How does COVID-19 kill? Uncertainty over whether it is the virus itself — or the response by a person’s immune system — that ultimately overwhelms a patient’s organs, is making it difficult for doctors to determine the best way to treat patients who are critically ill with the coronavirus.
Clinical data suggest that the immune system plays a part in the decline and death of people infected with the new coronavirus, and this has spurred a push for treatments such as steroids that rein in th...

Under WHO’s coordination, a group of experts with diverse backgrounds is working towards the development of vaccines against COVID-19.

The group makes a call to everyone to follow recommendations to prevent the transmission of the COVID-19 virus and protect the health of individuals. The group also thanks everyone for putting their trust in the scientific community.



Declaration
We are scientists, physicians, funders and manufacturers who have come together as part...

Via The Boston Globe, Jeff Howe write: The only way this ends: herd immunityThere is still a lot we don’t know about COVID-19, including exactly how many people are or have been infected, epidemiologists believe that this virus won’t begin to disappear until a far higher percentage of the population — at least 60 percent — develops immunity. If that doesn’t happen with a vaccine, it has to happen through exposure.
For weeks, the most pressing policy challenge has been relieving the life-an...

SARS-CoV-2 does not discriminate, but without careful consideration, the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic might. Demographic data from small studies are already informing political decisions and clinical research strategies. Women and men are affected by COVID-19, but biology and gender norms are shaping the disease burden. The success of the global response—the ability of both women and men to survive and recover from the pandemic's effects—will depend on the quality of evidence info...

The increased risk for COVID-19 pneumonia in people who smoke cigarettes or have chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may be at least partly explained by increased levels of an enzyme that enables the virus to more easily enter their lungs, according to a research letter published today in the European Respiratory Journal.



In the same journal, a study has identified advanced age, underlying cardiovascular or cerebrovascular illnesses, low levels of CD3+CD8+ T cells ...

The worst outbreaks of COVID-19 so far have been in colder parts of the Northern Hemisphere during winter or early spring. Will warmer weather slow the transmission?

Could the Southern Hemisphere see outbreaks intensify as that part of the globe moves into winter?

And is it possible that transmission might be naturally interrupted as it is each year for the seasonal flu?

These are some of the key questions about COVID-19 that scientists are trying to answer.

Not all patients with severe COVID-19 infection may benefit from a ventilator.

Some physicians caring for COVID-19 patients question whether the threshold for placing someone on a ventilator should be raised, given that the breathing machines are in critically short supply nationwide, Stat News reported.







"I think we may indeed be able to support a subset of these patients" with less invasive breathing support, Dr. Sohan Japa, an internal medicine physicia...

As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps into South Africa, the decades the country has spent fighting the world’s worst combined epidemic of tuberculosis (TB) and HIV could give it an advantage. But those infections could also worsen the pandemic’s impact.

By 6 April, South Africa had 1686 confirmed COVID-19 infections, the highest number on the continent—and that is almost certainly an undercount. At the same time, one in every five people aged 15 to 49 is HIV positive and two to three pe...

Palliative care services are under-resourced at the best of times. The 2017 Lancet Commission on Palliative Care and Pain Relief described the widespread lack of access to inexpensive and effective interventions as a travesty of justice. And these are not the best of times. As health systems become strained under COVID-19, providing safe and effective palliative care, including end-of-life care, becomes especially vital and especially difficult.

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Speech-related spread could help explain why people can spread the virus before they develop a cough.
People infected with COVID-19 may spread the disease when they speak and breathe, not only when they let out a hearty cough. 


Although these modes of transmission could help to explain how asymptomatic and mildly infected people fuel the virus' spread, researchers don't yet know whether tiny particles expelled in breath infect more people than large droplets spewed through cough...

In The Lancet, Kathy Leung and colleagues report their assessment of the transmissibility and severity of COVID-19 during the first wave in four cities and ten provinces in China outside Hubei. The study estimated the instantaneous reproduction number in the selected locations decreased substantially after non-pharmaceutical control measures were implemented on Jan 23, 2020, and has since remained lower than 1. The transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in these locations was mainly driven by imported ca...

In the worst cases of Covid-19, the virus not only attacks and destroys tissue in the lungs but also triggers an overreaction of the immune system, creating dangerous levels of inflammation. Many of these patients are left unable to breathe on their own, and some die in hospital intensive care units, or at home.

For others with milder Covid cases, a hospital stay might end without the need for artificial ventilation, and they go home after being treated for pneumonia. Many more are...