Analysis: Drug company and scientific partners at Oxford University have strongly pushed back against German press report
A row has broken out after German newspapers suggested the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine might have a lower efficacy among the over-65s. Below we take a look at the claims, and whether we should be concerned.
Continue reading...Commission president says firms must deliver on orders after AstraZeneca warns of shortfall
The EU “means business”, Ursula von der Leyen has said, as the bloc doubled down on plans for tighter monitoring of vaccine exports to countries outside of the union, such as the UK.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum, the president of the European commission said the EU had invested billions and “companies must now deliver” to the 27 member states.
Continue reading...Canines in Hungarian study appear to pick up unfamiliar terms through play
Whether you can teach an old dog new tricks might be a moot point, but it seems some canines can rapidly learn new words, and do so through play.
While young children are known to quickly pick up the names of new objects, the skill appears to be rare in animals.
Continue reading...One in eight people who get coronavirus also have first psychiatric or neurological illness within six months, research finds
One in eight people who have had Covid-19 are diagnosed with their first psychiatric or neurological illness within six months of testing positive for the virus, a new analysis suggests, adding heft to an emerging body of evidence that stresses the toll of the virus on mental health and brain disorders cannot be ignored.
The analysis – which is still to be peer-reviewed – also found that those figures rose to one in three when patients with a previous history of psychiatric or neurological illnesses were included.
Continue reading...Humans are designed to touch and be touched – which is why so many who live on their own have suffered during the pandemic. Will we ever fully recover?
There’s only so much a dog can do, even if that is a lot. I live alone with my staffy, and by week eight of the first lockdown she was rolling her eyes at my ever-tightening clutch. I had been sofa-bound with Covid and its after-effects before lockdown was announced, then spring and summer passed without any meaningful touch from another person. I missed the smell of my friends’ clothes and my nephew’s hair, but, more than anything, I missed the groundedness only another human body can bring. The ache in my solar plexus that married these thoughts often caught me off guard.
The need for touch exists below the horizon of consciousness. Before birth, when the amniotic fluid in the womb swirls around us and the foetal nervous system can distinguish our own body from our mother’s, our entire concept of self is rooted in touch. “The human body has built all its models based on touch received from caregivers,” says Dr Katerina Fotopoulou, a professor of psychodynamic neuroscience at University College London. “We’re utterly reliant on the caregiver to satisfy the body’s core needs. Little can be done without touch.”
Continue reading...Exactly a year after his first story about coronavirus, our science editor received the Pfizer injection last week. Here he reflects on a remarkable scientific achievement
I marked a grim anniversary in an unexpected manner last week. On 18 January last year, I wrote my first story about a mysterious disease that had struck Wuhan, in China, and which was now spreading around the world. More than two million individuals have since died of Covid-19, almost 100,000 of them in the UK.
Remarkably, 12 months to the day that the Observer published my story, I was given my first dose of Covid-19 vaccine, allowing me to follow nearly six million other newly immunised UK residents who are set to gain protection against a disease that has brought the planet to a standstill. It was a rare, comforting experience after a year of unremitting sadness and gloom.
Continue reading...The way we think about pain could change how much we actually suffer
We’ve all got a story about pain. Maybe it’s that time you broke your arm skating, or the time you finished the game on a twisted ankle, or the 10 hours of labour without an epidural. Maybe your story of pain is a story of violence, the injury and trauma of an assault. Maybe it’s a story of terror. Or it’s heartbreak, the seemingly endless depths of grief and despair after a loss. Whatever it is, (almost) all of us have experienced what we call pain and we’re not in a hurry to experience it again.
But have you ever tried to define that pain? When you’re telling the story, how do you explain the pain? Do you try to quantify the injury – how many broken bones, the size of the bruise, the amount of blood? Or do you describe the cause – the type of cancerous cells, the crowning baby, the sharp knife? But what if there was no obvious cause? And how do you communicate the intensity? Is it a searing or scalding burn, a throbbing or dull pressure, a pounding or stabbing headache? Is it worse than a bee sting, but not as bad as a dog bite?
Continue reading...Vitamin D levels under scrutiny amid Covid surge in Europe; New UK Covid variant may be 30% more deadly, says Johnson; Bulgaria to ease some coronavirus restrictions from 4 February
Calls of UK doctors to cut the gap between the first and second doses of the coronavirus vaccine are being resisted by officials at Public Health England.
The British Medical Association (BMA) has warned that delaying the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech jab to 12 weeks after the first is not justified by the science.
Stricter controls appear likely, with government’s approach in stark contrast to that during first Covid wave
Slumped on the sofa after another day of home schooling, many families will have longingly eyed adverts for getaways: sun, sandy beaches and glittering pools, a much-needed reward after a year in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic.
But ministers are becoming increasingly concerned they may have to ask the British public to sacrifice their hopes of a break abroad this summer. On Thursday, Priti Patel became the latest cabinet minister to say it was too soon to book an overseas break; Matt Hancock has already announced he is going to Cornwall.
