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...

Via Science, Jope de Vrieze write: Can a century-old TB vaccine steel the immune system against the new coronavirus?
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 ...

Via Fox News, Talia Kaplan write: Johnson & Johnson CEO on potential coronavirus vaccine: 'I think we'll have important data by the end of the year'

In an exclusive interview on “Sunday Morning Futures,” Alex Gorsky, the CEO of Johnson & Johnson, discussed his company’s efforts to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, saying, “I think we’ll have important data by the end of the year.”

Gorsky discussed the goals as many hospitals have been overwhelmed am...

ObjectiveMeteorological parameters are the important factors influencing the infectious diseases like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). This study aims to explore the association between coronavirus disease (COVID-19) death and weather parameters. 
Methods In this study, we collected the daily death number of COVID-19, meteorological and air pollutant data from 20 January, 2020 to 29 February, 2020 in Wuhan, China. Then, the generalized additive model was applied to e...

Surgical PPE placement video | AEC's contribution

The Spanish surgical society AEC has contributed with the initiative by facilitating us real videos of PPE use for performing a surgery in a COVID-19 patient. .video_controls { height: 20%; position: relative; top: -100%; float: right; z-index: 1000; width: 100%; }

Surgical PPE retirement | AEC's contribution The Spanish surgical society AEC has contributed with the initiative by facilitating us real videos of PPE use for performing a surgery in a COVID-19 patient.
.video_controls { height: 20%; position: relative; top: -100%; float: right; z-index: 1000; width: 100%; }

AEC's contribution to the initiative

On March 13, 2020, the National Science and Technology Advisors from a dozen countries, including the United States, called on publishers to voluntarily agree to make their COVID-19 and coronavirus-related publications, and the available data supporting them, immediately accessible in PubMed Central (PMC) and other appropriate public repositories to support the ongoing public health emergency response efforts.




To date, the following publishers have responded to the call...

Here, Nextstrain analyzed 723 publicly shared COVID-19 genomes. By comparing these viral genomes to each other, they can characterize how COVID-19 is moving around the world.

In this report, it is highlight that the virus has been introduced and is circulating in many parts of the globe. Knowing if and to what degree COVID-19 circulates locally and how mitigation measures can slow this spread requires a good knowledge of the local outbreak dynamics. This, in turn, requires widespre...

Italy recorded a lower day-to-day increase of coronavirus cases for the second day in a row Monday. Italy’s Civil Protection agency documented 4,789 new cases Monday, 700 less than the 5,560 new cases reported Sunday. Also 997 less new cases were reported on Sunday, representing a big drop after their highest levels ever on Friday 20th and Saturday 21st. 

Although it is still early to confirm any trend and more data must be collected to say it is a favorable situation, it ...

The coronavirus continues to dominate our daily lives. Around the world, pharmaceutical and biotech companies are working intensively on active substances that treat people with COVID-19. One of those substances is Resochin by Bayer.Click here for reference

From vaccine development to mathematical models, these are the Imperial women battling COVID-19.

From modelling the spread and impact of the pandemic to developing a prototype vaccine, the global COVID-19 research effort draws on the expertise of researchers from a range of different disciplines.

Originally planned to celebrate International Women’s Day earlier this month, here we meet some of the Imperial women tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.






Prof...

The largest study on COVID-19 to date showed that the prevalence of elevated aminotransferases and bilirubin in people faring worst was at least double that of others. Although clinically significant liver dysfunction was not quantified, this and other studies have led some to suggest that this finding might present clinical challenges. Close inspection of the available data supports a higher prevalence of abnormal aminotransferase levels in severe COVID-19 disease, but these studi...