Dr. Wayne Meredith

Dr. Paula Ferrada

Dr. Jo Buyske

Dr. Kenneth W. Sharp

Dr. Tan Arulampalam

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has revised its guidance so that pregnant and breastfeeding women can receive the covid-19 vaccine.

Writing in BMJ Opinion, Helen Hare, an acute medicine trainee, and Kate Womersley, an academic foundation trainee, said that the change had come after strong pressure from campaigners, clinicians, and some of the women affected.1

The MHRA had previously recommended that breastfeeding women should not be given ...

For most of November, 2020, England was in lockdown to force down the incidence of COVID-19 cases that had steadily increased in the late summer and autumn. Other countries in the UK (Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland) had also been reimposing and subsequently lifting restrictions, since each of the four nations is in charge of its own COVID-19 control plans.For a while, the strategy in England appeared to have worked, with many areas that previously had high case incidence seeing rates d...

Abstract The SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.7, now designated Variant of Concern 202012/01 (VOC) by Public Health England, originated in the UK in late Summer to early Autumn 2020. We examine epidemiological evidence for this VOC having a transmission advantage from several perspectives. First, whole genome sequence data collected from community-based diagnostic testing provides an indication of changing prevalence of different genetic variants through time. Phylodynamic modelling additionally...

The rapid spread of a new variant of coronavirus has been blamed for the introduction of strict tier four mixing rules for millions of people, harsher restrictions on mixing at Christmas in England, Scotland and Wales, and other countries placing the UK on a travel ban.


So how has it gone from being non-existent to the most common form of the virus in parts of England in a matter of months?

The government's advisers on new infections now say they have "high" ...

Abstract
IgG antibodies are crucial for protection against invading pathogens. A highly conserved N-linked glycan within the IgG-Fc tail, essential for IgG function, shows variable composition in humans. Afucosylated IgG variants are already used in anti-cancer therapeutic antibodies for their elevated activity through Fc receptors (FcγRIIIa). Here, we report that afucosylated IgG (~6% of total IgG in humans) are specifically formed against enveloped viruses but generally not against other...

There is evidence the new variant could be more transmissible, yet vaccines work very well against it
A new mutated form of the novel coronavirus that appears more transmissible than the original has raised alarm in the U.K. and around the world. It does not appear to cause more severe disease, and the newly available vaccines do seem to protect people against it. Yet on December 19—after an announcement that the variant, dubbed B.1.1.7, had suddenly accumulated 17mutations and was spreadi...