Research from Public Health England suggests that protection conferred a fortnight after vaccination
A single dose of a Covid-19 vaccine can slash transmission of the virus by up to half, according to a Public Health England study.
The PHE finding offers further hope that the pandemic can be brought under control as it indicates that vaccinated people are far less likely to pass the virus on to others.
Continue reading...Younger people invited to get jab at more than 1,600 sites across country
The Covid-19 vaccine rollout has been extended in England for the second time in two days. Adults aged 42 and over are now able to book their jab.
Here are your questions answered as the NHS in England takes another step forward in the biggest vaccination programme in its history.
Continue reading...Door-to-door initiative targeting elderly people reluctant to have jab to be rolled out after local success
A coronavirus “vaccination persuasion” initiative targeting elderly people who have declined invitations to get vaccinated is gearing up to be rolled out across Turkey after proving a resounding success in a district in the country’s south-east.
Since February, doctors and healthcare workers in the mainly Kurdish city of Adıyaman, or Semsûr, have been calling people in age groups already eligible for the vaccine to ask why they have not come to clinics for appointments.
Continue reading...Analysis: experts believe a number of things coalesced to cause the world’s worst coronavirus outbreak
India is now identifying more than 1 million coronavirus cases every three days, with many times more thought to be going unregistered in a vast country where public health surveillance is often poor. Daily deaths exceeded 2,800 on Sunday, but these too are thought to be many times higher.
Epidemiologists and other experts are speculating that several factors have coalesced over the past months to bring India to the point of the world’s worst Covid-19 outbreak.
Continue reading...The government has hit both its self-imposed targets so far. How will it go the rest of the way?
More than half of the UK population has now received at least a first dose of vaccine against Covid-19. By Friday evening 33,388,637 people had received one of the Pfizer, AstraZeneca or Moderna vaccines. Here’s how it was done, and what is still left to do.
Continue reading...Scientists in Exeter are identifying Covid through human faeces – this could be be expanded to monitor other diseases
They call themselves the “poo crew” – a team of health detectives who are tracking down and heading off Covid outbreaks by reading the signs in our sewage. And they are expanding. Earlier this month, the Environmental Monitoring for Health Protection Programme opened a purpose-built laboratory on the fringes of Exeter, its sterile interior in stark contrast to the unsanitary subject of its investigations.
The opening of the laboratory marks a dramatic expansion of what was, until less than a year ago, just a soil pipe dream: testing sewage for coronavirus to understand where it is circulating and get an early warning of future potential spikes in infection. In the future, this network could be expanded to monitor other infectious diseases including flu.
Continue reading...The vaccine was temporarily halted while scientists investigated rare but dangerous blood clots
US health officials have lifted an 11-day pause on Johnson & Johnson vaccinations following a recommendation by an expert panel. Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday the benefits of the single-dose Covid-19 shot outweigh a rare risk of blood clots.
Panel members said it is critical that younger women be told about that risk so they can decide if they’d rather choose another vaccine. The CDC and Food and Drug Administration agreed. European regulators earlier this week made a similar decision, deciding the clot risk was small enough to allow the rollout of Johnson & Johnson’s shot.
Continue reading...Study was one of the first to evaluate alterations in human mutation rates in response to manmade disaster
For decades popular culture has portrayed babies born to the survivors of nuclear accidents as mutants with additional heads or at high risk of cancers. But now a study of children whose parents were exposed to radiation from the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 suggests they carry no more DNA mutations than children born to any other parents.
The study, published in Science, is one of the first to systematically evaluate alterations in human mutation rates in response to a manmade disaster, such as accidental radiation exposure.
Continue reading...Researchers in Glasgow find two cases where cats were infected by owners with coronavirus symptoms
Two cases of human-to-cat transmission of Covid-19 have been identified by researchers. Scientists from the University of Glasgow found the cases of Sars-CoV-2 transmission as part of a screening programme of the feline population in the UK.
The cats, of different breeds, were living in separate households and displayed mild to severe respiratory signs. Researchers believe both pets were infected by their owners, who had Covid-19 symptoms before the cats became unwell.
Continue reading...Despite their life-saving capabilities, many countries have yet to administer enough doses to reap the full benefits
Nearly six months after the first Covid-19 vaccines were approved for emergency use, Guardian analysis shows that the vast majority of the world is yet to see a substantial benefit.
Supply shortages, safety concerns, public apathy and slow rollouts have resulted in most countries still being reliant on onerous lockdowns and other quarantine measures to reduce the severity of their outbreaks.
