The states and their hackers that security experts believe are targeting vaccine developers
Russia’s best-known hacker groups – Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear – are considered to be linked to the country’s intelligence organisations, according to western security agencies.
Continue reading...Despite the promising news from Pfizer and Moderna, other efforts – which may be even more effective – continue around the world
While everyone celebrated this month’s news that not one but two experimental vaccines against Covid-19 have proved at least 90% effective at preventing disease in late-stage clinical trials, research into understanding how the Sars-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, interacts with the human immune system never paused.
There are plenty of questions still to answer about the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines: how well will they protect the elderly, for example, and how long for? Which aspects of the immune response that they elicit are protective and which aren’t? Can even better results be achieved, with vaccines that target different parts of the immune system?
Continue reading...Infections up in UK by more than 18,000 on Sunday; warning over Gaza Strip infections; G20 leaders agree to fund fair distribution of vaccines
Experts have urged Americans against travelling for family gatherings at Thanksgiving this week even though millions were set to defy the advice, as the US crossed the threshold of more than 12m cases of coronavirus.
Ominous warnings came as Donald Trump appeared to admit that coronavirus is “running wild” across the US, in contrast with his statements throughout the election campaign that the virus would simply “go away” or “disappear” and, more recently, that the country was “rounding the turn” on the pandemic.
Related: Millions of Americans set to ignore warnings against Thanksgiving travel
The Palestinian health ministry has recommended strict limits on Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem this year due to the coronavirus outbreak.
Celebrations in the biblical town revered by Christians as Jesus’ birthplace are usually attended by thousands of people from around the world, but this year the ministry has recommended the upcoming tree lighting ceremony in Manger Square be limited to 50 people, throughout the festive season.
Continue reading...PM set to announce end to lockdown before trying to broker national agreement on family gatherings
Boris Johnson will meet his cabinet remotely on Sunday to decide how people will be able to gather with loved ones at Christmas, before the announcement of a new Covid winter plan.
The prime minister, who is self-isolating, will then confirm by video to parliament on Monday that national restrictions will end on 2 December and be replaced by the three-tier regional system, with even tighter controls in some areas.
Continue reading...The renowned fossil hunter on the anti-African prejudice in palaeontology, her dream discovery, and bathing her daughter beside a baby hippo
For over 50 years, British-born palaeoanthropologist Meave Leakey has been unearthing fossils of our early ancestors in Kenya’s Turkana Basin. Her discoveries have changed how we think about our origins. Instead of a tidy ape-to-human progression, her work suggests different pre-human species living simultaneously. Leakey’s new memoir, The Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past, co-written with her daughter Samira, reflects on her life in science and pieces together what we now understand about the climate-driven evolution of our species.
Leakey is part of a famous family of palaeoanthropologists. Her husband, Richard Leakey, and his parents, Louis and Mary, are known for their discoveries of early hominins.
Continue reading...After living with Parkinson’s for 30 years, the actor still counts himself a lucky man. He reflects on what his diagnosis has taught him about hope, acting, family and medical breakthroughs
The last time I spoke to Michael J Fox, in 2013, in his office in New York, he was 90% optimistic and 10% pragmatic. The former I expected; the latter was a shock. Ever since 1998, when Fox went public with his diagnosis of early-onset Parkinson’s disease, he has made optimism his defining public characteristic, because of, rather than despite, his illness. He called his 2002 memoir Lucky Man, and he told interviewers that Parkinson’s is a gift, “albeit one that keeps on taking”.
During our interview, surrounded by the memorabilia (guitars, Golden Globes) he has accrued over the course of his career, he talked about how it had all been for the best. Parkinson’s, he said, had made him quit drinking, which in turn had probably saved his marriage. Being diagnosed at the heartbreakingly young age of 29 had also knocked the ego out of his career ambitions, so he could do smaller things he was proud of – Stuart Little, the TV sitcom Spin City – as opposed to the big 90s comedies, such as Doc Hollywood, that were too often a waste of his talents. To be honest, I didn’t entirely buy his tidy silver linings, but who was I to cast doubt on whatever perspective Fox had developed to make a monstrously unjust situation more bearable? So the sudden dose of pragmatism astonished me. Finding a cure for Parkinson’s, he said, “is not something that I view will happen in my lifetime”. Previously, he had talked about finding “a cure within a decade”. No more. “That’s just the way it goes,” he said quietly. It was like a dark cloud had partly obscured the sun.
