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Covid origins investigation: US House of Representatives holds first hearing

WHO warns that few have developed antibodies to Covid-19

Only a tiny proportion of the global population – maybe as few as 2% or 3% – appear to have antibodies in the blood showing they have been infected with Covid-19, according to the World Health Organization, a finding that bodes ill for hopes that herd immunity will ease the exit from lockdown.

“Easing restrictions is not the end of the epidemic in any country,” said WHO director-general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a media briefing in Geneva on Monday. “So-called lockdowns can help to take the heat out of a country’s epidemic.”

But serological testing to find out how large a proportion of the population have had the infection and developed antibodies to it – which it is hoped will mean they have some level of immunity – suggests that the numbers are low.

“Early data suggests that a relatively small percentage of the populations may have been infected,” Tedros said. “Not more than 2%-3%.”

Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, an American infectious diseases expert who is the WHO’s technical lead on Covid-19, said they had thought the number of people infected would be higher, but she stressed it was still too early to be sure. “Initially, we see a lower proportion of people with antibodies than we were expecting,” she said. “A lower number of people are infected.”

On Friday, a study carried out in Santa Clara, California by Stanford University and released as a “pre-print” without peer review, found that 50 to 85 times more people had been infected with the virus than official figures showed.

Santa Clara county had 1,094 confirmed cases of Covid-19 at the time the study was carried out, but antibody tests suggest that between 48,000 and 81,000 people had been infected by early April, most of whom did not develop symptoms.

But even those high figures mean that within the whole population of the county, only 3% have been infected and have antibodies to the virus. A study in the Netherlands of 7,000 blood donors also found that just 3% had antibodies.

Van Kerkhove said they needed to look carefully at the way the studies were being carried out. “A number of studies we are aware of in pre-print have suggested that small proportions of the population [have antibodies],” she said. These were “in single digits, up to 14% in Germany and France”. “It is really important to understand how the studies were done.”

That would include asking how they found the people to test. Was it at random or were they blood donors, who tend to be healthy adults? They would also need to look at how well the blood tests were performed.

“We are working with a number of countries carrying out these serology studies,” she added. The WHO-supported studies would use robust methods and the tests would be validated for accuracy.

The hope will be that people who have had Covid-19 will be able to resume their lives. But Van Kerkhove last week said that even if tests showed a person had antibodies, it did not prove that they were immune.

“There are a lot of countries that are suggesting using rapid diagnostic serological tests to be able to capture what they think will be a measure of immunity,” she said. “Right now, we have no evidence that the use of a serological test can show that an individual has immunity or is protected from reinfection.”

https://www.theguardian.com/society...t-very-few-have-had-covid-19-without-symptoms
 
Coronavirus: Why Oxford university is so confident in an early vaccine win

The Oxford scientists are extraordinarily confident that their vaccine against the coronavirus will work.

The government's chief medical officer insists a jab is still 12 to 18 months off and some form of social distancing will be needed until it's in widespread use.

But the team at the Jenner Institute, part of University of Oxford, believe they'll have a million doses and proof that it's safe and effective by September - just five months away.

Their confidence is built on past success. The same vaccine technology has been used on other diseases, including the related coronavirus MERS, as well as Ebola.

ChAdOx1, pronounced "Chaddox-one", is a version of a common cold virus that has been modified not only so that it doesn't cause symptoms, but also so it carries some genetic material of the coronavirus.

It infects human cells, turning them into factories producing one of the viral proteins, which in turn trigger an immune response and should protect people against future infection.

Using tried and tested technology allows scientists to speed up the clinical trials. The medical regulators are satisfied that ChAdOx1 is robust and broadly safe, so the researchers can begin trials on healthy volunteers far sooner.

The Phase One clinical trial is now under way.

Around 500 volunteers will be given either the vaccine for coronavirus or a licensed meningitis jab. That way they can tell whether the experimental vaccine is more likely to cause side effects such as a sore arm, fever, or a headache.

They should also be able to see at an early stage whether people given the new vaccine are less likely to get COVID-19 than the control group who have been given the meningitis jab.

Its effectiveness will then need to be confirmed in further phases of trials, involving as many as 5,000 people.

The biggest challenge in the trials will actually be the success of the lockdown, which significantly reduces the amount of virus being transmitted between people.

So, to properly test the vaccine's effectiveness, the scientists are planning to give it to healthcare workers on the front line, who are at greater risk. They might even have to go abroad to a country where the epidemic is still raging to get the results they need as soon as possible.

Manufacturing will also be a challenge. Britain doesn't have vaccine plants able to produce the billions of doses the world needs.

Even to get to the one million doses planned for September, the Oxford team has had to collaborate with three manufacturers in the UK and four abroad.

The government has said it will accelerate the building of the new Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre in Harwell, but it still won't be ready until next year. It's a little late.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...so-confident-in-an-early-vaccine-win-11977568
 
Coronavirus: Nicotine patches to be tested on patients after study suggests smokers less likely to catch COVID-19

Nicotine patches are to be tested on coronavirus patients and healthcare workers treating infected people after initial studies suggested smokers were less likely to catch the disease.

Researchers in France say early data indicates those who smoke make up a disproportionately small number of people in hospital with COVID-19.

A study at Paris's Pitie-Salpetriere hospital suggests a substance in tobacco, thought to be nicotine, was preventing smokers contracting coronavirus.

Those leading the study stressed they did not advise people to start smoking, with scientists pointing out it kills half of those who do so regularly - claiming around 75,000 deaths each year in France.

But they say they want to learn more after questioning 480 patients who tested positive for the virus. A total of 350 had to be treated in hospital while the rest with less serious symptoms were sent home.

Of those needing hospital treatment, whose median age was 65, just 4.4% were regular smokers. Only 5.3% of those allowed home - who had a median age of 44 - 5.3% reported they smoked.

The researchers said that according to the latest official statistics in France, smokers make up 30% of those aged 45-54, and 8.8% of women and 11.3% of men aged 65-75.

The authors write: "Our cross-sectional study strongly suggests that daily smokers have a much lower probability of developing symptomatic or severe SARS-CoV-2 infection compared to the general population.

"The effect is significant, it divides the risk by five for ambulatory patients and by four for hospitalised patients. You rarely see that in medicine."

Eminent neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux, who has reviewed the work, speculated that nicotine could protect against the virus by preventing it reaching the body's cells.

It is also thought that nicotine could prevent the immune system going into overdrive due to the infection, as has been seen among some of the worst-affected cases.

Epidemiologist Florence Tubach, co-author of the study, cautioned: "Based on these results, however robust they may be, we must not conclude that there is a protective effect of tobacco smoke, which contains many toxic agents.

"Only nicotine or other modulators of the nicotinic receptor could have a protective effect and I maintain the conditional because our work remains observational."

The next phase of the research will go ahead after the trials have been approved by France's ministry of health.

Figures from hospitals in Paris show that of around 11,000 patients treat in hospital for COVID-19, 8.5% were smokers.

Official data indicates 25.4% of French people smoke.

It follows a study of more than 1,000 infected people in China, which found the proportion of smokers was 12.6% - compared to 28% across the country's adult population.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...mokers-less-likely-to-catch-covid-19-11977460
 
US scientists say coronavirus dies the fastest when it is exposed to direct sunlight, though a study cited has not yet been made public and awaits external evaluation.

William Bryan, science and technology adviser to the Department of Homeland Security, told reporters at the White House on Thursday that government scientists found ultraviolet rays had a potent impact on the pathogen, offering hope its spread may ease over the summer.

"The virus dies quickest in the presence of direct sunlight," Bryan said.

"Our most striking observation to date is the powerful effect that solar light appears to have on killing the virus - both surfaces and in the air," he added. "We've seen a similar effect with both temperature and humidity as well, where increasing the temperature and humidity or both is generally less favourable to the virus."

It has long been known that ultraviolet light has a sterilising effect, because the radiation damages the virus's genetic material and its ability to replicate.

But coronavirus has also proven lethal in warm-weather places such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, raising broader questions about the impact of environmental factors.

Dr Margaret Harris from the World Health Organization told Al Jazeera "the evidence is not supporting [the sunlight] theory".

"I'm sorry but we cannot hope that summer is going to have the effect that many people hope it will," said Harris.

Bryan warned it would be "irresponsible" to say the warmer summer months will eliminate the virus. But he said that time period would provide an "opportunity to get ahead" of the pandemic.

The research cited by Bryan has not yet been released for review, making it difficult for independent experts to comment on how robust its methodology was.

A key question will be what the intensity and wavelength of the UV light used in the experiment was, and whether this accurately mimics natural light conditions in summer.

Past studies have not found reliable evidence that warmer temperatures and the higher humidity of spring and summer will help tamp down the spread of the virus.

Bryan shared a slide summarising the major findings of an experiment carried out at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center in Maryland.

On nonporous surfaces such as stainless steel, the new coronavirus takes 18 hours to lose half its strength in a dark, low-humidity environment, Bryan said.

In a high-humidity environment, that half-life dropped to six hours, and when the virus was exposed to high humidity and sunlight, the half-life dropped to two minutes, he said.

