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FRIDAY, Sept. 3, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- A new coronavirus variant called Mu that may be able to evade existing antibodies, including those from vaccines, is under close watch by U.S. health officials.The variant hasn't taken extensive hold in the United States at this point, but the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is taking it "very seriously," according to its director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, CBS News reported."We're keeping a very close eye on it... but it is not at all even close to being dominant," Fauci said. "As you know, the Delta is more than 99% dominant."He noted that while Mu, technically known as B.1.621, has mutations suggesting "it would evade certain antibodies," there isn't a lot of clinical data to suggest that. "It is mostly laboratory in...

FRIDAY, Sept. 3, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- An ongoing study of more than 6 million Americans found no serious side effects linked to mRNA COVID-19 vaccines."These results from our safety surveillance are reassuring," said Dr. Nicola Klein, director of the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Study Center in Oakland, Calif. She spoke in a Kaiser Permanente news release.Klein is also a leader of Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), which studies patient records for 12 million Americans. The project is supported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.The Journal of the American Medical Association published Datalink's first comprehensive findings on Sept. 2.The study found no serious health effects that could be tied to the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-29 vaccines. Monitoring will...

FRIDAY, Sept. 3, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- As the school year gets underway across the United States, new data shows that coronavirus cases among children are climbing.Since the pandemic began, children have represented 14.8% of total cases, but for the week ending Aug. 26, that percentage jumped to 22.4%, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. While child COVID-19 cases declined in early summer, they have "increased exponentially" recently, with more than a five-fold increase in the past month, according to the academy. Child cases went from about 38,000 the week ending July 22 to more than 200,000 in the last week.That rate was well above the average that has been seen throughout the pandemic, and the trend is concerning as the Delta variant may pose greater danger to...

FRIDAY, Sept. 3, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- Former Marine Cpl. Claudia Mitchell can hold a banana or a water bottle in her left hand without squishing it as she opens it.She can use her left hand to help cut peaches for a pie. She can hold someone's hand without squeezing too hard, and she can grab her makeup bag with just her thumb and forefinger.Years ago, Mitchell, 41, wouldn't have imagined any of these feats were possible -- because her left arm is a bionic prosthetic.But Cleveland Clinic researchers have used cutting-edge technology to turn her Veterans Affairs-supplied prosthetic into an arm that actually acts and feels like her own.Using an array of sensors and robotic motors, Mitchell's arm provides feedback that lets her know without looking how hard she's holding an object,...