Continue reading...Patient lost both arms in work accident 23 years ago and it took years to find suitable donors for the complex operation
An Icelandic man who got the world’s first double-shoulder-and-arm transplant is recovering well after the operation, two decades after the accident that cost him both limbs, doctors have said.
They said it was still uncertain how much mobility Felix Gretarsson, 48, will recover following the operation earlier this month in the southeastern French city of Lyon.
Continue reading...UK, South Africa and Brazil variants indicate changes may be needed
In common with others, the virus that causes Covid-19 mutates as it spreads. Most mutations have little or no effect, but some can change the behaviour of the virus. Mutations in a variant found in the UK in September has helped the virus spread more easily and potentially more dangerously. Further changes in variants that emerged in South Africa and Brazil may help the virus resist antibodies induced by vaccines and Covid infections from the first wave.
Why would the vaccines be updated?
If scientists spot new variants of coronavirus that are resistant to current vaccines then the vaccines will need to be redesigned to make them effective again. The more people who have immunity, either through vaccination or past infection, the more evolutionary pressure there is on the virus to evolve around that immunity. And when there’s lot of virus around, as there is now, there are more opportunities for resistant variants to emerge.
My turn for an AstraZeneca dose has come up, so I need to decide whether to drop out of Novavax tests
I had two excellent pieces of news this week. They left me feeling utterly wretched.
First, my turn came up for the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid. I was told I could have my first jab on Thursday.
Continue reading...Scientists believe 2-metre-long burrow once housed predator that ambushed passing sea creatures
The undersea lair of a giant worm that ambushed passing marine creatures 20m years ago has been uncovered by fossil hunters in Taiwan.
Researchers believe the 2-metre-long burrow found in ancient marine sediment once housed a prehistoric predator that burst out of the seabed and dragged unsuspecting animals down into its lair.
Continue reading...As new Covid variants emerge, scientists advise use of FFP masks that filter inflow and outflow of air
Scientists have urged Britons to wear medical-grade masks when they cannot physically distance, amid growing concerns of faster-spreading Covid-19 variants – but said that any face covering is better than none at all.
This week French health officials advised people to wear surgical masks rather than homemade fabric ones as these afford greater protection against highly contagious new variants.
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Low uptake fuelled by fears over safety of vaccine and spread of misinformation
India’s Covid-19 vaccine drive has been hampered by turnout as low as 22% in some states, as fears over the safety of the vaccine and the spread of misinformation has fuelled widespread hesitancy.
On Saturday, India launched the world’s largest vaccination programme as it began the massive task of vaccinating its 1.3 billion citizens against coronavirus.
Continue reading...Tiny aerosols of the virus emitted when speaking linger in air for longer than larger droplets from a cough
Speaking to a friend when infected with the coronavirus could be as dangerous as coughing near them thanks to lingering particles, research has suggested.
Covid can be spread through a number of routes, including virus-containing droplets emitted when an infected person breaths, speaks or coughs – a factor experts said could help to explain why Covid seems to spread more easily in indoor settings.
Continue reading...A convoy of Spaniards and allies was ritually sacrificed in 1520 at Tecoaque – ‘the place where they ate them’ – before Hernán Cortés wreaked revenge
New research suggests Spanish conquistadores butchered at least a dozen women and their children in an Aztec-allied town where the inhabitants sacrificed and ate a detachment of Spaniards they had captured months earlier.
The National Institute of Anthropology and History published findings on Monday from years of excavation work at the town of Tecoaque, which means “the place where they ate them” in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs.
Continue reading...Minister who publicly drank syrup touted as coronavirus cure tests positive
A self-styled Sri Lankan holy man’s supposed miracle potion to prevent Covid-19 has turned sour after a minister who publicly drank it was taken to hospital with the virus.
Thousands defied public gathering restrictions to swamp a village in central Sri Lanka last month to get the syrup made by Dhammika Bandara.
Continue reading...When I damaged my vocal cords, I was forced to change the way I spoke – and discovered how much our voices reveal who we are
Some years ago, I was invited by my then boss, Jann Wenner, the owner of Rolling Stone, to be the lead singer in a band he was putting together from the magazine’s staff. I had just turned 41, and I jumped at the opportunity to sustain the delusion that I was not getting old. “Sign me up!” I said.
My chief attributes as a singer included impressive volume and an ability to stay more or less in tune, but I was strictly a self-taught amateur. I had, for instance, never done a proper voice warmup, and had certainly never been informed that the delicate layers of vibratory tissue, muscle and mucus membrane that make up the vocal cords are as prone to injury as a middle-aged knee joint. So, on practice days, I simply rose from my desk (I was finishing a book on deadline and spent eight hours a day writing, in complete silence), rode the subway to our rehearsal space in downtown Manhattan, took my place behind the microphone and started wailing over my bandmates’ cranked-up guitars and drums.
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