Researchers found a similar effect with the coronavirus that was suspended in the air - simulating the coughing or sneezing that often spreads the disease. In a dark room, the virus maintained half its strength for an hour.

But when exposed to sunlight, it lost half its strength in 90 seconds, Bryan said.

Researchers also found that isopropyl alcohol was a more effective disinfectant than bleach, he added.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020...virus-fastest-scientists-200424065853466.html
 
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“The disinfectant knocks it out in a minute. One minute,” Trump said in response to the presentation. “Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside?” He said it would be “almost a cleaning. It gets in the lungs and does a tremendous number on the lungs.”

On Friday morning, the maker of Lysol and Dettol, Reckitt Benckiser Plc, issued a statement that “under no circumstance” should its disinfectant products be administered into the human body, through injection, ingestion or any other route. The company said it was issuing the guidance after it was asked whether internal administration of disinfectants “may be appropriate for investigation or use as a treatment for coronavirus,” amid recent speculation and social media activity.

Warnings were echoed by doctors and researchers. Bleach is a toxic chemical, and inhaling it could damage the lungs.

“Inhaling chlorine bleach would be absolutely the worst thing for the lungs,” said John Balmes, a pulmonoligist a Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, and a professor of medicine at the University of California San Francisco. “The airway and lungs are not made to be exposed to even an aerosol of disinfectant.”

“Not even a low dilution of bleach or isopropyl alcohol is safe,” Balmes said in a telephone interview. “It’s a totally ridiculous concept.”

Thursday’s coronavirus briefing from the White House began innocuously enough. More than 870,000 people in the U.S. have been confirmed infected with Covid-19 and more than 49,000 have died. About 20,000 new cases were added on Thursday.

Bryan said that new U.S. research showed the coronavirus doesn’t last as long on door handles and other nonporous surfaces when it’s exposed to sunlight, higher temperatures and humidity.

He suggested that offered practical tips for many Americans, including “increasing the temperature and humidity for potentially contaminated indoor spaces” in order to kill the virus on surfaces. At a temperature of 70 to 75 degrees Fahrenheit and 80% humidity in the summer sun, for example, the research showed the virus would last just two minutes on a porous surface. Dry environments Bryan said, may require “extra care.”

Trump has previously expressed interest in whether summer weather would end the outbreak of the virus, suggesting in February that warmer spring temperatures could eliminate cases by this month.

‘Very Powerful Light’
Trump appeared intrigued by the research after Bryan’s presentation.

“Suppose we hit the body with a tremendous ultraviolet or just very powerful light,” Trump said, following Bryan’s presentation. “I think that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it.”

Researchers could also bring “the light inside the body” Trump said, “either through the skin or in some other way.”

The World Health Organization has warned against using UV lamps to sterilize any part of the body, saying it can cause skin irritation.

Disinfecting surfaces is an important practice in infection control. The coronavirus is fragile outside the body, and is essentially a packet of genetic information wrapped in a packet of lipids. Hand washing with soap is particularly effective in cleaning it and stopping transmission.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned Americans to be careful with cleaning products in their rush to use cleaners and disinfectants, which have been snapped up from store shelves and are still hard to find at many retailers. Poisonings related to cleaners and disinfectants rose significantly in March, according to the CDC. In one case, a woman was sent to the hospital after filling her sink with bleach solution, vinegar and hot water to soak her vegetables.

Weather Matters

As some U.S. states begin planning to roll back social-distancing restrictions, an important question has become whether summer heat might impact the virus — and whether the fall might bring a new outbreak, as some experts inside and outside the government have suggested.

Weather and UV rays are often an important factor in the transmission of infectious diseases. Transmission of the flu, for example, is often correlated with cold temperatures and dry air. One study found that in northern Europe, low temperature and low UV indexes coincided with peaks of the flu virus in the period between 2010 and 2018.

“We know that respiratory viruses are quite seasonal. Coronaviruses are also respiratory viruses, and we had hope and anticipation it would be, too,” said William Schaffner, an infectious disease professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. But, he said, not all coronaviruses show strong seasonal variation, and it’s not clear that this one will.

Scientists continue to research the new coronavirus, and the pathogen has circulated in parts of the world with high, humid temperatures. Singapore is experiencing a surge of cases despite hot, humid weather. And in the developed world, many people spend much of their time indoors in controlled, cooler, drier environments without direct sunlight.

Anthony Fauci, the National Institutes of Health scientist on the White House task force, said in an April 9 television interview that, “one should not assume that we are going to be rescued by a change in the weather. You must assume that the virus will continue to do its thing.”

Studies of other coronaviruses have suggested that certain types of UV light may act as a sort of disinfectant. Sunlight contains three types of ultraviolet light, and one of them, UVC is often used to sterilize medical equipment. In China and Italy, robots that disinfect using UVC light have reportedly been deployed in hospitals.

Some studies, however, have suggested the opposite. One recent study of cities in Southern China, for example, found that heat and UV rays seemed to have no impact on the virus.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...fastest-under-light-warm-and-humid-conditions
 
WHO launches plan to fast-track vaccine

World leaders have launched a World Health Organization (WHO) initiative to speed up the research, development and distribution of vaccines, drugs and tests against the coronavirus.

"Our shared commitment is to ensure all people have access to all the tools to defeat Covid-19,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

Speaking via video link at the launch, French President Emmanuel Macron said a vaccine should be “available to everyone around the world” when it is ready.

Other world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen, echoed that sentiment, describing a vaccine against Covid-19 as a universal public good.

The US, whose President Donald Trump recently said he would withdraw American funding from the WHO, says it will not take part in the initiative.
 
US authorities warn doctors against prescribing hydroxychloroquine

The US Food and Drug Administration has warned doctors against prescribing the malaria drug Donald Trump has been touting, citing reports of sometimes fatal heart side effects among patients.

From the Associated Press:

The warning comes as doctors at a New York hospital published a report that heart rhythm abnormalities developed in most of 84 coronavirus patients treated with hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin, a combo Trump has promoted. Both drugs are known to sometimes alter the heartbeat in dangerous ways, and their safety or ability to help people with COVID-19 is unknown.

The warning excludes in hospital and research studies. A National Institutes of Health experts panel earlier this week also recommended against taking that drug combo except in a formal study.
 
Hong Kong’s top epidemiologist has warned against easing lockdowns in Europe, saying “you need a sledgehammer” to bring down the rate of infections before reopening society.

Gabriel Leung, the dean of medicine at the University of Hong Kong, told Der Spiegel that lockdowns of the kind which have frozen societies and economies will be “a marathon, not a sprint”, and that the world now needs to learn to live with the coronavirus.

“Containment has failed everywhere,” Leung said. “What we need is suppression, or better: cycles of suppression and lift, probably many of them,” he said, adding that measures needed to be tuned to the “surge capacity” of national health systems.

Taking the example of the flu, which kills tens of thousands every year in Europe, Leung said:

Nobody likes it, but it is tolerated. Nobody asks for zero flu deaths. But if you exceed the capacity of your ICUs, then you would be breaching a very red line. So, somewhere between what people tolerate by implication every year and having completely overwhelmed ICUs like in New York City, somewhere between these extremes lie your tolerance levels ...

If you have a sustained [coronavirus] outbreak like in most of Europe, you need the sledgehammer to bring down the Rt to below 1. Rt is the virus’s actual transmission rate at a given moment. But you need to go much below 1 to bring the baseline level to a low enough level that you can accept.
 
Coronavirus came to New York from Europe, not China, governor says

(Reuters) - New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Friday pointed to research showing that strains of the novel coronavirus entered his state from Europe, not China, and said that travel bans enacted by U.S. President Donald Trump were too late to halt its spread.

Cuomo cited research from Northeastern University estimating that more than 10,000 New Yorkers may have contracted the disease by the time the state had its first confirmed case on March 1. He said he believed Italy was the likely source.

The governor noted that Trump ordered a ban on travel from China on Feb. 2, more than a month after news reports had emerged about an outbreak in the city of Wuhan, and decided to restrict travel from Europe the following month. By that time, the virus had spread widely in the United States, he said.

"We closed the front door with the China travel ban, which was right," Cuomo told a briefing. "But we left the back door open because the virus had left China by the time we did the China travel ban."

With his comments, Cuomo thrust himself into a heated and politically fraught debate about when and how the virus first entered the United States and whether officials like Trump and himself could have saved more lives if they had acted sooner.

Cuomo defended his own actions by pointing to the 19 days between New York's first confirmed case and his lockdown order, arguing that he had moved faster than any other state.

He also said Trump, who last week halted U.S. contributions to the World Health Organization after accusing it of promoting China's "disinformation" about the outbreak, was right to question whether the WHO responded properly to the crisis.

But Cuomo took aim at what he described as a slow reaction by the country's leaders, even as increasingly disturbing reports emerged out of China in January and February about how quickly the virus was spreading and killing people.

Cuomo said as many as 2.2 million people took flights from Europe to New York and New Jersey airports in those two months, many of them likely carrying the highly contagious respiratory illness COVID-19.

