• The FDA this week approved a new coronavirus testing kit for home use from Quest Diagnostics.
• Users will be able to take a swab from their nostril and send in the sample for quick analysis.
• The company is aiming to have 500,000 testing kits ready to go by the end of next month.

The FDA this week approved a coronavirus testing kit from Quest Diagnostics that will allow individuals to test themselves for COVID-19 from the comfort of their own home. After taking a swab from their nostril, users can then FedEx the sample overnight to a testing lab whereupon they’ll receive their results. In the wake of the approval, Quest Diagnostics said it’s planning to 500,000 kits ready to send out by the end of June.

The approval of the new testing kits is significant because a lack of widespread testing has been a longstanding issue. Without expansive coronavirus testing, it becomes that much more challenging to ascertain the full impact of the virus and whether or not the number of cases are rising or falling. More importantly, accessible testing helps ensure that asymptomatic coronavirus patients — who would otherwise be unaware that they have the virus — take appropriate safety precautions.

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Today’s Top Deals

1. 10 deals you don’t want to miss on Saturday: KN95 face masks under $3, free Echo Show 5, Apple deals, more
2. 10 deals you don’t want to miss on Sunday: Coronavirus face masks, strongest hand sanitizer, $50 off iPads, more
3. Don’t miss Bose’s true wireless earbuds while they’re on Amazon at the lowest price ever

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1. CDC: Coronavirus began spreading in the US much sooner than we thought
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3. Another coronavirus vaccine candidate might be ready sooner than expected

FDA approves an at-home coronavirus testing kit originally appeared on BGR.com on Sun, 31 May 2020 at 09:02:28 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sunday brings with it a slew of new daily deals that you’ll definitely want to check out. Highlights include Amazon’s best-selling coronavirus face masks at the new lower price of just 60¢ each, the strongest hand sanitizer on Amazon with 80% alcohol for $49.99 per 6-pack, AirPods Pro at Amazon’s lowest price ever, an Echo Show 5 for FREE when you buy a Ring Video Doorbell Pro refurb for just $179, a huge $50 discount on Apple’s newest 10.2-inch iPad, the best-selling Wi-Fi range extender on the entire Amazon site for just $17.99, $5 off the crazy pen that lets you draw physical objects in mid-air, a 32-inch Fire TV for just $139.99, wildly popular Kasa smart plugs for $9.99 each, and Anker Souncore true wireless earbuds with more than 7,000 5-star ratings for $32.99. See all of today’s top deals down below.

Face Mask, Pack of 50: $29.99 ($0.60 / mask)

Hand Sanitizer – 80% Alcohol – World Health Organization Formula – 8 fl. oz. 6 Pack – Liquid Sp…: $49.99 for 6 bottles

Apple AirPods Pro: $227.99

Certified Refurbished Ring Video Doorbell Pro with Certified Refurbished Echo Show 5 (Charcoal)…: $179.00

Apple iPad (10.2-Inch, Wi-Fi, 32GB) – Space Gray (Latest Model): $279.00

TP-Link N300 WiFi Extender,Covers Up to 800 Sq.ft, WiFi Range Extender supports up to 300Mbps s…: $17.99

MYNT3D Super 3D Pen, 1.75mm ABS and PLA Compatible 3D Printing Pen: $34.99

Insignia NS-32DF310NA19 32-inch Smart HD TV – Fire TV Edition: $139.99

Kasa Smart Plug by TP-Link, Smart Home WiFi Outlet works with Alexa, Echo, Google Home & IFTTT,…: $9.99

Upgraded, Anker Soundcore Liberty Neo True Wireless Earbuds, Pumping Bass, IPX7 Waterproof, Sec…: $32.99

Today’s Top Deals

1. 10 deals you don’t want to miss on Saturday: KN95 face masks under $3, free Echo Show 5, Apple deals, more
2. Don’t miss Bose’s true wireless earbuds while they’re on Amazon at the lowest price ever
3. Here are Amazon’s 5 best-selling electronics devices of the week

Trending Right Now:

1. CDC: Coronavirus began spreading in the US much sooner than we thought
2. Trump says he’d take hydroxychloroquine again, which is even more dangerous than it sounds
3. Another coronavirus vaccine candidate might be ready sooner than expected

10 deals you don’t want to miss on Sunday: Coronavirus face masks, strongest hand sanitizer, $50 off iPads, more originally appeared on BGR.com on Sun, 31 May 2020 at 07:47:44 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Minnesota protests are continuing to escalate and inspire similar demonstrations around the country in the wake of police killing an unarmed Minneapolis man this week named George Floyd.
• Minnesota officials say they’re using contact tracing to better understand who the protestors are and where they’re coming from.
• Contact tracing has previously been used as part of a comprehensive coronavirus response.

