In the UK, all eyes are on South African, Brazilian and Kent variants - with mutations transmitting among the population
With the discovery of new coronavirus variants in parts of the UK, prompting intensive testing, we take a look at what the variants are and how concerned we should be.
Continue reading...Germany warns new variants are set to spread; Israel to keep borders closed despite easing lockdown
Slovak regional authorities have quarantined a Roma settlement after a quarter of its residents tested positive for the coronavirus.
The settlement of Sacurov near Vranov nad Toplou in the east of the country, made up of two three-storey apartment blocks and around 70 shacks, is to be closed off for 10 days.
“In a week-and-a-half it grew [from five] to the unreal number of 113, due to a failure to maintain quarantine and isolation,” he said.
More than 80% of people in some developing countries have seen their incomes fall due to the coronavirus pandemic, economists have found, warning that rising poverty could mean poorer countries struggle to curb infections – especially with mass vaccination potentially years away.
“Economic help is part and parcel of fighting the virus,” co-author of the study Shana Warren told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“If you want people to stay home to stop the virus spreading while they wait for vaccines you need to provide them with the economic support to do so.”
Continue reading...Scientists aim to establish level of immunity in trial of 820 people, giving some a substitute vaccine at second appointment
Volunteers are being sought for a world-first trial to establish the efficacy of giving people a first dose of one vaccine and a second dose of a different vaccine.
The trial, which is being run by Oxford University and is funded by the government’s vaccine taskforce, has been described by ministers as “hugely important”.
Continue reading...About 15% of population has been offered first jab, as experts call for focus on hotspots
Britain has given a first dose of a coronavirus vaccine to more than 10 million people, as public health experts call on ministers to target future vaccinations in hotspots where the disease is threatening to run out of control.
Official figures from across the UK’s four nations showed that 374,756 people received a jab on Tuesday, taking the headline total to 10.02 million, less than two months after the programme began.
Continue reading...New age group eligible from Thursday while focus remains on older at-risk people
Israel’s health ministry has said it will offer coronavirus vaccines to anyone over the age of 16, as part of a rapid campaign in which the majority of older and vulnerable people have already received shots.
The ministry has told healthcare providers they can start booking appointments for the new age group starting on Thursday.
Continue reading...SpaceX’s second full test flight of its futuristic, bullet-shaped Starship ended in another fiery crash landing on Tuesday.
Elon Musk’s company launched its latest Starship prototype from the south-eastern tip of Texas, two months after the previous test ended in an equally explosive belly flop.
Continue reading...Preliminary findings based on analysis of data from more than 20,000 participants
The Sputnik V vaccine, which has been the subject of scepticism since Russia began using it last year before trials had ended, is 91.6% effective against symptomatic Covid according to data published in one of the world’s leading medical journals.
Results in the Lancet from 20,000 trial participants suggest Sputnik’s efficacy is on a par with that of some of the leading vaccines now in use. There was good efficacy in older adults, who are at highest risk for death, but little diversity, since most participants were white males.
Continue reading...Analysis: death rates in intensive care are falling as doctors identify more ways to help those with the disease
Vaccines may have been described as the great escape route from the Covid pandemic – but treatments, which are bringing down death rates, will be needed as much as ever in the era of jabs because the virus is not expected to go away in the foreseeable future, experts say.
“It’s going to take a long time to vaccinate the world,” said Peter Horby of Oxford University, chief investigator of the Recovery trial into Covid treatments and chair of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (Nervtag). “I don’t know what the estimates are, but we’ve already seen issues with manufacturing scale-up and difficulties in delivering at scale.
Continue reading...Analysis: scramble to stop spread of South African variant makes sense but may already be too late
When the coronavirus pandemic was in its infancy, one of the common silver linings scientists mentioned was the virus’s slow rate of mutation. It raised the hope that the virus lacked the agility to rapidly evolve around human immunity – whether from previous infection or vaccine. The virus is certainly slow to mutate by some standards. Sars-CoV-2 typically acquires two single letter changes in its genetic code a month, about half the rate seen in influenza.
So why are so many new variants emerging? At the heart of the problem is the fact the global pandemic is raging. Every new case is a chance for mutations to arise, spread and build up. In the simple arithmetic of evolution, when a virus mutates and gains an advantage it can rise above the others.
Continue reading...New research shows global death rates among patients in intensive care have fallen from 60% to 36%
Death rates among people who end up in intensive care with Covid-19 have improved dramatically since the start of the pandemic thanks to advances in treatment, new research has found.
The proportion of those worst affected by the disease who die from it has fallen from 60% when it first appeared early last year to 36% by October, the study of global trends shows.
Continue reading...Billed as a celebration of humankind’s victory over coronavirus, Games could fall foul of pandemic for a second time
The Olympic rings have been spruced up and are once again overlooking Tokyo Bay. Countdown clocks have been reset, telling passersby there are just 171 days to go until the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games begin.
They are supposed to build excitement in the host city and among sports fans around the world. But Japan’s Olympic dream is quickly turning sour in the face of the worst global health crisis for a century.
Continue reading...Experts say 501Y.V2 variant is more infectious and resistant to vaccines, though there are no signs that it leads to more severe disease
The South African variant, like the new UK variant, contains a mutation known as N501Y which is believed to make the virus more contagious than older variants. The South African variant also contains other mutations of concern, including E484K and K417N. These two mutations are thought to explain why the South African variant appears to be better able to evade neutralising antibody responses by the body.
