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  • The immune system of children: the key to understanding SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility?

    7 May, 2020
    Adults can be infected with different outcomes, from asymptomatic, mild, moderate to severe disease, and death. Children can also be infected by SARS-CoV-2, but most paediatric cases with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection are mild; severe COVID-19 disease in children is rare.Children are more vulnerable to other infections; thus, the important question arises—why are children less susceptible to COVID-19 disease compared with adults? So far, there is no evidence of a lower degree of e...
  • China is promoting coronavirus treatments based on unproven traditional medicines

    7 May, 2020
    Scientists say rigorous trial data are needed to show that remedies are safe and effective
    The Chinese government is heavily promoting traditional medicines as treatments for COVID-19. The remedies, a major part of China’s health-care system, are even being sent to countries including Iran and Italy as international aid. But scientists outside China say it is dangerous to support therapies that have yet to be proved safe and effective.





    There are currently no proven t...
  • Airway management for COVID-19: a move towards universal videolaryngoscope?

    6 May, 2020
    Considering that any patient who is admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) might be infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), we present a video of tracheal intubation performed in an operating room, using two different devices for laryngoscopy (video). As recommended by airway management societies worldwide, we used a rapid sequence induction, and face mask ventilation was avoided. In part 1 of the video, the use of standard Macintosh laryn...
  • The race is on for antibodies that stop the new coronavirus

    6 May, 2020

    Dr. X could not help her sick family members, but her eagerness to do something grew. She knew that in China, plasma from recovered people, which contains antibodies to the virus, was showing promise as a treatment. Her doctor told her about a project, a collaboration between Vanderbilt University and AstraZeneca, to develop something safer and more powerful. It aims to go beyond the mishmash of antibodies in convalescent plasma and pull out the equivalent of a guided missile: a...
  • Profile of a killer: the complex biology powering the coronavirus pandemic

    6 May, 2020
    Now, as the death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic surges, researchers are scrambling to uncover as much as possible about the biology of the latest coronavirus, named SARS-CoV-2. A profile of the killer is already emerging. Scientists are learning that the virus has evolved an array of adaptations that make it much more lethal than the other coronaviruses humanity has met so far. Unlike close relatives, SARS-CoV-2 can readily attack human cells at multiple points, with the lungs and the throa...
  • Another wave of coronavirus will likely hit the US in the fall. Here's why and what we can do to stop it

    5 May, 2020

    The coronavirus pandemic may have slowed down in many parts of the country because of social distancing efforts but don't plan your parties, vacations or trips to the office just yet. Experts say the virus won't be a thing of the past any time soon.

    A second round of Covid-19 cases is "inevitable" come fall, the nation's top infectious disease doctor said, as people increasingly try to resume regular life and more states ease or lift their stay-at-home orders.

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  • French hospital discovers Covid-19 case from December

    5 May, 2020
    Man found to have had virus a month before government confirmed first cases.

    A French hospital that retested old samples from pneumonia patients has discovered that it treated a man with the coronavirus as early as 27 December, nearly a month before the French government confirmed its first cases.

    Dr Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at the Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals in the northern suburbs of Paris, told BFM TV that scientists had retested samples from 24 patients...
  • When will the coronavirus pandemic end? AI model says

    4 May, 2020

    Data scientists have attempted to answer the question on everyone’s mind: When will the coronavirus pandemic end?

    Their predictions use a mathematical model known as SIR (susceptible, infected, recovered), which calculates the spread and recovery of diseases.



    Researchers from Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) fed the model data on confirmed infections, tests conducted, and deaths recorded, to estimate the life cycle of COVID-19.

    Gl...
  • Why Does the Virus Wallop Some Places and Spare Others?

    4 May, 2020
    Experts are trying to figure out why the coronavirus is so capricious. The answers could determine how to best protect ourselves and how long we have to.The coronavirus has touched almost every country on earth, but its impact has seemed capricious. Global metropolises like New York, Paris and London have been devastated, while teeming cities like Bangkok, Baghdad, New Delhi and Lagos have, so far, largely been spared.
    The question of why the virus has overwhelmed some places and left othe...
  • Obesity could shift severe COVID-19 disease to younger ages

    4 May, 2020
    News reports and communications from the US Federal Government had emphasised that COVID-19 was a particular problem for older people, and a resistance to social distancing and sheltering in place by younger people might have been informed by this idea. However, as the pandemic hit the Johns Hopkins Hospital in late March, 2020, younger patients began to be admitted to our ICU, many of whom were also obese. An informal survey of colleagues directing ICUs at other hospitals around...
  • Scores of coronavirus vaccines are in competition — how will scientists choose the best?

    4 May, 2020
    Developers and funders are laying the groundwork for efficacy trials, but only a handful of vaccines are likely to make the cut.Less than five months after the world first learnt about the new coronavirus causing fatal pneumonia in Wuhan, China, there are more than 90 vaccines for the virus at various stages of development, with more announced each week. At least six are already being tested for safety in people. Now, developers, funders and other stakeholders are laying the groundw...
  • COVID-19 and the long road to herd immunity

    1 May, 2020


    Achieving herd protection can stop the spread of an infectious disease within a population, but as experts from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health explain, the U.S. is nowhere near that point with SARS-CoV-2, and getting there could prove difficult
    When the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 first began to spread, virtually nobody was immune. Meeting no resistance, the virus moved quickly through communities, and ultimately around the world. In the absence of an effe...