"We acted two months after the China outbreak. When you look back, does anyone think the virus was still in China waiting for us to act two months later?" Cuomo said. "The horse had already left the barn by the time we moved."

Cuomo said it was important that the country learns from the mistakes that were made because the virus could surge again in autumn or a new virus could emerge. "It will happen again. Bank on it. Let's not put our head in the sand," he said.

He said it was too early to reopen his state, which is in lockdown until at least May 15. He said the three-day rolling average for people newly admitted for COVID-19 was holding stubbornly around 1,300 per day, a worrisome sign.

But on a positive note, he said hospitalizations for COVID-19 totaled 14,258 on Thursday, declining for the tenth straight day. He reported 422 additional deaths, the lowest daily total since March 31.

https://mobile.reuters.com/article/...&utm_source=twitter&__twitter_impression=true
 
Coronavirus: Immunity passports ‘could increase virus spread’

Governments should not issue so-called "immunity passports" or "risk-free certificates" as a way of easing lockdowns, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

It said there was "no evidence" that people who had developed antibodies after recovering from the virus were protected against a second infection.

Such a move could actually increase virus transmission, it warned.

People who assumed they were immune might stop taking precautions, it said.

Some governments have considered permitting people who have recovered to travel or return to work.

Restrictions imposed on movement to stop the virus spreading have crippled economies around the world.

More than 2.8m cases of the virus have been confirmed worldwide and nearly 200,000 people have died.

What did the WHO say?

"There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from Covid-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection," the WHO said in a briefing note.

Most studies carried out so far showed that people who had recovered from infection had antibodies in their blood - but some of these people had very low levels of antibodies.

This suggested that another part of the body's immune response - T-cells, which eliminate infected cells - may also be "critical" for recovery.

As of Friday no study had evaluated whether the presence of antibodies to the virus conferred immunity to subsequent infection by the virus in humans, the WHO said.

"At this point in the pandemic, there is not enough evidence about the effectiveness of antibody-mediated immunity to guarantee the accuracy of an 'immunity passport' or 'risk-free certificate'," it said.

The organisation also said laboratory tests to detect antibodies needed further validation to determine their accuracy and also needed to distinguish between previous infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus - which has caused the pandemic - and the six other known coronaviruses in circulation.

Passports too risky - for now
Analysis by Rachel Schraer, BBC health reporter

The WHO's guidance is based on evidence from researchers all around the world. But it could well change as we rapidly learn more about this virus.

There isn't currently any evidence to suggest having had the virus once protects you from getting it again. So the idea of an "immunity passport", allowing people who test positive for antibodies to have fewer restrictions, would be a very risky one.

Many countries including Germany, Italy and the UK are beginning to test samples of their populations for antibodies. In the UK, 25,000 people will be tested every month for the next year - both for antibodies, and to check if they currently have the virus.

This could provide more information about whether (and for how long) the disease confers immunity to those who have recovered. And that would give us a clearer idea about whether testing individuals and giving them some kind of immunity status might be an option in the future.

Where are 'immunity passports' being considered?

Last week Chile said it would begin issuing "health passports" to people deemed to have recovered from the illness.

Once screened for the presence of antibodies to make them immune to the virus, they could rejoin the workforce, officials said.

In Sweden, which has chosen to keep large parts of society open, some scientists believe people may end up with much higher immunity levels compared with those living under stricter regulations.

However Anders Wallensten from the Swedish Public Health Agency told the BBC that not enough was yet known about immunity.

"We will know more as more people are tested for antibodies, but also the more time goes on, and if more accounts of re-infection etcetera are reported," he said.

In Belgium, which has one of the highest death rates per capita but is planning to gradually relax lockdown restrictions from 11 May, a government adviser told the BBC he strongly opposed the idea of immunity passports.

"I abhor the fact that we would give people passports, a green one or a red one, depending on their serology status," said virologist Professor Marc Van Ranst, a member of the Belgian government's Risk Assessment Group and Scientific Committee on the Coronavirus.

"That will lead to forgeries, that will lead to people wilfully infecting themselves to the virus. This is just not a good idea. It is an extremely bad idea."

Earlier this week Professor Mala Maini from University College London said reliable antibody tests were urgently needed to determine how long antibodies persisted and whether they conferred protection.

"We're not yet sure if these antibodies indicate protective immunity against SARS-CoV-2 but preliminary data suggest they may be a reasonable proxy for this - so they are being considered to inform release from lockdown etc," she said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52425825
 
Doctor's Note: Sleep, Ramadan and the coronavirus

With the holy month of Ramadan upon us, the daily routines of Muslims around the world will change. Although there have been a number of health benefits linked to the intermittent fasting pattern during Ramadan, there is an argument that these may be counterbalanced by the negative effects that disrupted sleep patterns may have on the body.

Traditionally, Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. This means waking up before the sun rises to have a pre-fasting meal, or suhoor, fasting all day and then breaking the fast at sunset with an iftar - followed by prayers that can go on late into the night.

This year will be different as many mosques remain closed during the coronavirus pandemic and most of these activities will be done from home.

At a time when our immune system is most vital, do these disrupted sleep patterns associated with these early mornings and late nights put us more at risk of catching infections?

A good night's sleep is vital for good health. As the benefits of high-quality sleep become better understood, many scientists now feel sleep is just as important to good health as nutrition and exercise. Lack of sleep also promotes hunger hormones to go into overdrive, something you can do without when you are fasting.

Good quality sleep has been linked to a reduced risk of obesity, better concentration and memory, reduced risk of heart disease and stroke, reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, reduced risk of depression and anxiety and, most importantly, healthier immune systems.

For an immune system to work effectively, it must be able to recognise a foreign invader such as a virus or bacteria when it enters the body. It then needs to set off a wider reaction to contain and eventually destroy the invader. T-cells are a part of the immune system that recognise these foreign invaders and trigger that wider immune response. A recent study has shown that sleep enhanced the efficiency of T-cell responses to foreign invaders, thus promoting better immune function.

Proteins known as cytokines are also part of the body's immune response to infection. As well as recognising an infection is taking hold, cytokines send messages to uninfected cells telling them to prepare themselves for an invasion and promote enzyme production that helps fight off the infection.

Studies have shown that cytokines not only work best during sleep, but are actually produced when a person is asleep. This links to the ancient advice that people need to rest when they are unwell as doing so not only conserves energy but also helps the body to fight off the infection.

Other studies have shown that people who sleep more also have better reactions to vaccines. That is, they have better immunity to the disease the vaccine was given for than those who are sleep deprived. This has been shown for flu vaccines and for the hepatitis B vaccine.

It will be difficult during Ramadan to maintain the eight hours of continuous sleep recommended by experts, but there are ways around it.

If you are struggling to get your usual amount of sleep at night during Ramadan, you can make up for the lost hours through the day. This may involve taking naps or being creative.

Because of lockdown, many people are working from home now so it may be possible to go back to bed for another hour after suhoor as there is no longer a commute to work.

If you find yourself getting sleepy during the day, then take a 20 to 30-minute nap in a quiet, darkened room for the best effects.

Sleep quality may be affected by what you eat. The temptation to over-indulge with unhealthy food when it is time to break the fast can result in the consumption of calorie-loaded, sugar-heavy food. These can reduce your quality of sleep at night. So, as hard as it may be, try to balance these out with healthier alternatives.

It is clear that sleep has numerous benefits, including helping to ward off infections. But will better sleep help in our body's defence against the coronavirus?

This is a new disease, so it is impossible to say for sure just yet. However, given all the evidence that having a good night sleep does help your immune system recognise and fight off any infection, it certainly can't hurt when it comes to battling coronavirus.

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/f...leep-ramadan-coronavirus-200425090109950.html
 
Accepting, suffering or resisting: study groups Britons' response to coronavirus lockdown

Britons can be broadly split into three groups by their response to the coronavirus lockdown: those accepting the situation, those suffering as a result of it and those resisting it, analysis published by King’s College London showed on Monday.

The government announced a nationwide lockdown to tackle the spread of the coronavirus on March 23, telling Britons to only leave home for basic necessities, to exercise once a day, for medical need, or for work if they could not work from home.

King’s analysed data from a survey of 2,250 adults carried out by Ipsos MORI in early April and found 48% could be classed as “the accepting”, 44% as “the suffering” and 9% as “the resisting”.

“The large bulk of the population are fully behind the measures, but even within this group there are clear dividing lines between those who are coping pretty well and those who are really suffering,” said Bobby Duffy, Director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London.

“Nearly all of this suffering group have felt more anxious and depressed, and six in 10 are losing sleep.”

The study found young people were most likely to be in the resisting group, which was 64% male, and 55-75 year-olds were the biggest proportion of the accepting. While those suffering were more evenly spread across the age groups, nearly two-thirds were women.

The accepting were more likely to have voted for Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Conservatives and supported Brexit, King’s said, whereas the resisting were more likely to have backed the opposition Labour Party and remaining in the EU.

