Attention to the Unseen

CNBC reports: Coronavirus patients without symptoms aren’t driving the spread of the virus, World Health Organization officials said Monday, casting doubt on concerns by some researchers that the disease could be difficult to contain due to asymptomatic infections. Some people, particularly young and otherwise healthy individuals, who are infected by the coronavirus never develop symptoms or only develop mild symptoms. Others might not develop symptoms until days after they were actually infected. Preliminary evidence from the earliest outbreaks indicated that…

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The Washington Post reports: Shutdown orders prevented about 60 million novel coronavirus infections in the United States and 285 million in China, according to a research study published Monday that examined how stay-at-home orders and other restrictions limited the spread of the contagion. A separate study from epidemiologists at Imperial College London estimated the shutdowns saved about 3.1 million lives in 11 European countries, including 500,000 in the United Kingdom, and dropped infection rates by an average of 82 percent,…

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The Canadian Press reports: Masks and social distancing can help control the coronavirus but hand washing and other measures are still needed, a new study from Hamilton’s McMaster University says. Researchers concluded single-layer cloth masks are less effective than surgical masks, while tight-fitting N95 masks provide the best protection. A distance of 1 metre (more than 3 feet) between people lowers the danger of catching the virus, while 2 metres (about 6 1/2 feet) is even better. Eye protection such…

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Helen Branswell writes: New research has poured cold water on the theory that the Covid-19 outbreak in Washington state — the country’s first — was triggered by the very first confirmed case of the infection in the country. Instead, it suggests the person who ignited the first chain of sustained transmission in the United States probably returned to the country in mid-February, a month later. The work adds to evidence that the United States missed opportunities to stop the SARS-CoV-2…

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Science reports: On 9 March, a patient who had recently traveled to Europe and had symptoms of COVID-19 visited the emergency department of St Augustine’s, a private hospital in Durban, South Africa. Eight weeks later, 39 patients and 80 staff linked to the hospital had been infected, and 15 patients had died—fully half the death toll in KwaZulu-Natal province at that time. Now, scientists at the University of KwaZulu-Natal have published a detailed reconstruction of how the virus spread from…

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Ian Sample reports: Earlier this week, England’s deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam said the words nobody wanted to hear: “We can’t be sure we will get a vaccine.” But he was right to be circumspect. Vaccines are simple in principle but complex in practice. The ideal vaccine protects against infection, prevents its spread, and does so safely. But none of this is easily achieved, as vaccine timelines show. More than 30 years after scientists isolated HIV, the virus that…

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Sharon Begley writes: A deep dive into how the new coronavirus infects cells has found that it orchestrates a hostile takeover of their genes unlike any other known viruses do, producing what one leading scientist calls “unique” and “aberrant” changes. Recent studies show that in seizing control of genes in the human cells it invades, the virus changes how segments of DNA are read, doing so in a way that might explain why the elderly are more likely to die…

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