• Was COVID-19 Created in a Lab? China Has Some Urgent Questions to Answer

    In an interview with  The Telegraph’s Allison Pearsonon Thursday, Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, said it was likely that coronavirus was the result of a Chinese lab accidental release. Charles Moore writes in The Telegraph that Sir Richard’s interview chiefly concerned a new learned paper about the hunt for a COVID-19 vaccine, written by distinguished scientists, the vaccinologist, Birger Sorensen, and the immunologist, Angus Dalgleish, in the Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery.

  • Could the Coronavirus Be Weakening as It Spreads?

    Hospital leaders in Milan and Genoa, cities in two regions of northern Italy that have been hit hard by Covid-19, say that the coronavirus is losing potency, Markaham Hide writes in Medium. Reuters also published an article  on the topic.

  • Trump Administration Selects Five Coronavirus Vaccine Candidates as Finalists

    The Trump administration has selected five companies as the most likely candidates to produce a vaccine for the coronavirus, senior officials said, a critical step in the White House’s effort to deliver on its promise of being able to start widespread inoculation of Americans by the end of the year. Noah Weiland and David E. Sanger write in the New York Times that the five companies are Moderna, a Massachusetts-based biotechnology firm, which Dr. Fauci said he expected would enter into the final phase of clinical trials next month; the combination of Oxford University and AstraZeneca, on a similar schedule; and three large pharmaceutical companies: Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Pfizer. Each is taking a somewhat different approach.

  • Oxford Vaccine Team Chases Coronavirus to Brazil

    Oxford University’s potential Covid-19 vaccine will be tested in Brazil as scientists rush to find places with high enough rates of infection to determine whether their inoculations work. Rhys Blakely and Catherine Philp write in The Times that Astrazeneca, the drugmaker partnering with the university, said that finding communities with sufficient virus transmission to prove that a vaccine offered protection was now the toughest challenge in the race to develop a jab.

  • China Formulates Plan to Roll Out Vaccine before Clinical Trials Are Finished in Race against Trump

    China has five vaccines in phase II human trials – more than any other country, and it may deploy one or more of them as early as September to at-risk groups even if clinical trials have yet to be completed, Sophia Yan writes in The Telegraph. Success could buoy China’s coronavirus-ravaged economy, help Beijing deflect global anger over its cover-up of the pandemic – and it would also be a blow to Donald Trump’s “warp-speed” plans for a vaccine.

  • GCHQ Boss Warns Foreign States Are Trying to Steal Britain’s Attempts to Build COVID-19 Vaccine

    Jeremy Fleming, the Director of GCHQ, Britain’s cyberspy agency, confirmed GCHQ had seen attacks on the U.K.’s health infrastructure in recent weeks. Dominic Nicholls writes in The Telegraph that Fleming confirmed reports that foreign powers and criminals are targeting laboratories researching coronavirus vaccines.

  • Could Coronavirus Be Killed Off Without a Vaccine? History Suggests There's a Chance

    Already this century, devastating outbreaks of deadly cousins of today’s virus have twice been crushed without global immunization programs – the 2002-2003 SARS-COV-1 and the 2014-2015 Ebola. Harry de Quetteville asks in The Telegraph: as countries around the world begin to relax their lockdowns, will the third time be lucky too?

  • Coronavirus Shutdowns: Economists Look for Better Answers

    As Covid-19 cases took off in New York in March, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo imposed a lockdown of nonessential businesses to slow the spread of the coronavirus, calling it “the most drastic action we can take.” Eduardo Porter writes in the New York Times that now, researchers say more targeted approaches — in New York and elsewhere — might have protected public health with less economic pain.

  • “The Costs Are Too High”: The Scientist Who Wants Lockdown Lifted Faster

    It appears that most scientists still argue that now was not the time to lift the lockdown. Ian Sample writes in The Guardian that Sunetra Gupta, a professor of theoretical epidemiology at Oxford University, does not agree. She believes – somewhat controversially – that the lockdown should be lifted faster. In the rush to drive infections down, she fears the poorest have been brushed aside.

  • Missing School Is Bigger Risk for Children than Catching COVID, Warns Government Adviser

    Keeping children out of school poses a far greater risk to them that coronavirus, a U.K. government adviser has said. Camilla Turner writes in The Telegraph that Dr. Gavin Morgan, an expert in education psychology at University College London who sits on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), argues that the impact of Covid-19 on children’s health is “miniscule,” but spending a prolonged period out of school is devastating their development, Dr Gavin Morgan said.

  • I Refuse to Abide by These Bonkers Rules Any Longer

    “Heaven knows [Matthew Hancock, the U.K.] Secretary of State for Health has an unenviable job,” Allison Pearson argues in The Telegraph, “but after ten weeks, his determination to treat the British people like a remedial basket-weaving class does begin to grate.” She adds: “Sorry, I’m not doing it any more. Lockdown is over for me and for millions of others I’m quite sure. Sanity demands it.”

  • The Future Bioweapons Threat: Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic

    Experts discussing the lessons of the coronavirus epidemic for preparations for a bioweapon attack, are worried that the failures to detect, mitigate, and respond to COVID-19 may make a future biological weapon attack more likely. These experts agree that the U.S. has a long way to go in addressing biological threats from natural and man-made sources. Further, the U.S. needs to adapt to new realities – a time where citizens’ trust of government is significantly lower, where citizens actively protest experts and their recommendations, and where misinformation is one tap on a smartphone away.

  • During Global Crises, Strategic Redundancy Can Prevent Collapse of Supply Chains

    When the novel coronavirus began spreading during the early months of 2020, it put kinks in multinational production chains — first in China and then around the globe. But it didn’t have to happen that way. Experts suggest companies use redundancy as a way to fortify their operations against unforeseeable events such as pandemics.

  • The Importance of Building Trust in Contact Tracing Apps

    In the very real need for speed around excellent contact tracing in the COVID-19 environment, the voice of the people is getting lost, according to an expert. New researchhighlights the need for digital contact tracing solutions to have exceptional speed, high take-up rates, and demonstrable value. Researchers say that without significant uptake of the technology, digital contact tracing is close to useless.

  • Karl Friston: up to 80% Not Even Susceptible to COVID-19

    Just one month ago, the idea that most people aren’t susceptible to COVID-19 — perhaps the overwhelming majority — was considered dangerous denialism. It was startling when Nobel-prize-winning scientist Michael Levitt argued in UnHerd at the start of May that the growth curves of the disease were never truly exponential, suggesting that some sort of “prior immunity” must be kicking in very early.Freddie Sayers writes in Unherd that today, though, the presence of some level of prior resistance and immunity to COVID-19 is fast becoming accepted scientific fact. Now, from the unlikely source — Professor Karl Friston, who, like Michael Levitt, is a statistician not a virologist, and who is a prominent member of the “Independent SAGE committee,” the group set up by Sir David King to challenge government scientific advice — comes a claim that the true portion of people who are not even susceptible to COVID-19 may be as high as 80%.