King’s found 93% of the suffering said they were following lockdown rules completely or nearly all the time, compared to just 49% of the resisting. The latter were around 10 times more likely than the other groups to say they had met up with friends or family outside their home.

The government has been accused of being slow to respond to the spread of the virus, although ministers have argued that they followed scientific advice.

The accepting had the most confidence in the government’s handling of the outbreak, while the suffering were most likely to think Britain acted too slowly.

The resisting were around six times more likely than other groups to think too much fuss was being made about the risk of the virus and were also the most likely to believe false of unlikely claims about it, King’s said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...esponse-to-coronavirus-lockdown-idUSKCN2280UJ
 
Engineers at a university in Karachi have come up with a prototype of a ventilator to help Pakistan deal with the outbreak.

The team at NED University of Engineering and Technology are putting the ventilator through its final tests - clinical trials are likely to start this week before it goes into production.

The man behind the initiative, Dr Riazuddin, told BBC Urdu his device meets international standards: it can be run in both invasive and non-invasive situations on ICU patients.”

Pakistan has confirmed more than 12,500 coronavirus cases so far and 269 deaths. Officials warn the virus could spread rapidly during the holy month of Ramadan, which began at the weekend.
 
Coronavirus Lingers in Air of Crowded Spaces, New Study Finds

The new coronavirus appears to linger in the air in crowded spaces or rooms that lack ventilation, researchers found in a study that buttresses the notion that Covid-19 can spread through tiny airborne particles known as aerosols.

At two hospitals in Wuhan, China, researchers found bits of the virus’s genetic material floating in the air of hospital toilets, an indoor space housing large crowds, and rooms where medical staff take off protective gear. The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Research, didn’t seek to establish whether the airborne particles could cause infections.

The question of how readily the new virus can spread through the air has been a matter of debate. The World Health Organization has said the risk is limited to specific circumstances, pointing to an analysis of more than 75,000 cases in China in which no airborne transmission was reported.

But as the virus fans across the globe and infections near 3 million, scientists are trying to understand exactly how contamination occurs.

People produce two types of droplets when they breathe, cough or talk. Larger ones drop to the ground before they evaporate, causing contamination mostly via the objects on which they settle. Smaller ones -- those that make up aerosols -- can hang in the air for hours.

The researchers, led by Ke Lan of Wuhan University, set up so-called aerosol traps in and around two hospitals in the city that was home to the pandemic’s first steps.

They found few aerosols in patient wards, supermarkets and residential buildings. Many more were detected in toilets and two areas that had large crowds passing through, including an indoor space near one of the hospitals.

Especially high concentrations appeared in the rooms where medical staff doff protective equipment, which may suggest that particles contaminating their gear became airborne again when masks, gloves and gowns are removed.

The findings highlight the importance of ventilation, limiting crowds and careful sanitation efforts, the researchers said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...gers-in-air-of-crowded-spaces-new-study-finds
 
Italy, UK explore possible COVID-19 link to child inflammatory disease

Italian and British medical experts are investigating a possible link between the coronavirus pandemic and clusters of severe inflammatory disease among infants who are arriving in hospital with high fevers and swollen arteries.

Doctors in northern Italy, one of the world’s hardest-hit areas during the pandemic, have reported extraordinarily large numbers of children under age 9 with severe cases of what appears to be Kawasaki disease, more common in parts of Asia.

In Britain, doctors have made similar observations, prompting Health Secretary Matt Hancock to tell a coronavirus news briefing on Monday that he was “very worried” and that medical authorities were looking at the issue closely.

In the United States, a leading paediatric society says it has yet to see something similar.

Kawasaki disease, whose cause is unknown, often afflicts children aged under 5 and is associated with fever, skin rashes, swelling of glands, and in severe cases, inflammation of arteries of the heart. There is some evidence that individuals can inherit a predisposition to the disease, but the pattern is not clear.

England’s national medical director, Stephen Powis, told the British briefing he had become aware of reports of severely ill children with Kawasaki-like symptoms in the past few days but stressed it was too early to determine a link with the coronavirus.

“I’ve asked the national clinical director for children and young people to look into this as a matter of urgency. ... We’re not sure at the moment,” Powis said.

In Italy, paediatricians are also alarmed.

A hospital in the northern town of Bergamo has seen more than 20 cases of severe vascular inflammation in the past month, six times as many as it would expect to see in a year, said paediatric heart specialist Matteo Ciuffreda.

Ciuffreda, of the Giovanni XXIII hospital, said only a few of the infants with vascular inflammation had tested positive for the new coronavirus, but paediatric cardiologists in Madrid and Lisbon had told him they had seen similar cases.

He has called on his colleagues to document every such case to determine if there is a correlation between Kawasaki disease and COVID-19. He aims to publish the results of the Italian research in a scientific journal.

‘MULTI-ORGAN INFLAMMATION’

Ciuffreda said his first case of apparent Kawasaki disease was a 9-year-old boy who came to the hospital on March 21, at the peak of the coronavirus outbreak, with high fever and low blood oxygen levels. He tested negative for the coronavirus.

A scan showed the child had an enlarged coronary artery, a hallmark of severe cases of Kawasaki disease, he said.

“The little boy worried me a lot, with a violent multi-organ inflammation affecting both heart and the lungs,” Ciuffreda said. “I feared he wouldn’t survive, but surprisingly, in the course of a few days, he took a positive turn and he got better.”

Kawasaki disease was anecdotally linked 16 years ago to another known coronavirus, though it was never proven. The research was carried out after another, related coronavirus known as NL63 was found in a baby showing symptoms of Kawasaki disease in 2004.

Ian Jones, professor of virology at the University of Reading in Britain, said the NL63 virus uses the same receptor as the new coronavirus to infect humans, but he also stressed it was too early to draw conclusions.

“We just have to wait and see if this becomes a common observation,” he said.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has yet to see something similar in the United States, which has the greatest number of coronavirus infections and deaths.”We are not aware of any reports of this phenomenon in the United States,” Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, who chairs the academy’s committee on infectious disease, said in an email, referring to a potential link between COVID-19 and Kawasaki-type symptoms.

Dr. Sean O’Leary, a paediatric infectious diseases expert at Children’s Hospital Colorado who is part of that AAP committee, said his hospital has seen several cases of Kawasaki this year, but none in the more than 30 children admitted for COVID-19.

“Even if it is related, is a very rare complication,” he said. “If it were more common, we’d already have a pretty good idea about it in the United States.”
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...k-to-child-inflammatory-disease-idUSKCN2292JM
 
Britain's defence laboratory will test whether a product found in insect repellent can also be used to kill the strain of coronavirus that causes COVID-19, Sky News has learned.

Citriodiol is known to be effective at destroying certain types of coronavirus, so the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is exploring its use against the strain behind the COVID-19 pandemic.

Scientists at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) at Porton Down have been asked to conduct studies to provide further evidence, a spokesperson said.

Citriodiol is known to be effective at destroying certain types of coronaviruses so the Ministry of Defence is exploring its use against the strain behind the global pandemic.
Image:
Citriodiol is used in the insect repellent Mosi Guard and others
"Further work is required to determine its full effectiveness, acquisition and distribution," the MoD spokesperson added.

Sky News revealed last week that some soldiers are already being issued with Mosi Guard, a type of insect repellent that contains citriodiol, as part of "enhanced force health protection measures" during the crisis.

Priority will be given to personnel who are involved in operational roles and troops who are supporting the government's effort to tackle coronavirus, according to military sources.

Use is optional, not obligatory, and the spray would be in addition to social distancing, handwashing and wearing personal protective equipment.

"Citriodiol is known to have anti-viral properties and has been used as a barrier against the SARS 1 virus," the spokesperson said, referring to the strain that caused the 2003 epidemic.

"Its utility for protecting against COVID-19 is therefore being explored by the Ministry of Defence as an additional protective measure for personnel working on the response."

The issuing of insect repellent has triggered curiosity among MPs.

Two opposition defence spokespeople and the chair of the Defence Select Committee have written separately to Defence Secretary Ben Wallace to request further details.

Stewart McDonald of the Scottish National Party has asked to see the evidence the MoD relied upon to start issuing the insect repellent.

According to a copy of his letter, he said: "If this is based on science, it is vital that the evidence is made public and all frontline workers are given the same advice.

"If there is no evidence that it will be effective, then the MoD must explain why this product is being issued, creating a false sense of security and putting lives at risk.

"Clarity on this matter is of the greatest urgency."

Jamie Stone of the Liberal Democrats said that transparency was vital.

According to a copy of his letter, he wrote: "The over-riding point is that if your decision has been taken on the basis of sound scientific evidence, then why are other frontline workers not also being provided with citriodiol?"

The MP has also submitted a formal question to the Ministry of Defence, asking for the evidence to be made public. The department must reply by 4 May.

John Healey, Labour's shadow defence secretary, is understood to have submitted a question to the MoD about the use of citriodiol as well.

In his letter, Tobias Ellwood, a senior Conservative MP and chair of the Defence Select Committee, asked the defence secretary to confirm troops had been issued with insect repellent and, if so, how many.

