Health Highlights: Dec. 2, 2021

White House announces measures to fight COVID-19 this winter. Making rapid at-home coronavirus testing free for more people, maintaining masks on planes, and launching campaigns to increase vaccination and booster shots were steps were to be announced Thursday by the Biden administration. Read more

Which works best, Pfizer or Moderna? In what is billed as the first head-to-head comparison of the two shots, researchers analyzed the health records of nearly 440,000 U.S. veterans and found the Moderna shots had an edge at keeping infection and illness at bay. Read more

Fight against racism is key to new U.S. HIV/AIDS strategy. Racism is 'a public health threat' that must be tackled to end the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, the Biden administration announced Wednesday. Read more

Severe COVID-19 raises death risk a year after recovery. Patients hospitalized with COVID are 2.5 times more likely to die within the year than people who never contracted the coronavirus, new research shows. Read more

'Mild cognitive impairment' can resolve in old age. Many may worry the condition is just a stepping stone to dementia, but new research finds that in nearly half of cases, MCI fails to reappear on subsequent testing. Read more