As the Minnesota protests have spilled across the country, fueled by protestors angered over the police killing of an unarmed Minneapolis man named George Floyd, the protests have morphed into marches and demonstrations that have turned violent everywhere from New York City to Los Angeles. Curfews are being imposed in major cities around the US at the time of this writing, and at least eight states, as well as the District of Columbia, have requested the National Guard to assist local law enforcement.

In some cities like Minneapolis, though, officials are starting to turn to a familiar tool to investigate networks of protestors. The tool is contact-tracing, and it’s a familiar tool in that people have been hearing about it frequently in recent weeks as an important component of a comprehensive coronavirus pandemic response. According to Minnesota Public Safety Commissioner John Harringon, officials there have been using what they describe, without going into much detail, as contact-tracing in order to build out a picture of protestor affiliations — a process that officials in the state say has led them to conclude that much of the protest activity there is being fueled by people from outside coming in.

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Today’s Top Deals

1. 10 deals you don’t want to miss on Saturday: KN95 face masks under $3, free Echo Show 5, Apple deals, more
2. Don’t miss Bose’s true wireless earbuds while they’re on Amazon at the lowest price ever
3. Here are Amazon’s 5 best-selling electronics devices of the week

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1. CDC: Coronavirus began spreading in the US much sooner than we thought
2. The best photos and reactions from this historic day for SpaceX and NASA
3. Trump says he’d take hydroxychloroquine again, which is even more dangerous than it sounds

Minnesota is now using contact tracing to track protestors, as demonstrations escalate originally appeared on BGR.com on Sat, 30 May 2020 at 22:46:49 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Saturday’s SpaceX launch made history by launching astronauts from US soil for the first time since the Space Shuttle era that ended almost a decade ago.
• The launch was also a milestone moment in history for being the first time this has happened after being facilitated by a private company — in this case, SpaceX, working in partnership with NASA.
• This is the last step for SpaceX before Crew Dragon is certified for use by NASA.

To me, one of the most inspiring things about Saturday’s SpaceX launch of the first American astronauts from US soil in almost a decade — and the first time in history that a private company has facilitated this — was how it captivated people around the country and the world, at a time when people are pretty desperate for some good news. At one point Saturday afternoon, I noticed that more than 3 million people were tuned in to the SpaceX live stream via YouTube, watching in awe as a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket prepared to carry a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule skyward.

The spacecraft, as my colleague Mike Wehner previously noted, lifted off Saturday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida bound for the International Space Station, where it will deliver NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley. The duo will remain on the space station for somewhere between a few weeks and a few months, depending on what NASA decides after they arrive.

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1. 10 deals you don’t want to miss on Saturday: KN95 face masks under $3, free Echo Show 5, Apple deals, more
2. Don’t miss Bose’s true wireless earbuds while they’re on Amazon at the lowest price ever
3. 10 Amazon deals you can only get if you’re a Prime member

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1. CDC: Coronavirus began spreading in the US much sooner than we thought
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3. Another coronavirus vaccine candidate might be ready sooner than expected

The best photos and reactions from this historic day for SpaceX and NASA originally appeared on BGR.com on Sat, 30 May 2020 at 18:17:13 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• President Trump said he would take hydroxychloroquine again “if he thought he was exposed” to the novel coronavirus, even after extensive testing has proven that the anti-malaria drug isn’t as effective in treating COVID-19 as initially believed.
• The drug can have serious side-effects, and there’s no proof it can prevent infection either.
• Separately, a study looking at hydroxychloroquine prescriptions during a 10-week period found a significant increase in orders compared to 2019, especially after Trump endorsed hydroxychloroquine on TV in mid-March.

Of all the experimental drugs used in COVID-19 therapies, hydroxychloroquine is the most controversial, and that’s because of a single man. President Trump has been advocating for the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the novel coronavirus from the moment the first studies suggested the drug might work. He dialed down his excitement as results from bigger studies came in highlighting the severe cardiac side-effects of the anti-malarial medication in COVID-19 patients. Trump then revived it by making a surprising remark on TV.

Trump said he had been taking hydroxychloroquine, and then subsequently announced his regimen would stop. Since then, we’ve seen the results of an extensive study that looked at nearly 100,000 COVID-19 patients, concluding that hydroxychloroquine is more likely to lead to severe health issues than offer any benefits for coronavirus patients. The World Health Organization (WHO) stopped hydroxychloroquine studies earlier this week, and France and other EU countries followed their lead. You might think that would be the end of the story, but you’d be wrong. Trump said he would still take the drug if he caught the virus, even though there’s no proof it works, and that’s even more dangerous than it sounds.

