Studies from serum samples could transform our understanding of the spread of COVID-19, but what antibodies alone say about immunity is not yet clear.
It’s months into the coronavirus pandemic and public health officials still don’t know how many people have actually contracted the culprit, SARS-CoV-2. In many countries testing capacity has lagged behind the spread of the virus. Large numbers of people have developed COVID-19 symptoms but have not been tested, and the vast majority of peop...

Serologic testing helped scientists establish connections between two people with COVID-19 from Wuhan, China, to three clusters in Singapore, according to a study yesterday in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.




Also, a study today in The Journal of Infectious Diseases found that four of eight COVID-19 cases in three family clusters in China were asymptomatic or had only mild symptoms.




In a related study out of China in the same journal, researchers descr...

Abstract BackgroundEffective therapeutics to treat COVID-19 are urgently needed. Remdesivir is a nucleotide prodrug with in vitro and in vivo efficacy against coronaviruses. Here, we tested the efficacy of remdesivir treatment in a rhesus macaque model of SARS-CoV-2 infection.
MethodsTo evaluate the effect of remdesivir treatment on SARS-CoV-2 disease outcome, we used the recently established rhesus macaque model of SARS-CoV-2 infection that results in transient lower respiratory tract...

Support grows for a controversial ‘human challenge’ vaccine study — but no trial is yet planned.Momentum is building to speed the development of coronavirus vaccines by intentionally infecting healthy, young volunteers with the virus. A grass-roots effort has attracted nearly 1,500 potential volunteers for the controversial approach, known as a human-challenge trial.
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Despite the large and rapidly rising number of cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) and resulting deaths,1 there are limited data about the clinical characteristics of pregnant women with the disease.2,3 We extracted information regarding epidemiologic, clinical, laboratory, and radiologic characteristics, treatment, and outcomes of pregnant women with Covid-19 through the epidemic reporting system of the National Health Commission of China, which stores the medical records o...

Researchers at MIT; the Ragon Institute of MGH, MIT, and Harvard; and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; along with colleagues from around the world have identified specific types of cells that appear to be targets of the coronavirus that is causing the Covid-19 pandemic.

Using existing data on the RNA found in different types of cells, the researchers were able to search for cells that express the two proteins that help the SARS-CoV-2 virus enter human cells. They found subsets o...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has launched a real-time world map that shows the number of clinical studies concerning the novel coronavirus that have been carried out in each region. In this map, studies with no locations are not included in the counts or on the map, and studies with multiple locations are included in each region containing locations.

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NIBIB's current response to COVID-19 takes the form of multiple Notices of Special Interest. This includes: administrative supplements and emergency competitive revisions funding for current grantees; small business innovation research/small business technology transfer (SBIR/STTR) opportunities; and investigator-initiated research opportunities to address this crisis. Click here for reference

Free mContain app for Greater Memphis area also provides crowding alerts for physical distancing. Researchers at the University of Memphis-based Center of Excellence for Mobile Sensor Data-to-Knowledge (MD2K) have introduced a new mobile app that may support physical distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic. MD2K is supported by NIH with a grant administered by the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB). 
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Dr. Charles Knowles, a Surgery Professor at Queen Mary University, London, published this song on Youtube. It is a song penned to support NHS and other key workers fighting the COVID pandemic. A recording phone voice memo of the doctor and his guitar at home with pictures of those who have lost their lives by helping others is more than enough to thrill each one of us. All the support and courage to all the heroes fighting, and soon "all the things that made us smile will make us smile again"...

A drug called auranofin, approved for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, effectively inhibits severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) in laboratory conditions, as described in a new study by Georgia State University researchers.

Auranofin is a chemical compound that contains gold particles. Therefore it is also known as a gold-salt compound. Such gold-containing drugs have known anti-inflammatory properties, and this specific triethyl phosphine can reduce cyt...

Abstract

AIM: Current pricing of commercial mechanical ventilators in low/middleincome countries (LMICs) markedly restricts their availability, and consequently a considerable number of patients with acute/chronic respiratory failure cannot be adequately treated. Our aim was to design and test an affordable and easy-to-build noninvasive bilevel pressure ventilator to allow reducing the serious shortage of ventilators in LMICs. METHODS: The ventilator was built using off-the-shelf ma...