During the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in India, which began in March, 2021, demand on the health-care system has far exceeded capacity. Despite crippling shortages, patients are prescribed a battery of ineffective therapeutic interventions. Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, and herbal cocktails continue to receive state patronage. On May 8, 2021, 2-deoxyD-glucose was given emergency authorisation, stating that it will “save precious lives” without any published evidence that i...

AbstractBackground
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic overwhelmed healthcare systems, highlighting the need to better understand predictors of mortality and the impact of medical interventions.
Methods
This retrospective cohort study examined data from every patient who tested positive for COVID-19 and was admitted to White Plains Hospital between March 9, 2020, and June 3, 2020. We used binomial logistic regression to analyze data for all patients, and propensity score...

COVID-19 poses particular threats in low-resource settings, which typically have underfunded health-care systems and insufficient influence on the global health research agenda. Leadership and coordination have been shown in COVID-19 research in such settings, particularly across Africa, building on earlier experience from research on diseases such as Ebola virus disease and HIV. However, global coordination to achieve a coherent research response and ensure sufficient context-specific...

Abstract
Common lung diseases are first diagnosed using chest X-rays. Here, we show that a fully automated deep-learning pipeline for the standardization of chest X-ray images, for the visualization of lesions and for disease diagnosis can identify viral pneumonia caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and assess its severity, and can also discriminate between viral pneumonia caused by COVID-19 and other types of pneumonia. The deep-learning system was developed using a heterogeneou...

Abstract
Emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants have raised concerns about resistance to neutralizing antibodies elicited by previous infection or vaccination. We examined whether sera from recovered and naïve donors collected prior to, and following immunizations with existing mRNA vaccines, could neutralize the Wuhan-Hu-1 and B.1.351 variants. Pre-vaccination sera from recovered donors neutralized Wuhan-Hu-1 and sporadically neutralized B.1.351, but a single immunization boosted neutralizing titer...

The high infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 makes it essential to develop a rapid and accurate diagnostic test so that carriers can be isolated at an early stage. Viral RNA in nasopharyngeal samples by RT-PCR is currently considered the reference method although it is not recognized as a strong gold standard due to certain drawbacks. Here we develop a methodology combining the analysis of from human nasopharyngeal (NP) samples by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spec...

SummaryBackgroundEmergence of variants with specific mutations in key epitopes in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 raises concerns pertinent to mass vaccination campaigns and use of monoclonal antibodies. We aimed to describe the emergence of the B.1.1.7 variant of concern (VOC), including virological characteristics and clinical severity in contemporaneous patients with and without the variant.MethodsIn this cohort study, samples positive for SARS-CoV-2 on PCR that were collected from Nov 9, ...

SummaryBackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has led to a substantial reduction in gastrointestinal endoscopies, creating a backlog of procedures. We aimed to quantify this backlog nationally for England and assess how various interventions might mitigate the backlog.MethodsWe did a national analysis of data for colonoscopies, flexible sigmoidoscopies, and gastroscopies from National Health Service (NHS) trusts in NHS England's Monthly Diagnostic Waiting Times and Activity dataset. Trusts were excl...

SummaryBackgroundThe ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 (AZD1222) vaccine has been approved for emergency use by the UK regulatory authority, Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, with a regimen of two standard doses given with an interval of 4–12 weeks. The planned roll-out in the UK will involve vaccinating people in high-risk categories with their first dose immediately, and delivering the second dose 12 weeks later. Here, we provide both a further prespecified pooled analysis of trials of ChA...

Objectives
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has rapidly swept across the world. This study aimed to explore the relationship between the chest CT findings and clinical characteristics of COVID-19 patients.
Methods
Patients with COVID-19 confirmed by next-generation sequencing or RT-PCR who had undergone more than 4 serial chest CT procedures were retrospectively enrolled.
Results
This study included 361 patients – 192 men and 169 women. On initial chest CT, more lesions were...

Abstract
The aim of the present study was to investigate the pharmacological mechanism of matrine in treatment of COVID-19 combined with liver injury. Potential targets related to matrine, COVID-19 and liver injury were identified from several databases. We constructed PPI network and screened the core targets according to the degree value. Then, GO and KEGG enrichment were carried out. Molecular docking technology was used to verify the affinity between matrine and the crystal structure o...

Abstract
Bats are the likely zoonotic origin of several coronaviruses (CoVs) that infect humans, including SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2, both of which have caused large-scale epidemics. The number of CoVs present in an area is strongly correlated with local bat species richness, which in turn is affected by climatic conditions that drive the geographical distributions of species. Here we show that the southern Chinese Yunnan province and neighbouring regions in Myanmar and Laos form a global ...