• A Close Relative of SARS-CoV-2 Found in Bats Offers More Evidence It Evolved Naturally

    There is ongoing debate among policymakers and the general public about where SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, came from. While researchers consider bats the most likely natural hosts for SARS-CoV-2, the origins of the virus are still unclear. Cell Press notes that on May 10 in the journal Current Biology, researchers describe a recently identified bat coronavirus that is SARS-CoV-2’s closest relative in some regions of the genome and which contains insertions of amino acids at the junction of the S1 and S2 subunits of the virus’s spike protein in a manner similar to SAR-CoV-2. While it’s not a direct evolutionary precursor of SARS-CoV-2, this new virus, RmYN02, suggests that these types of seemingly unusual insertion events can occur naturally in coronavirus evolution, the researchers say.

  • New AI Diagnostic Can Predict COVID-19 without Testing

    Researchers at King’s College London, Massachusetts General Hospital and health science company ZOE have developed an artificial intelligence diagnostic that can predict whether someone is likely to have COVID-19 based on their symptoms. Their findings are published today in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0916-2. Click or tap if you trust this link.">Nature Medicine. King’s College London says that the AI model uses data from the COVID Symptom Study app to predict COVID-19 infection, by comparing people’s symptoms and the results of traditional COVID tests. Researchers say this may provide help for populations where access to testing is limited. Two clinical trials in the UK and the US are due to start shortly.

  • Experts: We Must Cooperate to Develop, Deploy COVID-19 Vaccines

    Development of vaccines against COVID-19 hinges on “unprecedented” and transparent cooperation among industry, government, and academia, according to a commentary by Anthony Fauci and other U.S. vaccine experts published yesterday in Science. Mary Van Beusekom writes in CIDRAP that the authors, noting that all vaccine platforms have advantages and disadvantages and underscoring the need for speed and flexibility of manufacture, safety, long-term efficacy, scale, affordability, vaccine stability, and a temperature-controlled supply chain, said that “no single vaccine or vaccine platform alone is likely to meet the global need, and so a strategic approach to the multi-pronged endeavor is absolutely critical.”

  • BGU Scientists Develop Anti-Coronavirus Surface Coating Based on Nanomaterials

    In light of the possibility that the virus can spread through contaminated surfaces, it is important to be able to sterilize surfaces with high contamination potential, such as doorknobs, elevator buttons or handrails in public areas in general, and in hospitals and clinics in particular. However, current disinfectants are mainly based on chemicals such as poisonous sodium hypochlorite (bleach) or alcohol, both of which provide only a temporary measure until the next exposure to the virus. Israel’s Ben Gurion University said that Prof. Angel Porgador, from the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Genetics at BGU and the National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev (NIBN), and Dr. Mark Schvartzman, Department of Materials Engineering at BGU, are developing novel surface coatings that will have a long term effect, and contain nanoparticles of safe metal ions and polymers with anti-viral and anti-microbial activity.

  • State Actions Played Lesser Role in COVID-19 Economic Damage

    Actions by state governments to try to limit the spread of COVID-19 played only a secondary role in the historic spike in U.S. unemployment in March, according to new research. Ohio State University says that while state actions to close schools were linked to an increase in unemployment, these effects were dwarfed by the larger national and international impact of the pandemic, according to researchers at the Ohio State University and Indiana University. Hispanics, young adults (aged 20-24), those without a college education and those with four or more children saw the steepest job losses. In two separate studies – here and here — the researchers took a broad look at the very early impact of the pandemic on jobs in the United States.

  • Coronavirus Not an Epidemic in U.K., Say Oxford University Experts

    Coronavirus is not at epidemic levels in Britain, experts at Oxford University have said, with new figures showing that only a tiny proportion of the population is currently infected. Sarah Knapton writes in The Telegraph that the latest data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggests that just 0.24 per cent of adults – approximately 136,000 people – have the virus. Separate surveillance by the Royal College of GPs indicates it may be even less. Figures released last week showed just 0.037 per cent of people have the virus, although this is likely to be lower than the actual number because few people are visiting doctors with symptoms. An epidemic is declared if the surveillance rate exceeds 40 per 10,000, but the new figures suggest it is between 24 and three in 10,000.

  • Government’s Handling of COVID-19 Is a Very British Disaster

    British exceptionalism has brought an exceptional outcome, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard writes in The Telegraph. “We have both an eye-watering number of avoidable deaths and a staggering amount of avoidable economic damage. The purported trade-off between lives and jobs – always a false choice – has instead spared neither. It is the worst of both.” He is unsparing in his judgement. He notes that Greece, with far fewer resources than Britain and having to cope with both a deep austerity and waves of migrants, has had 14 deaths per million, while the U.K. has just hit 472 (as of 24 April: the number is much higher by now). Greece has had 151 deaths linked to coronavirus, while Britain’s coronavirus-related death toll is approaching 50,000. “Britain could have been in a low-death club with Greece, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, or Germany,” he writes. If Britain had a similar COVID-related mortality rate as Greece, “These deaths could have been held to at 1,000 or thereabouts, ideally by Korean methods, or failing that at least by sheer Greek determination. All the other deaths are in essence a policy failure.”

  • Take the Shutdown Skeptics Seriously

    Should states ease pandemic restrictions or extend lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders into the summer? That question confronts leaders across the United States. President Trump says that “we have to get our country open.” And many governors are moving quickly in that direction.Critics are dismayed. Citing forecasts that COVID-19 deaths could rise to 3,000 per day in June, they say that reopening without better defenses against infections is reckless. Conor Friedersdorf writes in The Atlantic that such denunciations cast the lockdown debate as a straightforward battle between a pro-human and a pro-economy camp. But the actual trade-offs are not straightforward. Set aside “flattening the curve,” which will continue to make sense. Are ongoing, onerous shutdowns warranted beyond what is necessary to avoid overwhelming ambulances, hospitals, and morgues? The answer depends in part on an unknown: how close the country is to containing the virus.

