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Category: Science/mathematics

Coronavirus testing needs to triple before the U.S. can reopen, experts say

Coronavirus testing needs to triple before the U.S. can reopen, experts say

The New York Times reports: As some governors consider easing social distancing restrictions, new estimates by researchers at Harvard University suggest that the United States cannot safely reopen unless it conducts more than three times the number of coronavirus tests it is currently administering over the next month. An average of 146,000 people per day have been tested for the coronavirus nationally so far this month, according to the COVID Tracking Project, which on Friday reported 3.6 million total tests…

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Early data on antiviral drug suggests Covid-19 patients are responding to treatment

Early data on antiviral drug suggests Covid-19 patients are responding to treatment

STAT reports: A Chicago hospital treating severe Covid-19 patients with Gilead Sciences’ antiviral medicine remdesivir in a closely watched clinical trial is seeing rapid recoveries in fever and respiratory symptoms, with nearly all patients discharged in less than a week, STAT has learned. Remdesivir was one of the first medicines identified as having the potential to impact SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19, in lab tests. The entire world has been waiting for results from Gilead’s clinical trials, and…

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Still too early to determine which potential Covid-19 treatments are effective

Still too early to determine which potential Covid-19 treatments are effective

The Washington Post reports: The journey of EIDD-2801, from laboratory to the mouth of a human, unfolded with head-snapping speed. On March 23, a division of Emory University in Atlanta licensed the experimental drug to a Miami company owned by a wealthy hedge-fund manager and his wife. Just three weeks later, a pill was given to a person for the first time in a test of its safety, in Britain. It marked the beginning of an accelerated testing regimen that…

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Influential Covid-19 model uses flawed methods and shouldn’t guide U.S. policies, critics say

Influential Covid-19 model uses flawed methods and shouldn’t guide U.S. policies, critics say

STAT reports: A widely followed model for projecting Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. is producing results that have been bouncing up and down like an unpredictable fever, and now epidemiologists are criticizing it as flawed and misleading for both the public and policy makers. In particular, they warn against relying on it as the basis for government decision-making, including on “re-opening America.” “It’s not a model that most of us in the infectious disease epidemiology field think is well suited”…

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Infectious disease reporter, Jon Cohen, talks about the research to develop a COVID-19 vaccine

Infectious disease reporter, Jon Cohen, talks about the research to develop a COVID-19 vaccine

  Jon Cohen is an award-winning journalist who has been reporting on infectious diseases for 40 years. He tells Hari Sreenivasan about the remarkable research being done now–even as many still seem determined to ignore the facts–and about his recent, revealing conversation with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Experts know the new coronavirus isn’t a bioweapon. But some say it could have leaked from a lab

Experts know the new coronavirus isn’t a bioweapon. But some say it could have leaked from a lab

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reports: Much remains uncertain about the new coronavirus. What treatments will prove effective against COVID-19? When will a vaccine for the disease be ready? What level of social distancing will be required to tame the outbreak, and how long will it need to last? Will outbreaks come in waves? Amid all these vital forward-looking questions remains a more retrospective but still important one: Where did SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, come from in the…

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Role models: Researchers show world leaders how to behave in a crisis

Role models: Researchers show world leaders how to behave in a crisis

In an editorial, Nature journal says: Although the coronavirus pandemic has become a threat to every country on Earth, world leaders are all at sea — showing few signs that they wish to cooperate genuinely to combat it. By contrast, tens of thousands of researchers from different disciplines and countries have joined research and public-health efforts to fight COVID-19. They are working across continents, lending their time, ideas, expertise, equipment and money to the emergency public-health effort. They are providing…

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Trump administration was warned in 2018 about safety risks at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses

Trump administration was warned in 2018 about safety risks at Wuhan lab studying bat coronaviruses

Josh Rogin writes: Two years before the novel coronavirus pandemic upended the world, U.S. Embassy officials visited a Chinese research facility in the city of Wuhan several times and sent two official warnings back to Washington about inadequate safety at the lab, which was conducting risky studies on coronaviruses from bats. The cables have fueled discussions inside the U.S. government about whether this or another Wuhan lab was the source of the virus — even though conclusive proof has yet…

