Anecdotal reports have been circulating for weeks that Covid-19 can cause people to lose their sense of smell. This week, the idea gained credibility with the British Association of Otorhinolaryngology suggesting that so-called anosmia could be a useful symptom for screening for the virus, based on reports from South Korea, China and Italy, and higher than usual numbers reporting the complaint in UK clinics. On Monday, World Health Organization officials also said they were also...

The WHO says that "according to current evidence," the virus is transmitted through "respiratory droplets and contact routes." By that, the agency means the virus is found in the kind of big droplets of mucus or saliva created through coughing and sneezing.




These droplets can only travel short distances through the air and either land on people or land on surfaces that people later touch. Stopping this kind of transmission is why public health officials urge people to w...

A spate of mysterious second-time infections is calling into question the accuracy of COVID-19 diagnostic tools even as China prepares to lift quarantine measures to allow residents to leave the epicenter of its outbreak next month. It's also raising concerns of a possible second wave of cases.

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The limited supply of ventilators is one of the chief concerns facing hospitals as they prepare for more COVID-19 cases. In Italy, where hospitals have been overwhelmed with patients in respiratory failure, doctors have had to make difficult life-or-death decisions about who gets a ventilator and who does not.

In the U.S., emergency plans developed by states for a shortage of ventilators include using positive airway pressure machines — like those used to treat sleep apnea — to hel...

March 26, 2020: The Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), American Association for Respiratory Care (AARC), American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA), Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF), American Association of Critical‐Care Nurses (AACN), and American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) issue this consensus statement on the concept of placing multiple patients on a single mechanical ventilator.

The above‐named organizations advise clinicians that sharing mec...

Pneumonia cases, hospitalizations, ICU visits, deaths and even basic symptoms were more frequent in males.

The data arriving from Spain, combined with similar findings from other countries with large outbreaks, such as Italy, China and France, are increasingly suggesting that the top risk group for the novel coronavirus is not simply older adults, but older men. A Washington Post analysis of U.S. deaths so far also found that nearly 60 percent of deaths, in case...

IBEC researchers work in collaboration with experts from Sweden, Canada and Austria who are working intensively these days to validate the effect of possible treatments that may slow or attenuate the ability of the virus to replicate in our body.

The fact that experts from all over the world have now reached to IBEC researchers is because groups such as the one led by Núria Montserrat are pioneers in the use of bioengineering techniques to create mini-organs that, like the respirat...

Scientists working to quell the COVID-19 pandemic think it will be possible to figure out which antibodies are most potent in quashing a coronavirus infection, and then make vast quantities of identical copies of these proteins synthetically.

This approach — using infusions of what are known as monoclonal antibodies – has already proved to be effective in fighting a variety of diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis and some cancers.

Several efforts a...

The idea of humanoid robots taking jobs previously done by humans may feel dystopian, but in the midst of the global COVID-19 pandemic, robots can free up human hospital medical staff and limit the possibility virus spread.

That’s precisely why Beijing-based robotics company CloudMinds sent 14 robots to Wuhan, China to help with patient care amid the coronavirus pandemic. 
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New modelling research, published in The Lancet Public Health journal, suggests that school and workplace closures in Wuhan, China have reduced the number of COVID-19 cases and substantially delayed the epidemic peak - giving the health system the time and opportunity to expand and respond.

Using mathematical modelling to simulate the impact of either extending or relaxing current school and workplace closures, researchers estimate that by lifting these control measures in Ma...

Spain’s death toll from the coronavirus has surpassed the official figure from China, becoming the second highest in the world.
Figures released by the health ministry on Wednesday showed that in just 24 hours, Spain’s national death toll rose by 738. Its number of cases soared by 7,973.These are the highest figures for Spain in a single day. The country now has 47,610 confirmed cases.Click here for reference

Some people hope that outbreaks of the new coronavirus will wane as temperatures rise, but pandemics often don’t behave in the same way as seasonal outbreaks. BBC Future looks at what we know.






Many infectious diseases wax and wane with the seasons. Flu typically arrives with the colder winter months, as does the norovirus vomiting bug. Others, such as typhoid, tend to peak during the summer. Measles cases drop during the summer in temperate climat...