Can we do more as individuals to help slow the spread of coronavirus? We ask the experts
Covid-19 infections in the UK are reducing but remain stubbornly high, despite a month of lockdown measures. So could we be doing more as individuals to curb transmission of the virus? A virologist, a psychologist and a public health expert share their views on some of the Covid-19 mistakes that we are all still making.
Continue reading...The Miami Heat will employ canines to sniff out the virus among fans attending games. But can dogs be trained in time to work at the Super Bowl?
Nearly 100 million people are expected to watch Super Bowl LV in Tampa, the first time the big game has been held during a pandemic (the World Series has survived two). But only 22,000 of those viewers, 7,500 of them vaccinated healthcare workers, will be in actual attendance, representing just one-third the capacity of Raymond James Stadium. Social distancing and face-coverings will be enforced. The first few rows will be kept clear as a buffer between the field and the fans. By this stage of the pandemic, everyone should be aware that, at any one time, a portion of the population is composed of asymptomatic carriers who can infect others they come into contact with. As a result, any large gathering has the potential to become a super-spreader event with wide-reaching consequences. Large-scale testing at gatherings such as sporting events is limited by the availability of trained personnel, equipment, money, and the time it takes for the results of the actual test to work.
But an unconventional solution may be in the works.
Continue reading...Everything you need to know about the trial results for a new coronavirus vaccine
In an interim analysis of a phase 3 clinical trial conducted in the UK, the vaccine has shown 89% efficacy, with 27% of participants in the trial – almost 4,000 people – older than 65. That trial suggested 95.6% efficacy against the original coronavirus and 85.6% efficacy against the more recent UK strain. Those results were based on the first 62 cases of Covid-19 identified among volunteers, with 56 cases among those given a placebo against just six in those given the vaccine.
Continue reading...Unique physiology allows the Australian marsupial to produce square-shaped faeces that may aid communication
How wombats produce their cube-shape poo has long been a biological puzzle but now an international study has provided the answer to this unusual natural phenomenon.
The cube shape is formed within the intestines – not at the point of exit, as previously thought – according to research published in scientific journal Soft Matter on Thursday.
Continue reading...Explainer: Move attributed to ‘insufficient data’ but experts say no evidence vaccine doesn’t work
German authorities have advised that the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab should not be given to those aged 65 or above. We take a look at why, and what experts make of it.
Why has Germany advised the Oxford/AstraZeneca jab should only be used in adults under 65?
Continue reading...Archaeologists say foundations excavated in Tiberias are of a mosque built in about AD670
Archaeologists in Israel say they have discovered the remnants of an early mosque believed to date to the earliest decades of Islam during an excavation in the northern city of Tiberias.
The foundations of the mosque, excavated just south of the Sea of Galilee by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, point to its construction roughly a generation after the death of the prophet Muhammad, making it one of the earliest Muslim houses of worship to be studied by archaeologists.
Continue reading...US firm Innova believed to be largest beneficiary of contracts after selling millions of Covid tests that are dividing opinion
Dominic Cummings’ plan to test millions of people a day for coronavirus led the government to spend over £800m on quick turnaround tests that were later found in a pilot to give the wrong results as much as 60% of the time, the Guardian can reveal.
Operation Moonshot, a mass testing scheme championed by the prime minister’s former chief adviser, prompted the government to buy huge numbers of so-called lateral flow tests from a company owned by a little-known US private equity house.
Continue reading...Experts also studying similarities with lasting effects of Chikungunya virus in hope of finding new treatments
Scientists are studying the similarities between long Covid and ongoing symptoms experienced by survivors of Ebola and Chikungunya virus in the hope of devising new treatments to improve their health.
Like patients with long Covid, survivors of these other, relatively new human viruses, often experience lingering symptoms which can make it difficult to work or function in everyday life.
Continue reading...Madrid health authorities announce two-week pause after supply issues; Cyprus welcomes fall in number of new infections
The British home secretary Priti Patel has outlined new rules for tighter border controls amid unprecendented pressure on the UK health service and over 100,000 Covid-19 deaths.
Patel said too many people are coming in and out of the country every day, but told MPs on Wednesday more details will be set out by the health department next week.
Firstly, the police have stepped up checks and are carrying out more physical checks at addresses to ensure that people are complying with the self-isolation rules.
Second, we will continue to refuse entry to non-UK residents from red-list countries which are already subject to the UK travel ban.
The European Union health commissioner has said that AstraZeneca has committed to providing the bloc with doses from four plants, including two in Britain, Reuters reports.
Stella Kyriakides told a news conference that the company had legal obligations to comply with the contract.
Continue reading...The UK needs to learn from the lessons of the past year and come up with a concrete plan to avert a disastrous third wave
Yesterday Britain passed a grim milestone. A further 1,631 deaths from Covid-19 were recorded, taking the official tally above 100,000, though data from the Office for National Statistics suggests the total number will now be nearer 120,000. In a briefing, Boris Johnson has said his government did everything it could to minimise the loss of life, but these deaths were far from inevitable. While the number of UK deaths has entered the hundreds of thousands, New Zealand has recorded only 25 deaths from Covid-19 so far. Taiwan has recorded seven, Australia 909, Finland 655, Norway 550 and Singapore 29. These countries have largely returned to normal daily life.
In the first year of the pandemic, the UK faced three big challenges. Our national government had no long-term strategy for suppressing the virus beyond a continual cycle of lockdowns. Even now we still don’t know what the government’s plans for the next six months are. In the early days of the pandemic, the UK treated Covid-19 like a bad flu. The government halted testing, and the initial plan seemed to be allow the virus to run unchecked through the population (the “herd immunity” approach). Finally, ministers have pitted the economy against public health, instead of realising that the health of the economy depends upon a healthy population.
Continue reading...European Medicines Agency approval could stipulate age range, suggests Emer Cooke
The Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine may be authorised only for younger people in Europe, because there is insufficient data on how well it works in the over-65s, the head of the regulatory body has suggested.
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is expected to authorise the AstraZeneca vaccine at the end of this week, a month after it was approved in the UK.
Continue reading...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.
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