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Coronavirus could attack immune system like HIV by targeting protective T cells, scientists warn

Coronavirus could attack immune system like HIV by targeting protective T cells, scientists warn

South China Morning Post reports: The coronavirus that causes Covid-19 could kill the powerful immune cells that are supposed to kill the virus instead, scientists have warned. The surprise discovery, made by a team of researchers from Shanghai and New York, coincided with frontline doctors’ observation that Covid-19 could attack the human immune system and cause damages similar to that found in HIV patients. Lu Lu, from Fudan University in Shanghai, and Jang Shibo, from the New York Blood Centre,…

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The largest Arctic ozone hole ever measured is hovering over the North Pole

The largest Arctic ozone hole ever measured is hovering over the North Pole

Science News reports: A curious confluence of atmospheric events has produced the largest ozone hole ever measured over the Arctic. A powerful polar vortex has trapped especially frigid air in the atmosphere above the North Pole, allowing high-altitude clouds to form in the stratosphere, where the ozone layer also sits. Within those clouds, chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons already high in the atmosphere — gases used as refrigerants — react with ultraviolet rays from the sun to release chlorine and bromine atoms,…

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The minute details of contact tracing that helped Germany build virus defences

The minute details of contact tracing that helped Germany build virus defences

Reuters reports: One January lunchtime in a car parts company, a worker turned to a colleague and asked to borrow the salt. As well as the saltshaker, in that instant, they shared the new coronavirus, scientists have since concluded. That their exchange was documented at all is the result of intense scrutiny, part of a rare success story in the global fight against the virus. The co-workers were early links in what was to be the first documented chain of…

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How social gatherings were rocket fuel for coronavirus

How social gatherings were rocket fuel for coronavirus

The Guardian reports: On 15 February, a merry crowd wearing clown wigs and jester hats gathered in the town hall of Gangelt, a small western German municipality nestled by the Dutch border, to ring in the peak of the carnival season. Beer and wine flowed aplenty as approximately 350 adults in fancy dress locked arms on long wooden benches and swayed to the rhythm of music provided by a live band. During an interval in the programme, guests got up…

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The best hopes for a coronavirus drug

The best hopes for a coronavirus drug

The Atlantic reports: Twenty-nine. That’s the number of proteins the new coronavirus has, at most, in its arsenal to attack human cells. That’s 29 proteins to go up against upwards of tens of thousands of proteins comprising the vastly more complex and sophisticated human body. Twenty-nine proteins that have taken over enough cells in enough bodies to kill more than 80,000 people and grind the world to a halt. If there is a way—a vaccine, therapy, or drug—to stop the…

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The road to coronavirus hell was paved by evangelicals

The road to coronavirus hell was paved by evangelicals

Katherine Stewart writes: Donald Trump rose to power with the determined assistance of a movement that denies science, bashes government and prioritized loyalty over professional expertise. In the current crisis, we are all reaping what that movement has sown. At least since the 19th century, when the proslavery theologian Robert Lewis Dabney attacked the physical sciences as “theories of unbelief,” hostility to science has characterized the more extreme forms of religious nationalism in the United States. Today, the hard core…

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Can a century-old TB vaccine steel the immune system against the new coronavirus?

Can a century-old TB vaccine steel the immune system against the new coronavirus?

Science reports: Researchers in four countries will soon start a clinical trial of an unorthodox approach to the new coronavirus. They will test whether a century-old vaccine against tuberculosis (TB), a bacterial disease, can rev up the human immune system in a broad way, allowing it to better fight the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 and, perhaps, prevent infection with it altogether. The studies will be done in physicians and nurses, who are at higher risk of becoming infected…

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Why the coronavirus has been so successful

Why the coronavirus has been so successful

Ed Yong writes: One of the few mercies during this crisis is that, by their nature, individual coronaviruses are easily destroyed. Each virus particle consists of a small set of genes, enclosed by a sphere of fatty lipid molecules, and because lipid shells are easily torn apart by soap, 20 seconds of thorough hand-washing can take one down. Lipid shells are also vulnerable to the elements; a recent study shows that the new coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, survives for no more than…

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