Seven cases of a coronavirus variant from India have been discovered in Israel, the Health Ministry announced on Friday. It is the first time the Indian variant, classified as B.1.617, has been identified in Israel. The variant was found in unvaccinated travelers who returned to Israel from abroad. The ministry did not specify where the travelers had arrived from. Coronavirus czar Prof. Nachman Ash told Channel 12 News on Motzei Shabbos that there is currently very little information known about the variant but it seems to spread rapidly and there are signs it may be resistant to the vaccine. There has been a surge of coronavirus cases in southern India in recent days, with a record number of over 200,000 people being diagnosed per day. (YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)

Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine will remain in limbo for a while longer after government health advisers declared Wednesday that they need more evidence to decide if a handful of unusual blood clots were linked to the shot — and if so, how big the risk really is. The reports are exceedingly rare — six cases out of more than 7 million U.S. inoculations with the one-dose vaccine. But the government recommended a pause in J&J vaccinations this week, not long after European regulators declared that such clots are a rare but possible risk with the AstraZeneca vaccine, a shot made in a similar way but not yet approved for use in the U.S. At an emergency meeting, advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrestled with the fact that the U.S.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is urging all schools in the state to reopen, saying there are no health barriers to getting children back into classrooms and ending distance learning. Speaking Wednesday, he said: “Money is not an object now. It’s an excuse.” His wishes remain an expectation rather than a mandate because California’s decentralized education system lets the 1,200 school districts govern themselves. Some of the largest school districts are reopening, including Los Angeles and San Diego. Newsom says more than 9,000 of California’s 11,000 schools have reopened or have set plans to reopen, but that is misleading because there is no uniformity in what it means for a school to be open.

A top official from the World Health Organization says Europe has surpassed 1 million deaths from COVID-19 and the situation remains “serious,” with about 1.6 million new cases reported each week in the region. Overall, a tally by Johns Hopkins University shows nearly 3 million deaths have been linked to COVID-19 worldwide — with the Americas hardest hit, followed by Europe. The United States, Brazil and Mexico have reported the highest number of deaths, collectively at more than 1.1 million. Addressing recent concerns about vaccines, Dr. Hans Kluge also said the risk of people suffering blood clots is far higher for people with COVID-19 than people who receive AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine.

Frustrated parents in San Francisco have coined a new phrase for their latest classroom reality: “Zoom in a Room.” In Los Angeles, students can start going back to school in person, but more than half say they will stick with distance learning. More than a year after the coronavirus pandemic forced California’s classrooms to close, some of the largest school districts are welcoming back students this week. But the most populated state is lagging the rest of the country — and in some cases offering options that parents say are unacceptable. Kira Gaber said she’s been told to send her kindergartner back to his San Francisco classroom with a laptop and headphones — aka Zoom in a Room. His teacher will be working online from home, while an adult monitor watches the kids in class.

Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit issued a legal opinion on Tuesday evening stating that Israel’s high-level security and coronavirus cabinets cannot hold votes until a justice minister is appointed, Channel 13 News reported. Mandelblit stated that until a minister is appointed, the two special cabinets will have to allow votes to be carried out by the full cabinet. His opinion is based on the fact that the failure to appoint a justice minister is in violation of the coalition agreement between Likud and Blue and White to maintain equal representation of both parties. The ruling comes on the background of a political squabble between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

Five Chareidi Bochrim in their 20s were moderately to lightly injured after their car flipped over on Highway 98. According to witnesses, the car flipped over near the town of Keshet in the Golan Heights. Rescue teams that were dispatched to the scene of the accident provided first aid medical treatment to the five youngsters. They were all transported by ambulance to Ziv Hospital in Safed. Police traffic investigators have begun their more thorough investigation. United Hatzalah volunteer EMT Alber Ancounina who was one of the first responders at the scene relayed: “The accident involved a car that flipped over.

The Indian city of Pune is running out of ventilators as gasping coronavirus patients crowd its hospitals. Social media is full of people searching for beds, while relatives throng pharmacies looking for antiviral medicines that hospitals ran out of long ago. The surge, which can be seen across India, is particularly alarming because the country is a major vaccine producer and a critical supplier to the U.N.-backed COVAX initiative. That program aims to bring shots to some of the world’s poorest countries. Already the rise in cases has forced India to focus on satisfying its domestic demand — and delay deliveries to COVAX and elsewhere, including the United Kingdom and Canada.

For decades, a deadly type of childhood cancer has eluded science’s best tools. Now doctors have made progress with an unusual treatment: Dripping millions of copies of a virus directly into kids’ brains to infect their tumors and spur an immune system attack. A dozen children treated this way lived more than twice as long as similar patients have in the past, doctors reported Saturday at an American Association for Cancer Research conference and in the New England Journal of Medicine. Although most of them eventually died of their disease, a few are alive and well several years after treatment — something virtually unheard of in this situation. “This is the first step, a critical step,” said the study’s leader, Dr.

The U.S. is recommending a “pause” in the administration of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine to investigate reports of potentially dangerous blood clots. In a joint statement Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration said they were investigating clots in six women that occurred 6 to 13 days after vaccination. The clots were observed in the sinuses of the brain along with reduced platelet counts — making the usual treatment for blood clots, the blood thinner heparin, potentially “dangerous.” More than 6.8 million doses of the J&J vaccine have been administered in the U.S., the vast majority with no or mild side effects. U.S.