Continue reading...Billions of unwanted male chicks are slaughtered by the farming industry. Now a startup claims to have found a surprising solution to the problem
The eggs we eat have a hidden cost. About 7bn male chicks are killed worldwide every year to produce them. Farmers need to replenish their supply of egg-laying hens but, by nature, half the chicks that hatch are male and growing them for meat is uneconomic – that industry uses faster growing breeds. In many countries they are tossed into shredding machines, although in the UK they are gassed.
But what if those male chicks could instead hatch out as functional females, able to grow into egg-laying birds? That’s the vision of Israeli startup Soos Technology. Founded in 2017, the company, which has received $3.3m in investment and prize winnings, wants to make commercial hatcheries kinder and more economic by changing the effective sex of poultry embryos as they develop.
Continue reading...As a hospital consultant working in intensive care, the reality of coronavirus and patients’ fear is brought home to me every day
I’m not ready,” the patient implores me through her CPAP [continuous positive airway pressure] hood. She’s breathing at more than triple her normal rate and I’ve been asked to intubate her as she’s deteriorating, despite three days in intensive care. She is 42 years old.
There’s terror in her eyes. A tear runs down her cheek. She’s looking at the patient opposite who is in an induced coma, intubated and ventilated, and isn’t doing well.
Continue reading...First there was Pfizer, then AstraZeneca, now Moderna and Novavax. How do they differ? And which might you get?
Continue reading...When Harvard professor Avi Loeb discovered possible signs of extraterrestrial activity, it caused a scandal in the research community. Is fear and conservatism stopping science from considering plausible evidence that there are aliens out there?
By the time humanity noticed the object, it was already leaving the solar system. 19 October 2017. Astronomers at the University of Hawaii notice an odd shape tumbling away from Earth, a bright speck hurtling through the deep dark. Informally, they name it ‘Oumuamua, from the Hawaiian for “scout”, and classify it an interstellar asteroid, the first known to visit our solar system. Really, nobody could be sure what it was. Asteroids are rocky and dull and commonly round, but ‘Oumuamua was shiny and elongated. Astronomers had first thought it a comet, but comets have bright gassy tails, and here there wasn’t one. The more data was collected, the more mysterious the object seemed. “Time after time it looked unusual,” says the astrophysicist Avi Loeb, over Zoom. “At some point it crossed a threshold for me. And at that point you say, ‘OK, come on!’”
Loeb is the Frank B Baird Jr Professor of Science at Harvard and, until recently, the longest-serving chair of Harvard’s department of astronomy. When we speak, he is in his home office – big old fireplace, books about the cosmos, a remarkable quantity of dark wood – preparing to discuss his new book, Extraterrestrial, in which he argues an exotic hypothesis: that ‘Oumuamua was “designed, built and launched by an extraterrestrial intelligence”. Loeb is 59, but energised like a child. “I should tell you,” he warns, gently teasing, a few days after the US Capitol is stormed. “Today I’m supposed to be interviewed by Fox News. Some people said, ‘Avi, don’t do it. How could you do that?’ And I said, ‘Look, science doesn’t have a political agenda – we should speak to everyone!’”
Continue reading...The llama has provided nanobodies that effectively prevent infection, but the use of other species in Covid research raises troubling ethical questions
Cormac the llama lives a quiet life on a farm in Washington State, totally unaware that his unique immune system may be key to protecting the developing world from Covid-19.
“He is an extremely charismatic llama … he’s a pretty cool guy,” says TJ Esparza, a neuroscientist at the Uniformed Services University. He is part of the team attempting to transform Cormac’s nanobody cells into a drug that will coat the inside of human lungs, providing temporary but effective protection from coronavirus particles.
Continue reading...Graves found under demolished student halls are providing valuable insight into life in a post-Roman settlement
An early medieval graveyard unearthed beneath student accommodation at Cambridge University has been described as “one of the most exciting finds of Anglo-Saxon archaeology since the 19th century”.
King’s College discovered the “extensive” cemetery, containing more than 60 graves, after demolishing a group of 1930s buildings which had recently housed graduates and staff in the west of the city, to make way for more modern halls.
Continue reading...Librarian says she feels ‘very lucky’ working from home, so she volunteered for the vaccine test
While many have endured almost a year of stress and hardship during the Covid crisis in the UK, others have remained relatively unscathed.
Caroline Ball, a 37-year-old academic librarian from just outside Derby, has even felt guilty at times, having the good fortune of a stable job which she can do from home and not worrying about homeschooling children.
Continue reading...Shock and anger at EU’s move to invoke Brexit clause on Irish border; Fauci says ‘virus will continue to mutate’ as Democrats aim to fast-track Covid relief plan; Johnson & Johnson one-dose Covid vaccine shown to work
Hello everyone, I’m Molly Blackall, taking over the blog in London. I’ll be bringing you all the key updates in the coronavirus pandemic around the world over the next few hours.
If you spot something you think we should be reporting on in this blog, please feel free to drop me a message on Twitter. Tips and pointers always much appreciated!
The former Northern Ireland secretary Julian Smith has weighed into the row over the EU’s threat to override part of Northern Ireland Protocol under its coronavirus vaccine controls, calling it “almost Trumpian.”
The Tory MP told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Years have been spent trying to ensure goods will flow freely and there will be no hard border and last night the EU pulled the emergency cord without following any of the process that are in the protocol if one side wants to suspend it.
And they did that, in my view, without anywhere near the understanding of the Good Friday Agreement, of the sensitivity of the situation in Northern Ireland, and it was an almost Trumpian act.
It is not just a backdoor for goods going to Britain, it is a very sensitive place and we have a duty of care between the EU and the UK to preserve no hard border and stability in Northern Ireland.
Related: EU in U-turn over move to control vaccine exports to Northern Ireland
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