  • U.S. to Accuse China of Hacking COVID-19 Vaccine Research

    For months, U.S. officials have been warning about a spike in cyberattacks during the coronavirus pandemic, but they’ve stopped short of pointing fingers at any one country. Now, as the all-out global race for a coronavirus vaccine accelerates and hackers home in on related scientific research, U.S. officials are preparing to single out a long-standing cyber adversary: China.

  • Germany: Politicians Worry about Radicalization at Anti-Lockdown Protests

    German lawmakers from across the political spectrum on Monday warned that the growing wave of anti-lockdown protests could provide fertile ground for radicalization and recruitment for far-right extremist groups and anti-vaccine campaigns. Over the weekend, thousands of people gathered in cities across Germany to demand an end to restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

  • The German Way; Antigen Tests; HCQ Disappointments; Promise of Anti-Inflammatory Drugs

    These seven developments and topics on the coronavirus front caught our eye last week:
    1. Germany shows the way. Germany, led by a low-key, competent, steady, truth-telling, self-effacing, and empathetic former scientist (Angela Merkel was a professor of physical chemistry before entering politics) was a leader in the West in taking on the coronavirus pandemic, and now it is leading the way in a measured, calibrated reopening of the economy and restarting of public life.
    2. Predicting the pandemic’s next phase. Two studies paint a picture of how the pandemic could play out. Both studies see a future – about 2-3 years — typified by waves, or peaks and valleys, with social distancing turned on and off based on the number of infection cases.
    3. Mysterious young-children syndrome. Three young children have died in New York of a mysterious syndrome with links to the coronavirus. Doctors s call it “pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome.”
    4. FDA approves antigen test. In a significant move which holds the promise of greatly expanded testing capacity in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has approved the first antigen test which can rapidly detect whether a person has been infected by the coronavirus.
    5. Effectiveness of antiviral drugs cocktail. In a new study published in The Lancet, researchers in Hong Kong reported that patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 appear to improve more rapidly if they were treated with a cocktail of antiviral drugs, compared with a group receiving a mix containing fewer drugs.
    6. Hydroxychloroquine continues to disappoint. Another large clinical trial shows what all other previous clinical trials have so far demonstrated: hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are yet to prove their effectiveness in treating COVID-19.
    7. Promising COVID-19 treatments. Scientists are looking at anti-inflammatory medicines as a potential ingredient in an effective combination therapy. One possible anti-inflammatory treatment is tocilizumab, sold by Roche as Actemra and currently prescribed people suffering from arthritis.

  • Israel Preparing to Conduct 100,000 Serological Tests

    Jerusalem is preparing to launch a coordinated, nationwide testing campaign to determine the population’s readiness for a possible second wave of COVID-19, the government’s top health official has announced. In an interview with The New York Times, Health Ministry director general Moshe Bar Siman-Tov said that 100,000 serological tests, obtained from firms in the United States and Italy for almost $40 million, were being prepared for use by health clinics across the country in the coming weeks.

  • Digital “Virus” Helps Researchers Map Potential Spread

    As governments around the world wrestle with questions about how and when to reopen their economies, they must rely on predictions or weeks-old data to make informed decisions. Cornell University says that a Cornell researcher is among a team of engineers, statisticians and computer and data scientists who have developed a potential solution: a digital “virus” that could piggyback on contact-tracing apps and spread from smartphone to smartphone in real time. This would allow policymakers to gauge the impact of various social distancing measures without waiting two weeks or longer to learn how coronavirus has actually spread, said Shane Henderson, professor of operations research and information engineering and a co-author of “Safe Blues: A Method for Estimation and Control in the Fight Against COVID-19.”

  • U.K. Government Has “Terrorized” Britons into Believing Coronavirus Will Kill Them, Says Adviser

    The Government’s coronavirus warnings have “effectively terrorised” Britons “into believing that this is a disease that is going to kill you” even though most those infected will not be hospitalized, one of its advisers has warned. Christopher Hope writes in The Telegraph that Professor Robert Dingwall also said that “Eighty per cent of the people who get this infection will never need to go near a hospital. The ones who do go to hospital because they are quite seriously ill, most of them will come out alive – even those who go into intensive care. We have completely lost sight of that in the obsession with deaths.”

  • Just 332 under-45s Have Died in U.K. from Corona. It's Madness to Keep Them from Work While Our Economy Burns

    Alex Brummer writes in the Daily Mail that as a financial writer, he has reported on Britain’s humiliating search for a bail-out from the International Monetary Fund in 1976, on the stock market crash of 1987, the U.K.’s ejection from the European Monetary System (precursor of the euro) in 1992 and the financial crisis of 2008-09. “I can honestly say we’ve never had it so bad,” he writes. We are not just condemning a generation of young people to long-term joblessness, we are also encumbering the country with levels of debt which it will take decades to pay off and could even linger into the 22nd century. (Remember, the debts incurred as a result of World War II were only finally paid off by Gordon Brown in 2006.) Each of their deaths is a tragedy. But the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that, up until April 24, only 332 people under the age of 45 have died from Covid-19 out of 27,356 deaths in total. No one wants to see a second or third peak to this crisis. But the truth is we are living on borrowed time and money. If Britain wants to have the resources to run the NHS, provide decent social care, get our schools and universities up and running, and maintain the defence and safety of the realm then the economy has to be resuscitated — and fast.And there could be no better vanguard to bring us back from the economic precipice than a workforce of the under-45s.