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Today’s Top Deals

1. 10 deals you don’t want to miss on Saturday: KN95 face masks under $3, free Echo Show 5, Apple deals, more
2. Don’t miss Bose’s true wireless earbuds while they’re on Amazon at the lowest price ever
3. Today’s top deals: $3 KN95 face masks, Prime-only deals, strongest hand sanitizer, $5 smart plugs, Fire TV sale, more

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1. Study says you should wear a coronavirus face mask even at home
2. Watch live as NASA once again tries to launch historic SpaceX Crew Dragon mission
3. Best Buy has so many hot deals that end today – here are the 10 best ones

Trump says he’d take hydroxychloroquine again, which is even more dangerous than it sounds originally appeared on BGR.com on Sat, 30 May 2020 at 14:06:13 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• The novel coronavirus began spreading in the US even earlier than believed, according to new research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
• COVID-19 community transmission may have happened as early as January, several weeks before the original official estimate.
• The study proves the failure of authorities at finding coronavirus patients and stopping the spread of the disease at a time when the dangers surrounding COVID-19 were already known.

The novel coronavirus started to spread in the US in late January. We know that since the first diagnosed case dates back to January 20th. A recent report suggested that the first COVID-19 patient in the US may have been infected at some point in mid-December, several weeks ahead of the first confirmed case. Similar research from Europe indicates the virus could have reached the continent as early as mid-November, at a point when the world had no idea that a new virus was circulating. Then autopsy results showed that a patient died of COVID-19 in California as early as February 6th, three weeks earlier than the first reported COVID-19 death in America.

The CDC now says that it found limited evidence of the early spread of COVID-19 within the US in late January and early February. The agency says that until late February, “COVID-19 incidence was too low to be detected by emergency department syndromic surveillance for COVID-19–like illness.”

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Today’s Top Deals

1. Don’t miss Bose’s true wireless earbuds while they’re on Amazon at the lowest price ever
2. 10 deals you don’t want to miss on Saturday: KN95 face masks under $3, free Echo Show 5, Apple deals, more
3. Today’s top deals: $3 KN95 face masks, Prime-only deals, strongest hand sanitizer, $5 smart plugs, Fire TV sale, more

Trending Right Now:

1. Study says you should wear a coronavirus face mask even at home
2. Watch live as NASA once again tries to launch historic SpaceX Crew Dragon mission
3. Xanax, a common anxiety medication, might actually block coronavirus

CDC: Coronavirus began spreading in the US much sooner than we thought originally appeared on BGR.com on Sat, 30 May 2020 at 13:05:16 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• Another potential coronavirus vaccine might be available this fall.
• Pfizer said the candidate it’s developing with BioNTech could be ready by October if everything goes well.
• There’s no guarantee that any of these vaccines will work, and several logistic challenges have to be addressed before mass immunization campaigns can be conducted.

The development of vaccines for the novel coronavirus has been rather promising so far, with more than 100 teams moving forward with drugs for neutralizing the virus and preventing infection. Separately, research has shown that COVID-19 survivors will be immune, and that vaccine candidates can induce the same kind of immunity in subjects. While it’s still unclear how long COVID-19 protection lasts, vaccines would make the disease a lot easier to control.

Around 10 groups are already testing their drugs on human volunteers, and some of them might be ready as soon as this fall if all goes well. Companies like Moderna and researchers from Oxford said their vaccines might be delivered in the coming months, with the Oxford team saying its drug could be ready by September. Separately, China has at least four candidates in testing. Officials said they’re already devising plans for emergency use of these drugs, with some immunizations to take place as soon as this year, regardless of whether the clinical trials are completed or not. Pfizer now joins the list of entities that might have a vaccine candidate ready in 2020, with a tentative availability window set for October.

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Today’s Top Deals

1. Don’t miss Bose’s true wireless earbuds while they’re on Amazon at the lowest price ever
2. 10 deals you don’t want to miss on Saturday: KN95 face masks under $3, free Echo Show 5, Apple deals, more
3. Today’s top deals: $3 KN95 face masks, Prime-only deals, strongest hand sanitizer, $5 smart plugs, Fire TV sale, more

Trending Right Now:

1. Study says you should wear a coronavirus face mask even at home
2. Xanax, a common anxiety medication, might actually block coronavirus
3. Watch live as NASA once again tries to launch historic SpaceX Crew Dragon mission

Another coronavirus vaccine candidate might be ready sooner than expected originally appeared on BGR.com on Sat, 30 May 2020 at 12:04:30 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• NASA and SpaceX are set to make history by launching astronauts from U.S. soil for the first time since the Space Shuttle era.
• The mission will take NASA astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken to the International Space Station for a stay of up to several months.
• This is the last step for SpaceX before Crew Dragon is certified for use by NASA.

