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TUESDAY, Sept. 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Cellphone activity could be used to monitor and predict spread of the new coronavirus, researchers say. They analyzed cellphone use in more than 2,700 U.S. counties between early January and early May to identify where the phones were used, including workplaces, homes, retail and grocery stores, parks and transit stations. Between 22,000 and 84,000 points of publicly available, anonymous cellphone location data were analyzed for each day in the study period. Counties with greater declines in workplace cellphone activity during stay-at-home orders had lower rates of COVID-19, according to findings published Aug. 31 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. Researchers said their findings suggest that this type of cellphone data could be used...

TUESDAY, Sept. 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Pregnant women are understandably worried about everything that goes into their bodies. But here's one worry they can cross off that list: flu shots. A large, new study has confirmed that an expectant woman's flu shot doesn't increase the risk of autism in her child. And that's true even if the vaccine is given during the first trimester of pregnancy, the Swedish study found. "The flu vaccine is safe during pregnancy. This study, as well as many others, have consistently shown that flu vaccine is safe," noted vaccine expert Dr. Paul Offit. He's director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and was not involved in the current research. What can put mom and baby at risk is getting the flu. "Pregnant...

TUESDAY, Sept. 1, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced on Monday that it would extend its flexible free school meals program through the fall, to help keep millions of kids fed as the coronavirus pandemic continues to hold the country in its grip. The program, which allowed parents and caregivers to collect free meals for their kids at any school this summer, was set to expire at the start of September but pressure had been mounting on the agency to continue the program, the Washington Post reported. In mid-August, Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue said that extending the full scope of the free meals for kids program beyond August would go "beyond what [the] USDA currently has the authority to implement and would be closer to a universal...

MONDAY, Aug. 31, 2020 (HealthDay News) -- Young people seldom say a food or drink is "too sweet." A new study suggests that may be because they're less sensitive to sugar than adults and prefer more of it. Researchers found that compared to adults, kids and teens needed 40% more sugar in a solution to detect sweetness. The researchers also found that young people have a bigger "sweet tooth" than adults, or prefer more intense sweetness, a finding that echoes previous studies. The study included almost 500 children, teens and adults. The researchers gave participants sugar-water concoctions with different levels of sugar. They measured how much sugar the participants preferred and the lowest concentration required for them to taste it. "Both of these dimensions of sweet-taste...