FRIDLEY,MINN.(VINnews) — Medtronics, a Minnesota-based medical equipment company, has decided to publicly share the design specifications of its patent-protected Puritan Bennett 560 (PB 560) ventilator amid a global shortage of the devices due to the coronavirus pandemic. The shortage is dire enough that doctors are having to make life-or-death decisions about which people with severe […]

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Italian officials asked Israeli health ministry officials to allow the mass usage of a clip regarding the ‘chain of infection’ which explains how COVID-19 can pass from people to surfaces and from them to other people.

MOSCOW – The chief doctor of Moscow’s top hospital for coronavirus patients says he’s tested positive, a statement that comes a week after his encounter with President Vladimir Putin. Putin visited the Kommunarka hospital a week ago and met with its chief doctor Denis Protsenko. The doctor says he’s feeling OK and self-isolated in his […]

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Dig. Plant. Breathe. As spring’s arrival in the Northern Hemisphere coincides with government stay-at-home orders, the itch to get outside has turned backyard gardens into a getaway for the mind in chaotic times. Gardeners who already know that working with soil is a way to connect with nature say it helps […]

PARIS (AP) — They don’t have to put themselves in harm’s way, but the volunteers of France’s well-known Civil Protection service have chosen the front line in the fight against the coronavirus. They are often the first to knock on the doors of people calling for help, and who may have the infection or whose […]

WUHAN, China (AP) — Shopkeepers in the city at the center of China’s virus outbreak were reopening Monday but customers were scarce after authorities lifted more of the anti-virus controls that kept tens of millions of people at home for two months. “I’m so excited, I want to cry,” said a woman on one of […]

SALFORD, ENGLAND (VINnews) — A 108-year-old British woman who survived the 1918-1919 Spanish Flu succumbed to the coronavirus, according to a report by the Guardian newspaper. Hilda Churchill died in a Salford nursing home on Saturday, just hours after testing positive for COVID-19 — and just eight days before her 109th birthday. The oldest known […]

JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Despite the fact that most of the Chareidi public have internalized the inherent dangers in gathering even outdoors for minyan and maintain strict social distancing in other places, there are still people who ignore the health ministry directives and congregate without any distancing. An Israeli police helicopter took this video of Satmar […]

LE PECQ, France (AP) — Of a world in coronavirus turmoil, they may know little or nothing. Submariners stealthily cruising the ocean deeps, purposefully shielded from worldly worries to encourage undivided focus on their top-secret missions of nuclear deterrence, may be among the last pockets of people anywhere who are still blissfully unaware of how […]

BNEI BRAK (VINnews) — In the wake of the ruling by Rav Chaim Kanievski that people who violate health ministry regulations are considered to be a rodef (endangering other’s lives) and may be exposed for their actions, police reported a sharp rise in reports by residents of people violating isolation or of shuls still active […]