Across the globe, debate is raging about the best way to tackle the spread of coronavirus, with countries adopting radically different approaches in the fight against the disease.

But one Israeli professor claims that all efforts will lead to the same result, because the disease is self-limiting, and largely vanishes after 70 days, with or without any interventions.
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When immunization services are disrupted, even for brief periods during emergencies, the risk of vaccine-preventable disease outbreaks, such as measles and polio, increase. Last year’s deadly measles outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which took more than 6000 lives in a country already facing its largest Ebola outbreak, highlights the importance of maintaining essential health services, such as immunization in times of emergency. Further disease outbreaks will also overwhelm h...

Is it possible to be infected with the coronavirus and show no symptoms? Or go through a period of several days before symptoms kick in?

And even in this stage with no cough, no fever, no sign of illness, could you be transmitting the virus to others?

"There is evidence that SARS-CoV-2 has this ability to spread silently," says Shweta Bansal, an infectious disease modeler at Georgetown University.

Indeed, cases of COVID-19 among nursing home residents, choir groups an...

6 strategies for teens facing a new (temporary) normal.



Being a teenager is difficult no matter what, and the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is making it even harder. With school closures and cancelled events, many teens are missing out on some of the biggest moments of their young lives — as well as everyday moments like chatting with friends and participating in class.

For teenagers facing life changes due to the outbreak who are feeling anxious, isolated and disap...

One important characteristic of viruses and other pathogens is how contagious they are. This is measured in a few ways. One key measure is the R0, or basic reproduction number, which indicates how many new cases one infected person generates. For an R0 of three we would expect each new case of a disease to produce three other infections. This is not just a measure of the inherent infectiousness of a disease. It also depends on other factors, including the rate of contact within a population a...

Studies of past outbreaks reveal a toll on health care workers. During the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic of 2003, 89% of 271 health care workers in Hong Kong reported negative psychological effects, including exhaustion and fear of social contact. And for up to 2 years after the epidemic dwindled, health care workers in Toronto, another city hit hard by SARS, had significantly higher than normal levels of burnout, psychological distress, and post-traumatic stress.
Those...

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...

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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Certain genetic differences might separate people who fall severely ill with COVID-19 from those who contract the infection but hardly develop a cough, a new preliminary study suggests. 

The research is still in its early days, though, experts say.



The immune system can react to viruses thanks, in part, to specific genes that help cells spot unfamiliar bugs when they enter the body. The genes, known as human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes, contain instructions to buil...

Chinese doctors in Wuhan, where the virus first emerged in December, say a growing number of cases in which people recover from the virus, but continue to test positive without showing symptoms, is one of their biggest challenges as the country moves into a new phase of its containment battle. 

Those patients all tested negative for the virus at some point after recovering, but then tested positive again, some up to 70 days later, the doctors said. Many have done so over 50-60 days...

A panel of U.S. physicians, statisticians, and other experts has developed treatment guidelines for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). These guidelines, intended for healthcare providers, are based on published and preliminary data and the clinical expertise of the panelists, many of whom are frontline clinicians caring for patients during the rapidly evolving pandemic. The guidelines are posted online (covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov) and will be updated often as new data are publis...