NASA’s first attempt to launch American astronauts from US soil in almost a decade fizzled out before it could even begin on Wednesday. The launch of the SpaceX Crew Dragon was called off with just minutes to go due to poor weather conditions, forcing the space agency to push the launch to Saturday.

Now, as before, we’ll have to cross our fingers and hope that the launch can proceed as scheduled. The weather looks roughly the same as it did prior to the Wednesday launch attempt, suggesting that we may be in store for another last-second decision on whether or not to send SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon skyward.

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Today’s Top Deals

1. 10 deals you don’t want to miss on Saturday: KN95 face masks under $3, free Echo Show 5, Apple deals, more
2. Don’t miss Bose’s true wireless earbuds while they’re on Amazon at the lowest price ever
3. 10 Amazon deals you can only get if you’re a Prime member

Trending Right Now:

1. Study says you should wear a coronavirus face mask even at home
2. Xanax, a common anxiety medication, might actually block coronavirus
3. Best Buy has so many hot deals that end today – here are the 10 best ones

Watch live as NASA once again tries to launch historic SpaceX Crew Dragon mission originally appeared on BGR.com on Sat, 30 May 2020 at 11:03:10 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• The Android 11 beta release date was just postponed, as Google decided to cancel the launch event it had planned for June 3rd.
• Google announced the change of schedule via Twitter, saying that “now is not the time to celebrate.”
• The move comes in response to the wave of protests against police brutality that followed the murder of George Floyd.

Google released the first Android 11 beta version a few weeks ago, but that’s just the developer preview that usually precedes the formal introduction of a new Android version. The official reveal typically happens in May, and then the first public beta rolls out a few months ahead of the final version. But 2020 has been anything but typical, as the novel coronavirus changed everything we took for granted. Google was forced to shut down its events, and this year’s I/O was canceled entirely. The Pixel 4a launch was pushed back as a result, and so was the Android 11 reveal and the release of the first public beta.

Google planned to announce Android 11 on June 3rd, nearly a month later than it normally would have, but that’s not happening either. This time around, it’s the recent wave of protests in Minneapolis and other places following the murder of George Floyd.

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Today’s Top Deals

1. 10 deals you don’t want to miss on Saturday: KN95 face masks under $3, free Echo Show 5, Apple deals, more
2. Don’t miss Bose’s true wireless earbuds while they’re on Amazon at the lowest price ever
3. 10 Amazon deals you can only get if you’re a Prime member

Trending Right Now:

1. Xanax, a common anxiety medication, might actually block coronavirus
2. Study says you should wear a coronavirus face mask even at home
3. Best Buy has so many hot deals that end today – here are the 10 best ones

Android 11 announcement delayed due to protests over police brutality originally appeared on BGR.com on Sat, 30 May 2020 at 10:02:41 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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• A new study shows that coronavirus masks are super effective when wearing them at home to prevent the spread of disease to family members.
• The research shows that wearing a mask reduces the chances of transmission by 79%.
• The study also examined the effectiveness of bleach and other disinfectants in halting the spread of the virus, revealing that regular cleaning reduces the chances of spreading the virus by 77% within a home.

If you’ve been diligent about wearing a mask when out in public to protect yourself and others from the spread of the coronavirus, pat yourself on the back. Public health experts and researchers agree that wearing a mask when you leave the house is one of the best things we can do to slow the pandemic as we wait for a vaccine.

Now, new research says that keeping your mask on at home might be an even better way to curb the spread of the disease. The study was published in BMJ Global Health and it suggests that you can reduce the risk of transmitting the virus to others in your own home by a whopping 79% if someone in the household is positive for the disease.

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Today’s Top Deals

1. 10 deals you don’t want to miss on Saturday: KN95 face masks under $3, free Echo Show 5, Apple deals, more
2. Don’t miss Bose’s true wireless earbuds while they’re on Amazon at the lowest price ever
3. 10 Amazon deals you can only get if you’re a Prime member

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1. Xanax, a common anxiety medication, might actually block coronavirus
2. Best Buy has so many hot deals that end today – here are the 10 best ones
3. A gang of monkeys stole coronavirus blood samples from a lab because 2020 wasn’t weird enough

Study says you should wear a coronavirus face mask even at home originally appeared on BGR.com on Sat, 30 May 2020 at 09:01:40 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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