Scientists involved in one of the world's leading studies into finding a vaccine for the coronavirus say there is currently only a 50% chance of success because the number of people in Britain with the virus is falling too quickly.

The Oxford University mission to find a vaccine for the COVID-19 virus is in "a race against the virus disappearing, and against time," Adam Hill, director at Oxford University's Jenner Institute, said this weekend.

Hill told The Telegraph newspap...

Official findings add to concerns about Sweden’s laissez-faire strategy towards the pandemic
Just 7.3% of Stockholm’s inhabitants had developed Covid-19 antibodies by the end of April, according to a study, raising concerns that the country’s light-touch approach to the coronavirus may not be helping it build up broad immunity.

The research by Sweden’s public health agency comes as Finland warned it would be risky to welcome Swedish tourists after figures suggested the country’s dea...

A million new infections were confirmed in less than two weeks.
More than five million people worldwide have contracted the coronavirus, according to data compiled by The New York Times.

That figure is just one measure of the pandemic’s global toll. Its persistent rise — the number passed four million less than two weeks ago — reflects not just pathogen’s pernicious spread but also increases in testing.

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Initial evidences suggest that the 44% of people with mild or asymptomatic infection have very low antibody levels with little neutralizing capacity | According to these results, a positive antibody test may not guarantee protection against SARS-CoV-2. Click here for reference

As coronavirus vaccines hurtle through development, scientists are getting their first look at data that hint at how well different vaccines are likely to work. The picture, so far, is murky.



On 18 May, US biotech firm Moderna revealed the first data from a human trial: its COVID-19 vaccine triggered an immune response in people, and protected mice from lung infections with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. The results — which the company, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, annou...

Computational models, cell studies and animal experiments are being used to pinpoint the viral host that kicked off the pandemic.
As a growing number of countries push for an independent investigation into the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, many scientists around the world are already trying to uncover when, where and how the new coronavirus got into people.

Finding the source is important for preventing further reinfection, but scientists’ investigations — which include modelling...

Authorities have struggled to enforce social distancing at the trading centres. At one Lima market, 79% of vendors had coronavirus.



Four out of five merchants at a major fruit market in Peru have tested positive for coronavirus, revealing shocking levels of infection – and prompting fears that Latin America’s traditional trading centres may have helped spread Covid-19 across the region.

Seventy-nine per cent of stall-holders in Lima’s wholesale fruit market tested po...

Lately, there’s been much buzz in the news about an unorthodox way of finding a vaccine for COVID-19: human challenge trials. Whereas plenty of articles have debated whether human challenge trials should be legal, this article focuses on whether we have a moral duty to participate in them. The goal here isn’t to single-handedly answer this complex moral question, but rather to provide two frameworks we can use to help us arrive at our own answers.

What exactly is a human challenge ...

The coronavirus spreading across the globe could become a constant presence, a leading World Health Organization official has said.

During a media briefing in Geneva, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's health emergencies program, warned Wednesday that the disease may join the mix of viruses that kill people around the world every year.

"This virus just may become another endemic virus in our communities and this virus may never go away. HIV hasn't gone away," Rya...

Turning ventilated patients onto their stomachs, called proning, helps them by opening their lungs. Now doctors are testing to see if it can keep others off ventilators altogether.
The surprisingly low-tech concept, called proning, can improve breathing in patients stricken by the respiratory distress that is the hallmark of the virus, doctors have found. It draws from basic principles of physiology and gravity. Lying on one’s stomach helps open airways in lungs that have become compressed...

131 million women give birth annually. This population is particularly vulnerable to emerging infectious pathogens due to alterations in immune, respiratory, and cardiovascular physiology that occur during pregnancy. Early data regarding pregnancy outcomes in COVID-19 are reassuring: maternal outcomes are similar to non-pregnant adults, and vertical transmission and neonatal infection are rare.
However, pregnant women remain at risk of severe disease requiring intensive care, and they dese...

The pandemic has given rise to too many small and uncontrolled clinical trials.



Researchers have rallied in unprecedented ways to defeat the coronavirus pandemic. They are retooling laboratories to focus on the virus; helping with testing efforts; and, in the case of clinician–researchers, working feverishly to carry out research studies while also treating patients in overwhelmed health-care systems.




Some clinical trials — such as the World Health Organizati...