He also asked whether DSTL was involved in any testing of the product.

The former defence minister added: "Are there plans to issue citriodiol to other essential workers, such as those in the NHS?"
Citrefine International Ltd, the company that makes citriodiol, welcomed the news that defence scientists would be testing the product.

Citriodiol stays on the skin for several hours, meaning it could provide a longer period of protection than soap and water if proven to be an effective barrier, according to Jacqueline Watson, managing director of the small, Leeds-based firm.

She said the company had been calling for government support for a testing programme.

"I can understand why people are sceptical," Ms Watson told Sky News in an interview.

"They are right we don't have data against this particular virus.

"However there is data against other coronaviruses. And, I am certainly not an expert in this area, but having talked to experts, there is good reason to think it may well work against this. But that is why it is just so important to get it tested really thoroughly at a specialist laboratory."

She described how citriodiol had been proven to breakdown the envelope around other coronaviruses, killing the disease.

The product would not guard against inhalation but could kill the virus on a person's skin before it could be transferred anywhere else.

If its utility against the pandemic is proven, Ms Watson said her company would like to work with the government on how best it could be deployed.

"It is not necessarily going to utilised across the country - in homes, for example - but it could well be used on the front line or as people start to be able to go out and about," she said.

Citriodiol is made from oil from the leaves and twigs of the eucalyptus citriodora tree, which is found in Asia, South America and Africa.

It is used in the insect repellent Mosi Guard and others.

It is understood that only insect repellent containing citriodiol and not containing deet is regarded as having the potential of any kind of utility against the novel coronavirus.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...-repellent-ingredient-kills-covid-19-11980303
 
A leading candidate for a Covid-19 vaccine has shown promising results in animal trials, and is expected to see mass production in India within months.

The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest maker of vaccines by volume, said on Tuesday that it plans this year to produce up to 60 million doses of a potential vaccine developed by the University of Oxford, which is under clinical trial in Britain.

While the vaccine candidate, called “ChAdOx1 nCoV-19”, is yet to be proven to work against Covid-19, Serum decided to start manufacturing it as it had shown success in animal trials and had progressed to tests on humans, Serum Chief Executive Adar Poonawalla said.

Full article here: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/3081981/coronavirus-oxford-vaccine-effective-monkeys-heading-mass

Serum Institute is investing a few million dollars into the pre-production of this vaccine. Hopefully the investment pays off. If successful we could start having immunization treatments in hotspots starting September.
 
UK pledges £1.5bn for Covid-19 vaccine research

The UK government has pledged more than £1.5bn over the next five years as part of international efforts to find a Covid-19 vaccine.

International Development Secretary Anne-Marie Trevelyan told MPs the UK would contribute the equivalent of £330m a year for the next five years to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance - formerly the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation.

First Secretary Dominic Raab later said the government will seek to vaccinate "all of the people here in the UK" as well as supporting the "most vulnerable and poorest countries" in immunising their populations.
 
Coronavirus: How India will play a major role in a Covid-19 vaccine


Half a dozen Indian companies are developing vaccines for coronavirus

India is among the largest manufacturer of generic drugs and vaccines in the world. It is home to half a dozen major vaccine makers and a host of smaller ones, making doses against polio, meningitis, pneumonia, rotavirus, BCG, measles, mumps and rubella, among other diseases.


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-52363791
 
India exports 50 million hydroxychloroquine tablets to U.S. for COVID-19 fight: source

NEW DELHI/AHMEDABAD (Reuters) - India has shipped 50 million tablets of hydroxychloroquine to the United States, an Indian source with direct knowledge of the exports said, although U.S. regulators warned the anti-malarial drug may have harmful side effects in the treatment of COVID-19.

The trade, India’s biggest export of the drug to any country, follows a request by U.S. President Donald Trump for New Delhi to release supplies of hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment for the respiratory disease.

“It amounts to 50 million tablets... Commercial companies are pursuing. It’s ongoing,” said the source, who declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of discussions with the United States.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Union’s drug regulator and the Canadian health department have cautioned against the use of hydroxychloroquine, citing side effects such as abnormal heart rhythms and a dangerously rapid heart rate.

However, the health warnings have done little to deter the drug’s imports to the United States, where some doctors are continuing to prescribe the drug for the treatment of COVID-19.

“There is high demand for hydroxychloroquine in the international market including U.S.,” Viranchi Shah, senior vice-president, Indian Drug Manufacturers Association (IDMA), told Reuters.

This month India said it would allow some exports of hydroxychloroquine after Trump touted it as a “game changer” and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to send supplies.

In Modi’s home state of Gujarat, 68 new licences have been issued to drugmakers to manufacture hydroxychloroquine formulations, H.G. Koshia, commissioner, Food and Drug Control Administration (FDCA), Gujarat, told Reuters.

“Majority of these licences are for exports,” he said.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, IPCA Laboratories and Cadila Healthcare are among India’s leading suppliers of hydroxychloroquine.

Cadila Healthcare recently said it was ramping up production tenfold to 30 metric tonnes per month.

Sales of the decades-old treatment had soared overnight after Trump’s advocacy of the drug, raising questions whether political pressure had overridden scientific criteria in the crisis.

As the U.S. coronavirus death toll topped 60,000 on Wednesday - the highest in the world - doctors in the United States are desperate for anything that might alter the course of the disease, which attacks the lungs and can shut down other organs in severe cases.

“Pharma companies in Gujarat are continuing to produce and export hydroxychloroquine in large quantities,” IDMA’s Shah said.

The foreign ministry said India was continuing to supply hydroxychloroquine, and other essential medicines produced in India, to other countries. These supplies were taking place both on a humanitarian and a commercial basis.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-for-covid-19-fight-source-idUSKBN22C2LN?il=0
 
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence agencies are debunking a conspiracy theory, saying they have concluded that the new coronavirus was “not manmade or genetically modified” but say they are still examining a notion put forward by the president and aides that the pandemic may have resulted from an accident at a Chinese lab.

The statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the clearinghouse for the web of U.S. spy agencies, comes as President Donald Trump and his allies have touted the as-yet-unproven theory that an infectious disease lab in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Chinese outbreak, was the source of the global pandemic, which has killed more than 220,000 people worldwide.

In recent days the Trump administration has sharpened its rhetoric on China, accusing the geopolitical foe and vital trading partner of failing to act swiftly enough to sound the alarm to the world about the outbreak or to stop the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19. U.S. officials have said the Chinese government should “pay a price” for its handling of the pandemic.

The new statement says, “The Intelligence Community also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.”

“The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.”

Trump on Thursday again blamed China for not doing enough to contain the coronavirus.

“We just got hit by a vicious virus that should never have been allowed to escape China,” he said during an Oval Office meeting with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

Earlier this month, Trump addressed the lab theory saying, “More and more, we’re hearing the story.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added at the time, “The mere fact that we don’t know the answers — that China hasn’t shared the answers — I think is very, very telling.”

Pompeo also pressed China to let outside experts into the lab “so that we can determine precisely where this virus began.”

While Trump and Pompeo have made public statements speculating about the lab, a U.S. intelligence official disputed the notion that there was any pressure on agencies to bolster a particular theory. The intelligence official was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue and spoke only on condition of anonymity.

Scientists say the virus arose naturally in bats. Even so, Pompeo and others have pointed fingers at an institute that is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It has done groundbreaking research tracing the likely origins of the SARS virus, finding new bat viruses and discovering how they could jump to people.

“We know that there is the Wuhan Institute of Virology just a handful of miles away from where the wet market was,” Pompeo said two weeks ago. The institute has an address 8 miles, or 13 kilometers, from the market that is considered a possible source.

U.S. officials say the American Embassy in Beijing flagged concerns about potential safety issues at the lab in Wuhan in 2018, but they have yet to find any evidence the virus originated there nearly two years later.

The Chinese government said Thursday that any claims that the coronavirus was released from a laboratory are “unfounded and purely fabricated out of nothing.”

Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang cited the institute’s director, Yuan Zhiming, as saying the lab strictly implements bio-security procedures that would prevent the release of any pathogen.

“I would like to point out again that the origin of the virus is a complex scientific issue, and it should be studied by scientists and professionals,” Geng said.

Geng also criticized U.S. politicians who have suggested China should be held accountable for the global pandemic, saying they should spend their time on “better controlling the epidemic situation at home.”

But a Chinese government spokesman, Zhao Lijian, demonstrated that China was not above sowing confusion in the face of the pandemic. He tweeted in March the falsehood that the virus might have come from the U.S. Army.

