Rob Stein

The main reason the surge is ebbing now, pandemic experts suspect, is the significant immunity many people in the U.S. have acquired from prior infections and COVID vaccinations many received.

The Food and Drug Administration proposes easing many restrictions on gay and bisexual men donating blood.

Long criticized as discriminatory, the policy has prevented many gay and bisexual men from donating blood. The Food and Drug Administration revealed a draft of its new approach on Friday.

FDA advisers debate the agency's controversial proposal to start handling the COVID vaccines like the flu shots — updating them annually to target the most likely strain to be dominant each winter.

The new approach would simplify vaccination guidance so that, every fall, people would get a new shot, updated to try to match whatever variant is dominant.

And what about a cold or RSV? With all the illness spreading, it's virus soup out there these days. Some people feel so sick they're wondering if they're fighting more than one germ at once.

It would make more sense to screen a plane's wastewater to look for new variants than to screen individual passenger volunteers, some researchers say. Others say any information is helpful.

The CDC has expanded screening of incoming international air travelers to try to more quickly spot any new variants that might emerge from China's massive COVID outbreak.

The Respiratory Syncytial Virus - or RSV - surge has peaked, and the flu appears to be receding. But COVID rates are up again, driven by holiday gatherings and an even more transmissible variant.

RSV and the flu appear to be receding in the U.S., but COVID is on the rise, new data suggests, driven by holiday gatherings and an even more transmissible omicron subvariant that has become dominant.

The U.S. has started requiring all travelers from China to test negative for COVID, even though many experts think it won't help much.

The National Center for Health Statistics estimates that cases of long-COVID have caused more the 3,000 deaths in the U.S., but this is undoubtedly an undercount.

Using CRISPR to modify certain immune cells could make cancer-fighting immunotherapy more potent for a broader set of patients. Two people who went through the treatment share their stories.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Medical Association warn that the surge in RSV, flu and COVID is threatening the upcoming holiday season.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated the status of the "tripledemic" in the wake of Thanksgiving.

The Food and Drug Administration is likely to propose easing restrictions on blood donations by gay and bisexual men.

Looming over the holiday season this winter are three viruses instead of two: RSV, COVID and flu.

As the holiday approaches, infectious disease specialists are bracing for the possibility that big family get-togethers and travel will propel the spread of RSV, flu and COVID-19.

Step aside, BA.5. The new variants BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, appear to be among the most adept yet at evading immunity from previous infection and vaccination.

Two subvariants that have emerged from the soup of Omicron offspring are among the most adept at evading immunity. They appear poised to become dominant in the U.S. and could fuel a new surge.