the total number of cases with 6.8 million, while Brazil topped the 5 million mark Wednesday.  Brazil is second in the total number of deaths with more than 148,000, with India third with over 105,000. Memorandum …

An Iranian dissident has contracted the coronavirus at a prison in northern Iran, according to a knowledgeable source, highlighting what U.S. and U.N. officials say is a worsening pandemic threat facing Iran’s prisoners of conscience.In a message sent Tuesday to VOA Persian, an Iran-based source close to the family of dissident Farhad Meysami said Meysami tested positive for the virus at Rajaei Shahr prison in the city of Karaj and was transferred that morning from his ward to a so-called prison “safe room” for isolation. The source had no further …