Trump, whose early response to the outbreak has been questioned, also pushed back on news reports that he was repeatedly warned about the virus by intelligence agencies. Trump said he was given the first intelligence briefing in “later January.” Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar also briefed Trump on the threat by phone on Jan. 18.

https://apnews.com/c9499f7b8ab2ae70...Twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">BREAKING: A UAE research institute has developed a breakthrough treatment for COVID-19 which could be a game-changer in the global fight against the virus. 1/5</p>— هند مانع العتيبة Hend Al Otaiba (@hend_mana) <a href="https://twitter.com/hend_mana/status/1256194232383156225?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Abu Dhabi Stem Cells Center (ADSCC) has developed an innovative method which involves extracting stem cells from a patient’s blood and reintroducing them into the lungs via inhalation of a mist, regenerating lung cells and preventing the immune system from overreacting. 2/5</p>— هند مانع العتيبة Hend Al Otaiba (@hend_mana) <a href="https://twitter.com/hend_mana/status/1256194343527989249?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The treatment has already successfully undergone an initial phase of clinical trials - with 73 patients making full recoveries without any adverse side effects. The recipients were moderately or severely ill before treatment, with many intubated in an ICU. 3/5</p>— هند مانع العتيبة Hend Al Otaiba (@hend_mana) <a href="https://twitter.com/hend_mana/status/1256195170841890816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">More trials are being conducted and we should have a clearer understanding of the treatment’s potential in the coming weeks, but it could have a significant impact on our ability to live with the virus until a vaccine is available. 4/5</p>— هند مانع العتيبة Hend Al Otaiba (@hend_mana) <a href="https://twitter.com/hend_mana/status/1256195280321552385?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The ADSCC effort is one of around 60 significant studies in the UAE aiming to produce COVID-19 treatments and improve testing, in line with the UAE Government’s determination to mobilize the country’s resources towards overcoming the virus. 5/5</p>— هند مانع العتيبة Hend Al Otaiba (@hend_mana) <a href="https://twitter.com/hend_mana/status/1256195418955943938?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
Abdullah719 said:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">BREAKING: A UAE research institute has developed a breakthrough treatment for COVID-19 which could be a game-changer in the global fight against the virus. 1/5</p>— هند مانع العتيبة Hend Al Otaiba (@hend_mana) <a href="https://twitter.com/hend_mana/status/1256194232383156225?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Abu Dhabi Stem Cells Center (ADSCC) has developed an innovative method which involves extracting stem cells from a patient’s blood and reintroducing them into the lungs via inhalation of a mist, regenerating lung cells and preventing the immune system from overreacting. 2/5</p>— هند مانع العتيبة Hend Al Otaiba (@hend_mana) <a href="https://twitter.com/hend_mana/status/1256194343527989249?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The treatment has already successfully undergone an initial phase of clinical trials - with 73 patients making full recoveries without any adverse side effects. The recipients were moderately or severely ill before treatment, with many intubated in an ICU. 3/5</p>— هند مانع العتيبة Hend Al Otaiba (@hend_mana) <a href="https://twitter.com/hend_mana/status/1256195170841890816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">More trials are being conducted and we should have a clearer understanding of the treatment’s potential in the coming weeks, but it could have a significant impact on our ability to live with the virus until a vaccine is available. 4/5</p>— هند مانع العتيبة Hend Al Otaiba (@hend_mana) <a href="https://twitter.com/hend_mana/status/1256195280321552385?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The ADSCC effort is one of around 60 significant studies in the UAE aiming to produce COVID-19 treatments and improve testing, in line with the UAE Government’s determination to mobilize the country’s resources towards overcoming the virus. 5/5</p>— هند مانع العتيبة Hend Al Otaiba (@hend_mana) <a href="https://twitter.com/hend_mana/status/1256195418955943938?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 1, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Click to expand...

Can this be taken seriously? No disrespect to UAE but they really dont have history for ground-breaking science research.
 
Scientists working for the US military have designed a new Covid-19 test that could potentially identify carriers before they become infectious and spread the disease, the Guardian has learned.

In what could be a significant breakthrough, project coordinators hope the blood-based test will be able to detect the virus’s presence as early as 24 hours after infection – before people show symptoms and several days before a carrier is considered capable of spreading it to other people. That is also around four days before current tests can detect the virus.

The test has emerged from a project set up by the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) aimed at rapid diagnosis of germ or chemical warfare poisoning. It was hurriedly repurposed when the pandemic broke out and the new test is expected to be put forward for emergency use approval (EUA) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) within a week.

“The concept fills a diagnostic gap worldwide,” the head of Darpa’s biological technologies office, Dr Brad Ringeisen, told the Guardian, since it should also fill in testing gaps at later stages of the infection. If given FDA approval, he said, it had the potential to be “absolutely a gamechanger”.
 
U.S. emergency approval broadens use of Gilead's COVID-19 drug remdesivir

Gilead Science Inc’s (GILD.O) antiviral drug remdesivir was granted emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for COVID-19 on Friday, clearing the way for broader use of the drug in more hospitals around the United States.

During a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House with President Donald Trump, Gilead Chief Executive Daniel O’Day called the move an important first step and said the company was donating 1.5 million vials of the drug to help patients.

The donation is expected to be enough for at least 140,000 patients, depending on the number of days they need to be treated.

Gilead said on Wednesday the drug, which is given by intravenous infusion, had helped improve outcomes for patients with COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, and provided data suggesting it worked better when given earlier in the course of infection.

With many countries reeling from the coronavirus pandemic, interest in Gilead’s drug has been high because there are currently no approved treatments or preventive vaccines for COVID-19. Doctors are desperate for anything that might alter the course of the disease that attacks the lungs and can shut down other organs in extremely severe cases.

Data released this week from a trial by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States showed that remdesivir reduced hospitalization stays by 31% compared to a placebo treatment, but did not significantly improve survival.

Gilead did not immediately respond to a request for the price it plans to charge for the drug after its pledged donations are used up. The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, which assesses effectiveness of drugs to determine appropriate prices, put the cost of producing a 10-day course of remdesivir at $10, but suggested that the price would rise to $4,500 based on patient benefits shown in clinical trials.

Remdesivir was previously available only for patients enrolled in clinical trials or for patients cleared to get the drug under expanded use and compassionate use programs. Through Gilead’s trials, more than 181 hospital locations around the world, including hospitals in 27 U.S. states, have been administering the drug.

The FDA authorization applies to patients hospitalized with severe COVID-19 who require oxygen supplementation.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said the 1.5 million vials would start being distributed to hospitals on Monday.

Gilead said the federal government will coordinate the donation and distribution of remdesivir to hospitals in cities hardest hit by COVID-19. Citing the drug’s limited supply, the company said hospitals with intensive care units and other hospitals that the government deems most in need will receive priority.

There have been more than 3.2 million people infected by the novel coronavirus worldwide and over 232,800 dead, according to a Reuters tally.

The United States has the most cases and casualties at more than 1 million and at least 63,200 with much of the country in lockdown to contain the spread of the virus.

The recent clinical data has raised hopes remdesivir might be an effective treatment.

A draft study abstract released inadvertently by the World Health Organization (WHO) last week said remdesivir failed to improve patients’ condition or reduce the pathogen’s presence in the bloodstream. The drugmaker said the findings were inconclusive because the study was terminated early.

Remdesivir, which previously failed as a treatment for Ebola, is being tried against COVID-19 because it is designed to disable the mechanism by which certain viruses, including the new coronavirus, make copies of themselves and potentially overwhelm their host’s immune system.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ileads-covid-19-drug-remdesivir-idUSKBN22D69R
 
Scientists working for the US military have designed a new Covid-19 test that could potentially identify carriers before they become infectious and spread the disease, the Guardian has learned.

In what could be a significant breakthrough, project coordinators hope the blood-based test will be able to detect the virus’s presence as early as 24 hours after infection – before people show symptoms and several days before a carrier is considered capable of spreading it to other people. That is also around four days before current tests can detect the virus.

The test has emerged from a project set up by the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) aimed at rapid diagnosis of germ or chemical warfare poisoning. It was hurriedly repurposed when the pandemic broke out and the new test is expected to be put forward for emergency use approval (EUA) by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) within a week.

“The concept fills a diagnostic gap worldwide,” the head of Darpa’s biological technologies office, Dr Brad Ringeisen, told the Guardian, since it should also fill in testing gaps at later stages of the infection. If given FDA approval, he said, it had the potential to be “absolutely a gamechanger”.

Source Guardian
 
King-Misbah said:
Can this be taken seriously? No disrespect to UAE but they really dont have history for ground-breaking science research.
Click to expand...

More details needed on what the treatment really is? How does it work? What are the side effects?

And random double blind trails to really see the efficacy, then we can say that this works.

Lots of steps still to go. Potentially stem cells are very effective but they are difficult to implement on a wide scale.
 
US authorises use of anti-viral drug Remdesivir

The US's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has authorised emergency use of the Ebola drug remdesivir for treating the coronavirus.

The authorisation means the anti-viral drug can now be used on people who are hospitalised with severe Covid-19.

A recent clinical trial showed the drug helped shorten the recovery time for people who were seriously ill.

However, it did not significantly improve survival rates.

Experts have warned the drug - which was originally developed to treat Ebola, and is produced by Gilead pharmaceutical company in California - should not be seen as a "magic bullet" for coronavirus.

The drug interferes with the virus's genome, disrupting its ability to replicate.

