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THURSDAY, Feb. 3, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he is giving a new push to the cancer moonshot initiative that he first led during the Obama administration.In his announcement, Biden said the program would aim to boost prevention, screening and research with a target of reducing the cancer death rate by 50% over the next 25 years. Both Biden and his wife, Jill, have embraced the initiative ever since they lost their son, Beau, to brain cancer at the age of 46 in 2015."For Joe and me, [Beau's death] has stolen our joy," Jill Biden said at a White House event detailing the relaunch. "It left us broken in our grief. But through that pain, we found purpose, strengthening our fortitude for this fight to end cancer as we know it."The project will also...

THURSDAY, Feb. 3, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Nine in 10 Americans -- 91% -- live within an hour of lifesaving stroke care, researchers say.That's up from about 80% a decade ago, due to an increase in hospitals with specialized staff, tools and resources, as well as expanded use of telestroke services that use the internet to link small and rural hospitals with stroke specialists in large facilities."Investments in improving stroke systems of care have been successful, and we are seeing improved access to stroke expertise and improved health care for patients who are remote from centers of expertise, so it's a message of hope," said study lead author Dr. Kori Zachrison, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.The...

THURSDAY, Feb. 3, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Those hard-to-find COVID-19 home tests are becoming more available, particularly with the U.S. government offering four free tests for every household.So far, roughly 60 million American households have ordered the free tests, according to the White House. But many folks still have a lot of basic questions about them, said Krist Azizian, chief pharmacy officer for Keck Medicine of the University of Southern California.These rapid at-home tests are called antigen tests, he said. "Antigen tests detect a high volume of viral load, and the results are generally available within 15 minutes," Azizian said in a university news release.However, you shouldn't test yourself immediately after you think you've been exposed to COVID, Azizian said."COVID-19...

THURSDAY, Feb. 3, 2022 (HealthDay News) -- Stroke is a possible complication of COVID-19, and researchers say they now know when that risk is highest.A new study from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the risk of COVID-related ischemic stroke appears greatest in the first three days after you're diagnosed with the virus. Not just higher, but 10 times greater than during the period before a person contracts COVID-19."The findings of our study, especially the substantial high risk of stroke during early days of COVID-19, are consistent with the findings of other studies," said study co-author Quanhe Yang, a senior scientist at the CDC. "More and more evidence suggested that stroke following the diagnosis of COVID-19 is a possible complication of COVID-19 that...