Continue reading...Watchdog says benefits outweigh risks but that warning should be added to product information
Europe’s medicines regulator has found a possible link between Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine and rare cases of unusual blood clotting disorders it said were “very similar” to those that had occurred with the AstraZeneca shot.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) on Tuesday recommended a warning should be added to the vaccine’s product information, but stressed that the benefits of the shot – whose rollout was paused last week in Europe and the US – outweighed its risks.
Continue reading...Ministers announce taskforce to ‘supercharge’ search for antiviral treatments to roll out as soon as autumn
People with mild Covid-19 could take a pill or capsule at home to prevent the illness turning serious and requiring hospital treatment, under government plans to fast-track development of treatments for the disease.
The government is launching an antivirals taskforce to find at least two drugs by the autumn that people can take to stop coronavirus in its tracks and speed up recovery from it.
Continue reading...UCL data of 10,000 volunteers shows cases 30% higher among those who slept poorly in their 50s, 60s and 70s
People who regularly sleep for six hours or less each night in middle age are more likely to develop dementia than those who routinely manage seven hours, according to a major study into the disease.
Researchers found a 30% greater risk of dementia in those who during their 50s, 60s and 70s consistently had a short night’s sleep, regardless of other risk factors such as heart and metabolic conditions and poor mental health.
Continue reading...There’s been much debate about lateral flow tests – their accuracy depends on context and the theories of a 18th-century cleric
Maths quiz. If you take a Covid test that only gives a false positive one time in every 1,000, what’s the chance that you’ve actually got Covid? Surely it’s 99.9%, right?
No! The correct answer is: you have no idea. You don’t have enough information to make the judgment.
Continue reading...Exclusive: In leaked emails, Matt Hancock’s adviser says there is ‘urgent need for decisions’ on asymptomatic testing
Senior government officials have raised “urgent” concerns about the mass expansion of rapid coronavirus testing, estimating that as few as 2% to 10% of positive results may be accurate in places with low Covid rates, such as London.
Boris Johnson last week urged everyone in England to take two rapid-turnaround tests a week in the biggest expansion of the multibillion-pound testing programme to date.
Continue reading...Scientists confirm they have produced ‘chimera’ embryos from long-tailed macaques and humans
Monkey embryos containing human cells have been produced in a laboratory, a study has confirmed, spurring fresh debate into the ethics of such experiments.
The embryos are known as chimeras, organisms whose cells come from two or more “individuals”, and in this case, different species: a long-tailed macaque and a human.
Continue reading...They are 20 disparate diseases that, like mines, unduly affect the world’s poorest people. Now there’s a plan to eradicate them by 2030
In January the World Health Organization launched a new strategy for eradicating neglected tropical diseases, boldly setting targets to eliminate 20 of them by 2030.
But what are neglected tropical diseases (NTDs)? There is no easy answer. The concept was first proposed in the early 2000s to bring to light a group of diseases that disproportionately affect poor people yet, despite their collective impact, do not attract as much attention as diseases such as HIV/Aids, malaria or tuberculosis.
Continue reading...Prof Marie Scully developed a diagnostic test at University College London hospital after seeing rare side-effect in patient
Marie Scully was alarmed and puzzled. “It didn’t make sense,” she said. The consultant haematologist at University College London hospital (UCLH) had seen patients with blood clots in the brain and low platelets before and, although it was unusual, she always knew why. But there was no reason for the condition of the young woman in her 30s she was treating in early March.
“Now when you have blood clots in the brain like that there’s always a cause, and it was difficult to pinpoint the cause,” said Prof Scully. “It didn’t fit our normal diagnostic boxes, let’s say. She was a young woman with cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, and she had a low platelet count.”
Continue reading...Evidence is growing of a link between the Covid-19 vaccine and a deadly thrombosis – and theories are emerging as to why
Since rare but severe clotting was seen in some people following vaccination with AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine, researchers worldwide have been grappling to understand why the clotting syndrome, known as “thrombosis with thrombocytopenia” (clotting with a low platelet count), occurs.
Most cases of these clots occurred in veins in the brain (a condition called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, or CVST), though some occurred in other veins, including those to the abdomen (splanchnic vein thrombosis). It has a high death rate.
Continue reading...Using ipatasertib, researchers say some brain cancers could potentially be made vulnerable to immunotherapy agent
Two people with advanced brain cancer of the sort that led to the death of the MP Tessa Jowell have responded well in a small trial to an experimental combination of chemo and immunotherapy drugs. In one case, the life-threatening tumour seems to have disappeared.
Doctors at the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden hospital in London cautioned that this was very early research but said it was unusual to have such a good response in patients in an early trial.
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