In an effort to better inform the world about CODIV-19, the WHO has launched a Facebook Messenger version of its WHO Health Alert platform – offering instant and accurate information about COVID-19– via Facebook’s global reach.




The WHO’s Health Alert interactive service can now be accessed in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic through WHO’s official Facebook page by selecting “Send Message” or through the dedicated Messenger link.




The WHO Health Ale...

Despite warnings that asthmatics were at higher risk for severe illness from the coronavirus, asthma is showing up in only about five percent of New York State’s fatal Covid cases.

For people with asthma, the outbreak of a pandemic that can lead to respiratory failure has not been a welcome event. Many health organizations have cautioned that asthmatics are most likely at higher risk for severe illness if they get the coronavirus. There’s been a run on inhalers, and coronavirus patient...

Swiss drugmaker Roche aims by next month to offer blood tests to identify those who had been infected with the coronavirus, potentially helping inform locked-down nations of who might have some immunity and be able to resume work or contact with the public. 

The Basel-based company said on Friday it wants to make the antibody test available by early May in countries that accept European CE regulatory standards, and is seeking U.S. Food and Drug Administration emergency authorization fo...

UK cancer specialist says leaving potentially infectious staff in hospitals is unethical.

Healthcare workers should be screened for Covid-19 every week to protect patients from asymptomatic infection, the head of the Francis Crick Institute’s testing facility has said.

The call comes amid concerns that hospitals are becoming hotspots for disease transmission and evidence that a significant fraction of those infected show few or no symptoms.

“For all our fuss about social ...

Covid-19 patients who are getting an experimental drug called remdesivir have been recovering quickly, with most going home in days, STAT News reported Thursday after it obtained a video of a conversation about the trial.
The patients taking part in a clinical trial of the drug have all had severe respiratory symptoms and fever, but were able to leave the hospital after less than a week of treatment, STAT quoted the doctor leading the trial as saying."The best news is that most of our ...

In her regular job, Priya Nori runs Montefiore Medical Center’s antibiotic stewardship program, and spends most of her time ensuring that the Bronx-based hospital doesn’t overuse the drugs and allow bacteria resistant to them to thrive. But like many physicians, Nori is now spending all of her time helping treat COVID-19 patients at her New York City hospital, which like other medical centers in the pandemic hot spot, is crowded with 50% more patients than normal. As part of that care, she an...

The disinfection station uses light at wavelengths demonstrated to kill germs but to be safe for skin and eye contact. It was presented by SunCrafter, a German start-up business that uses modules decommissioned by industrial solar farms to provide power to remote communities.



Lisa Wendzich, founder and chief executive, said that the company – which is based on the Siemens innovation campus in Berlin – was now working with partners to identify how to manufacture significant numb...

BlueDot’s outbreak risk software safeguards lives by mitigating exposure to infectious diseases that threaten human health, security, and prosperity.






BlueDot was among the first in the world to identify the emerging risk from COVID-19 in Hubei province and notify our clients via our Insights platform, validating our capabilities as a global early warning system for infectious disease.

BlueDot published the first scientific paper on COVID-19, accurately pr...

The scientific community has galvanised in response to the recent COVID-19 outbreak, building on decades of basic research characterising this virus family. Labs at the forefront of the outbreak response shared genomes of the virus in open access databases, which enabled researchers to rapidly develop tests for this novel pathogen. Other labs have shared experimentally-determined and computationally-predicted structures of some of the viral proteins, and still others have shared epidemiol...

Introduction
The concept of personal protective equipment (PPE) for the surgeon has been in place for greater than 100 years. The aim has been to protect both the surgeon and the patient. However, as zoonotic respiratory pathogens emerge, surgeons and their teams will need to adapt quickly to what will adequately protect them and their patients. There has been a generalized call for more personal protective equipment (PPE), however, there is a wide array of PPE available. High quality ...

“We know there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say that we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.”
– Donald Rumsfeld, February 12, 2002




The history of informed consent is one of continuous evolution in search of a best practice, from the mid-20th century, physi...

We report the neurologic features in an observational series of 58 of 64 consecutive patients admitted to the hospital because of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) due to Covid-19. The patients received similar evaluations by intensivists in two intensive care units (ICUs) in Strasbourg, France, between March 3 and April 3, 2020.




Six patients were excluded because of paralytic neuromuscular blockade when neurologic...