Continue reading...Katalin Karikó’s mRNA research helped pave way for Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna’s successful work
The Hungarian-born biochemist who helped pioneer the research behind the mRNA technology used in the two Covid-19 vaccines showing positive results believes it was always a no-brainer.
“I never doubted it would work,” Katalin Karikó told the Guardian. “I had seen the data from animal studies, and I was expecting it. I always wished that I would live long enough to see something that I’ve worked on be approved.”
Continue reading...Donald Trump Jr tests positive for Covid; South Australia makes pizza worker scapegoat for failures; German doctor arrested on suspicion of killing two Covid patients. Follow latest updates
via Reuters
Mexico’s confirmed coronavirus death toll has risen to 100,823, according the the country’s health ministry.
In case you missed it earlier:
In Australia, New South Wales has reached two weeks – one complete infection cycle – without a single locally transmitted coronavirus case, AAP reports.
Donald Trump Jr tests positive for Covid; South Australia lockdown to end at midnight on Saturday; global cases pass 57.5m. Follow latest updates
The number of Covid-19 cases in the United States was on track to surpass 12 million on Saturday, just days ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday that health experts have warned could fuel the surging spread of infection around the country.
The milestone marks a worsening of the country’s Covid-19 epidemic, which has claimed a quarter of a million lives across America, more than in any other nation.
Turkey on Saturday reported its highest daily number of new coronavirus patients since the outbreak started.
Figures from the health ministry showed that 5,532 people had been diagnosed with Covid-19 symptoms in the previous 24 hours.
Continue reading...With potential injectable vaccines estimated to be out of reach for two-thirds of world’s population, scientists hope to find less-heat-sensitive formulations
News that one of the potential coronavirus vaccines had at least a 90% efficacy rate was a “victory for science”, said K Srinath Reddy, a cardiologist and president of the Public Health Foundation of India. But it meant little to his country’s 1.3 billion citizens.
“For us, the Pfizer vaccine is more of a scientific curiosity than a practical possibility,” Reddy said.
Continue reading...Obrador rejects criticism as political attacks; Canada fears big rise in cases could overwhelm hospitals; Italy records 37,242 new cases
This blog is now closed. Follow our continuing coronavirus coverage here
Marshall is asked if he admits there have been shortcomings in South Australia’s hotel quarantine system.
“Not at all. There will be a thorough investigation but what we have said since day one is this is a highly contagious disease ... we know that, very highly trained nurses and with all of their PPE, they have been able to contract the disease, so we know there is a risk associated with every time we bring somebody into this country,” he says.
Continue reading...The observatory has played a key part in space exploration – and a few movies – but two accidents have rendered the 305m-wide instrument unsafe
A huge US space telescope nestled deep in the Puerto Rican jungle will be shut down after suffering two destructive mishaps in recent months, ending 57 years of astronomical discoveries.
Operations at the Arecibo observatory, one of the largest in the world, were halted in August when one of its supportive cables slipped loose from its socket, falling and gashing a 30-metre (100ft) hole in its 305m-wide (1,000ft) reflector dish.
Continue reading...There’s now evidence that ignoring social distancing rules could help more lethal strains of Covid-19 to win out
Letting the virus that causes Covid-19 circulate more-or-less freely is dangerous not only because it risks overwhelming hospitals and so endangering lives unnecessarily, but also because it could delay the evolution of the virus to a more benign form and potentially even make it more lethal.