During a meeting with US President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, Gilead Chief Executive Daniel O'Day said the FDA authorisation was an important first step.

The company would donate 1.5 million vials of the drug, he said.

FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn also said at the meeting: "It's the first authorised therapy for Covid-19, so we're really proud to be part of it."

Emergency FDA authorisation is not the same as formal approval, which requires a higher level of review.

What do we know about remdesivir?

The drug did not cure Ebola, and Gilead says on its website: "Remdesivir is an experimental medicine that does not have established safety or efficacy for the treatment of any condition." Gilead also warns of possible serious side-effects.

However, President Trump has been a vocal supporter of remdesivir as a potential treatment for the coronavirus.

In its clinical trial, whose full results are yet to be released, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) found that remdesivir cut the duration of symptoms from 15 days down to 11.

The trials involved 1,063 people at hospitals around the world - including the US, France, Italy, the UK, China and South Korea. Some patients were given the drug and others were given a placebo (dummy) treatment.

Dr Anthony Fauci who runs NIAID, said that remdesivir had "a clear-cut, significant, positive effect in diminishing the time to recovery".

However, although remdesivir may aid recovery - and possibly stop people having to be treated in intensive care - the trials did not give any clear indication whether it can prevent deaths from coronavirus.

As much remains uncertain about the treatment regime, Gilead suggests a 10-day dosing duration for patients on ventilators and five days for patients who are not.

Could other countries use remdesivir?
The FDA's jurisdiction does not stretch overseas so the authorisation only applies to US. Experts also stressed that the emergency use is not the same as full approval.

Gilead says it is currently using up existing stocks of the drug, and the supply is limited. The US government will co-ordinate distribution of remdesivir to hospitals in US cities most heavily impacted by Covid-19.

So it is not clear how much of the drug could be distributed worldwide, nor at what price.

Gilead says it is donating 1.5 million individual doses of remdesivir, which "equates to more than 140,000 treatment courses that will be provided at no cost". The emergency distribution in the US is included in that.

But worldwide there are more than three million confirmed cases, in 185 countries.

Gilead says it is striving to expand production rapidly, with global partners.

The company aims to produce at least 500,000 treatment courses by October, 1 million treatment courses by December 2020 and millions more in 2021, if required.

The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, a US body which studies drug prices, estimated the cost of a 10-day course of remdesivir at $10 (£8), but suggested a cost-effective price could be as much as $4,500, based on the clinical trials.

Dr Michael Head, a senior research fellow in global health at the University of Southampton, said the move "shows the importance of exploring the use of existing therapeutics when new pathogens emerge".

"This is an important step in options available to clinicians to treat those hospitalised with Covid-19. The data shows that many hospitalised patients will die, so although the effectiveness of remdesivir is limited, it may be a useful addition as an option for treatment."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52511270
 
UK hospital trials blood plasma treatment for COVID-19

LONDON (Reuters) - A top British hospital will use blood plasma treatment for COVID-19 patients as part of a trial that transfuses plasma from recovered people into sick people to give their immune systems a boost to fight the virus.

Since the novel coronavirus emerged in China late last year, it has killed more than 200,000 people worldwide and drug companies are racing to produce a vaccine though there is not yet any specific treatment.

London’s Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson said helped save his life after he fell gravely ill with COVID-19, is to test the so called “convalescent plasma” treatment as part of an international trial.

Blood plasma donations from people who have recovered from COVID-19 is transfused into sick patients whose bodies are not producing enough of their own antibodies against the virus.

“At the moment, there is no proven treatment for COVID-19,” said Dr Manu Shankar-Hari, a consultant in intensive care medicine at Guy’s and St Thomas’.

“Convalescent plasma is a promising treatment that could help patients whose bodies aren’t producing enough antibodies to curb the disease,” he said. “This trial will help us understand whether the treatment should be used more widely to treat COVID-19.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...sma-treatment-for-covid-19-idUSKBN22E0JE?il=0
 
A month ago, Blanca Reyes received the call dreaded by so many.

The hospital gave her the tragic news that her father had died. He had been diagnosed with coronavirus but it still came as a huge shock.

"'What?' I said. 'That can't be right, he was stable. This was the last update you gave me'. And then the person continued: 'No, if you are Blanca Reyes and your father... he died. Please come to the hospital.'"

Compounding her shock and grief in the weeks that have passed since, the hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador, still can't find his body.

Despite multiple phone calls and trips to the hospital, Blanca's been given no answers. A death certificate has been issued but no body to bury.

Blanca speaks with quiet anger and grief about the way she has been treated.

She suspects the government is trying to cover up the extent of its failure to handle the pandemic.

"I have some theories. One is that they didn't tell the families because they didn't want to hand over the bodies in order to hide, at the beginning, the number of COVID-19 deaths."

Authorities admitted to Sky News they have 120 bodies that have not been identified but could not account for bodies simply going missing in the system.

Blanca's story is symptomatic of a complete collapse in the city where she lives in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The nightmare we have all been dreading happened here.

The government failed the people in their hour of greatest need and the health system was overwhelmed.

It failed so badly that bodies were left to rot on the streets or in people's homes. When Cesar Galvez's father died, local authorities were too busy to take his body. They had to keep it in their home for three days.

"We were helpless... no one to turn to, everything turned hard and even more for the relatives. Imagine having there a dead body and not being able of doing anything. It is tough," said Cesar Galvez.

The city of Guayaquil has been called Latin America's Wuhan, after the Chinese city where the virus started.

It has been among the continent's worst hit.

It's thought as many as 7,000 have died in this one city alone, although official figures, which count only those who tested positive for the virus before dying, are far lower.

They are used to disposing of 50 bodies a day in normal times. As COVID-19 ravaged the city, that number rose to 500.

Poverty, disorganisation, and the failure of officials to anticipate the crisis led to dystopian scenes of bodies being collected from the streets.

Blanca waits for answers and a body to bury. She is in no doubt that the government could and should have done much more.

"The authorities did not act on time, I believe my father got sick because there was no control at all. The airports were not shut down on time.

"They did not even control the temperature of the passengers. This was known since January, first in China then Italy in February. They had two months to get ready and they did not do it."

Her lament will be familiar to so many, far beyond Ecuador.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...n-americas-wuhan-11981836?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter
 
Pharma giant Roche gets US go-ahead for Covid-19 antibody test

Swiss drug maker Roche Holding AG says it has received emergency use approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for an antibody test to help determine if people have ever been infected with the coronavirus.

Governments, businesses and individuals are seeking such blood tests to help them learn more about who may have had the disease, who may have some immunity and to potentially craft strategies to end lockdowns that have battered global economies.

Roche had previously pledged to make its antibody test available by early May and to boost production by June to “high double-digit millions” per month.
 
Scientists have discovered an antibody which prevents the coronavirus from infecting human cells in "groundbreaking research" which could lead to the development of new treatments.

Building on research into the SARS coronavirus, scientists from Utrect University in the Netherlands, as well as the Erasmus Medical Centre and the company Harbour BioMed (HBM), have identified a potential method of neutralising COVID-19.

They discovered that an antibody which prevents the SARS virus from infecting human cells could also block the novel coronavirus from infecting human cells too, according a peer reviewed study published on Monday in the journal Nature Communications.

Testing their collection of antibodies on cultured human cells, researchers discovered one which binds to a specific part which is present in both SARS and the virus causing COVID-19.

How does contact tracing app work?

The discovery could offer an initial step towards developing a fully-human antibody to treat or prevent the disease, which has infected more then 3.5 million people worldwide, and led to more than 247,000 deaths.

The neutralising antibody "has potential to alter the course of infection in the infected host, support virus clearance or protect an uninfected individual that is exposed to the virus," said Dr Berend-Jan Bosch, co-lead author on the study.

Dr Frank Grosveld, the study's other co-lead author, said the discovery provided "a strong foundation for additional research to characterise this antibody and begin development as a potential COVID-19 treatment".

"The antibody used in this work is 'fully human', allowing development to proceed more rapidly and reducing the potential for immune-related side effects," he added.

The fully-human antibody is different from conventional therapeutic antibodies, which are often first developed in other species before being "humanised" so they can be transmitted to people.

It was developed using Harbour BioMed's H2L2 transgenic mouse technology - effectively a mouse which has been genetically engineered to contain human genes, enabling researchers to develop "human" antibodies without testing them on living people.

"This is groundbreaking research," said Dr Jingsong Wang, the chief executive of HBM.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...of-antibody-which-prevents-infection-11982809
 
'Missing link' species may never be found

An "intermediate host" animal passed the coronavirus from wild bats to humans, evidence suggests.

But while the World Health Organization says that the research points to the virus's "natural origin", some scientists say it might never be known how the first person was infected.

It remains unclear whether this host animal was sold in the now infamous Wuhan wildlife market in China.

But the wildlife trade is seen as a potential source of this "spillover".

Researchers say the trade provides a source of species-to-species disease transmission, which caused previous outbreaks and has been blamed for this pandemic.

The WHO's technical lead on Covid-19, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, told the BBC's Andrew Marr show: "We were preparing for something like this as it's not a matter of if, it is a matter of when."