Though the data is still sketchy and the measures crude, this effect may already be influencing the difference in death rates between Sweden – which took a relaxed approach to containment until recently – and Norway, whose measures have been much stricter. Sweden has more than three times as many deaths per 100 cases as its neighbour.
Continue reading...Russia passes landmark number as 23,610 new cases reported; Denmark says no further cases of mutation since mid-September
The UK will be urged to reconsider its opposition to waiving intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines and treatments at a World Trade Organization meeting on Friday, a move that would allow mass production of treatments and inoculations against the disease and could significantly shorten the length of the pandemic, campaigners say.
India and South Africa have proposed that WTO member states be allowed to waive patents and other intellectual property (IP) rights on any treatments and tools related to Covid-19 until the end of the pandemic, including for the Moderna and Pfizer/BionNTech vaccines that are set to be approved for use in the coming weeks.
Related: UK faces calls to drop opposition to patent-free Covid vaccines
More mink mutation news: a number of cases of Covid-19 have been found in people who work in the mink industry in Sweden.
In a statement the Swedish Public Health Agency said it and “the Swedish Veterinary Institute, the Swedish Board of Agriculture and local infection control units are jointly investigating whether there is any connection between the cases and their contact with minks.”
Flera myndigheter utreder fall av covid-19 inom minknäringen. https://t.co/TRDin3ZZHG
Continue reading...Denmark has already launched a nationwide cull of its farmed mink herd after concerns for vaccine efficacy
Seven countries are now reporting mink-related Sars-CoV-2 mutations in humans, according to new scientific analysis.
The mutations are identified as Covid-19 mink variants as they have repeatedly been found in mink and now in humans as well.
Uncertainty around the implications of the discovery of a Covid-19 mink variant in humans led Denmark, the world’s largest mink fur producer, to launch a nationwide cull earlier this month.
The cull was sparked by research from Denmark’s public health body, the Statens Serum Institut (SSI), which showed that a mink variant called C5 was harder for antibodies to neutralise and posed a potential threat to vaccine efficacy.
Finding has implications for one-size-fits-all approach to vaccine development
Antibody levels against the virus that causes Covid-19 appear to fall faster in men than in women, a study suggests – a finding that could have implications for vaccine research.
Historically, medical research has often taken a one-size-fits-all approach, lumping women and men together despite growing evidence that the sexes differ in how they catch and fight disease. Covid-19 seems to be a case in point, with women more likely to be infected but men thought to be up to twice as likely to die from the virus.
Continue reading...Medical establishment says cooperation can save lives; UK pressed to open transatlantic travel corridors; South Australia locks down for 6 days
I am handing over the blog to my colleague Alexandra Topping in the UK.
Thanks for reading but if you’re just joining, here are the main developments of the past few hours:
Businesses in the Japanese capital, Tokyo, could be asked to shorten their opening hours in order to contain an outbreak of the virus that has seen cases in the city reach a record daily high of 472 on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Eleven local authorities to enter level 4 – highest of Scotland’s five-tier system of virus controls
More than 2.7 million Scots will face near-lockdown restrictions for three weeks after Nicola Sturgeon imposed the country’s highest level of Covid restrictions across the west of Scotland.
Following a cabinet meeting on Tuesday morning, Scotland’s first minister told MSPs that 11 local authority areas would enter level 4 – the highest of Scotland’s five-tier system of virus controls – from 6pm this Friday for a limited period.
Continue reading...The country music icon’s $1m donation supported the latest breakthrough by Moderna and several research papers
It’s truly the greatest gift of all: a $1m donation by Dolly Parton to coronavirus vaccine research supported the development of the Moderna vaccine, which shows 95% protection from the virus.
In April, Parton donated £800,000 to research after her friend Dr Naji Abumrad of the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee told her that they were making “some exciting advancements” in the search for a cure for the virus. Abumrad and Parton became friends in 2014 after the singer was involved in a car accident and treated at Vanderbilt.
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Related: Coronavirus live news: senator Chuck Grassley tests positive; airlines offer Covid testing
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