The spillover

Infectious disease experts agree that, like most emerging human disease, this virus initially jumped undetected across the species barrier.

Prof Andrew Cunningham, from the Zoological Society of London, explained: "We've actually been expecting something like this to happen for a while.

"These diseases are emerging more frequently in recent years as a result of human encroachment into wild habitat and increased contact and use of wild animals by people."

The virus that causes Covid-19 is far from the first case of such spillover. It joins a murky list of household name viruses - including Ebola, rabies, Sars and Mers - that have originated in wild bat populations. Some of the now extensive body of evidence about bat viruses, and their ability to infect humans, comes from searching for the source of the 2003 outbreak of Sars, a very closely related coronavirus.

It took until 2017 for scientists to discover the "rich gene pool of bat Sars-related coronaviruses" in a single cave in China.

What viruses needed in order to infect a new host is the ability to "unlock" and get inside a cell to replicate. And, like Sars, the ancestral bat coronavirus appears to have held the human cellular key. "In the case of Sars-CoV-2 the key is a virus protein called Spike and the main lock to enter a cell is a receptor called ACE2," explained Prof David Robertson, a virologist from the University of Glasgow.

"The coronavirus is not only able to fit that ACE2 lock, "it's actually doing this many times better than Sars-1 does", he said.

That perfect fit could explain why the coronavirus is so easily transmitted from person to person; its contagiousness has outpaced our efforts to contain it. But bringing the bat virus to the door of a human cell is where the trade in wildlife plays an important role.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52529830
 
Turkey's 3D-printing movement shields coronavirus workers

Istanbul, Turkey - Various sounds of whirring and beeping lead the way into a converted office in Istanbul.

Now filled with 3D printing machines and a packaging line, the space has been taken over by 3 Boyutlu Destek - meaning 3D support - in order to 3D print much-needed protective equipment for Turkey's medical staff.

3 Boyutlu Destek is a collective production movement, which started as the coronavirus pandemic hit Turkey in March.

The movement now boasts more than 3,500 volunteers spread across 81 cities in the country and about 4,500 3D printers.

Their primary production is face-shields, printing more than 25,000 in one week and then distributing to more than 250 hospitals.

Healthcare professionals are able to apply to the 3 Boyutlu Destek website in order to receive deliveries of the plastic coverings.

This volunteered assistance is welcome as Turkey has the most COVID-19 infections in the Middle East with nearly 128,000 cases, as well as more than 3,400 deaths.

On April 22, the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) announced 24 healthcare professionals died from coronavirus and 3,474 had been diagnosed with the corresponding disease, COVID-19. Of these cases, 2,005 were in Istanbul.

Immediate PPE need
The Turkish Medical Association has regularly denounced the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) not only in Turkey, but across the world.

"Personal protective equipment is one of the most vital items in the delivery of health services, and this equipment has to be supplied to healthcare workers regularly, in sufficient amounts and in proper forms," TTB stated in one of their recent news releases.

"Shortage of PPE is an unacceptable situation, and failing to supply it is itself a risk factor."

3 Boyutlu Destek co-founder Ilker Vardarli, an engineer by trade, told Al Jazeera face-shields are the most demanded product from healthcare workers across Turkey, as they provide far more protection than regular cloth masks.

"When you are using a mask, you are only saving your mouth and nose, but when you are using a shield, you are saving your skin [and eyes]. When your hands go to your head, the face-shield protects these areas," Vardarli explained.

Hospitals across Turkey were only able to provide face-shields to surgeons before the 3D printing collective commenced production, now each healthcare worker can have access to this protection by just making a request on the group's website.

The face-shield was originally designed by Prusa 3D, a Czech 3D printing company, though was fine-tuned by Turkish-based volunteers in order to cut the time it takes to print from three hours to just one and a half hours.

Adding to the fast production of face-shields is a service from the Turkish Motorcycle Platform in Istanbul. At least 250 volunteers on bikes travel to producer's homes in order to pick up the 3D-printed products, take them to the main office for packaging, and then they are on their way to hospitals for dispersal.

The 3D printer plastic - referred to as filaments - required to make the shields are also donated from supporters around the country. The entire operation is crowdsourced.

Design possibilities
While 3 Boyutlu Destek is currently focused on face-shields to meet the demands of medical workers, it has also designed and printed other equipment.

Vardarli listed a number of products the collective has experimented with, ranging from a hands-free door opener, Venturi's valves used for ventilators, and adapters to convert snorkelling masks into non-invasive ventilators.

Laryngoscopes, however, are the product healthcare workers have asked 3 Boyutlu Destek most for after face-shields. This device is placed in the patient's mouth in order to view the throat and larynx, or voice box.

"This is a really important product because they need to use it for every patient and there isn't enough time now in order to sterilise them," Vardarli explained.

The 3D-printed laryngoscope is one-time use only and takes six hours to print.

"It's not an optimal product because you can't sterilise it, but you can use it in a time of shortage," Vardarli said.

The majority of products 3 Boyutlu Destek are designing are non-invasive, otherwise, they would need to seek approval from Turkey's ministry of health.

Open-source information
The emphasis of a volunteer community and open-source information sharing is of high importance to Vardarli, particularly when facing a global pandemic.

"If you are sharing your project through an open-source community, everyone can produce your product as soon as possible, at the same time, in different cities and locations," Vardarli said.

"Our power is coming from open-source; this is a maker movement, you share what you produce."

Volunteer Deniz Derman is working eight-hour days, printing and packaging face-shields alongside writing her thesis on bio-medical engineering.

Derman agreed 3D printing and information sharing is the best solution to provide PPE in various locations in the shortest amount of time.

"Seeing as coronavirus is a global problem, open-source is the best way forward. People all over the world can make something beneficial for doctors and healthcare professionals," Derman told Al Jazeera.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020...elds-coronavirus-workers-200502200305303.html
 
UK scientific advisers' fears over antibody testing

According to documents released today, Sage - the UK government’s scientific advisory body - is worried that antibody tests may not be accurate enough to be used to clear some of the population to return to work. Here is a summary of their concerns on the potential use of antibody testing:

Some people may go back to work thinking they have immunity when they do not (due to false positives)

People may stop washing their hands as much ("There is some evidence from previous public health crises that misunderstanding test results can affect adherence to risk-reducing behaviours," the body said)

Those who a test showed were not immune might try to hide away and perhaps "seek to avoid attendance at work entirely"

The potential for discrimination by employers on the basis of antibody status, for example only taking on new staff if they had confirmed antibodies

This might prompt some people to try to seek out infection in order to fully integrate back into the workplace
 
Coronavirus: France's first known case 'was in December'

A patient treated in a hospital near Paris on 27 December for suspected pneumonia actually had the coronavirus, his doctor has said.

This means the virus may have arrived in Europe almost a month earlier than previously thought.

Dr Yves Cohen said a swab taken at the time was recently tested, and came back positive for Covid-19.

The patient, who has since recovered, said he had no idea where he caught the virus as he had not travelled abroad.

Knowing who was the first case is key to understanding how the virus spread.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says it is possible more early cases will come to light, and spokesman Christian Lindmeier urged countries to check records for similar cases in order to gain a clearer picture of the outbreak.

The French health ministry told the BBC that the government was obtaining confirmation on the case and that it would consider further investigations if they proved necessary.

France is not the only country where subsequent testing points to earlier cases. Two weeks ago, a post-mortem examination carried out in California revealed that the first coronavirus-related death in the US was almost a month earlier than previously thought.

Read more:

What do we know about the new case?

Dr Cohen, head of emergency medicine at Avicenne and Jean-Verdier hospitals near Paris, said the patient was a 43-year-old man from Bobigny, north-east of Paris.

He told the BBC's Newsday programme that the patient must have been infected between 14 and 22 December, as coronavirus symptoms take between five and 14 days to appear.

The patient, Amirouche Hammar was admitted to hospital on 27 December exhibiting a dry cough, a fever and trouble breathing - symptoms which would later become known as main indications of coronavirus.

This was four days before the WHO's China country office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown cause being detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Mr Hammar told French broadcaster BFMTV that he had not left France before falling sick. Dr Cohen said while two of the patient's children had also fallen ill, his wife had not shown any symptoms.

But Dr Cohen pointed out that the patient's wife worked at a supermarket near Charles de Gaulle airport and could have come into contact with people who had recently arrived from China. The patient's wife said that "often customers would come directly from the airport, still carrying their suitcases".

"We're wondering whether she was asymptomatic," Dr Cohen said.

Could coronavirus have been circulating in Europe in late 2019, many weeks before it was officially recognised and declared a threat there? That is the suggestion being made after a French doctor has revealed that he treated a patient in Paris with all of the symptoms of coronavirus just after Christmas.

How does this change what we know about the pandemic? It might be that the test result is an error and so does not change a thing.

But it if is correct, it could mean spread of the disease was going unchecked in Europe while all eyes were on the East in Wuhan.

Certainly, any laboratories in Europe with samples from patients sick with similar symptoms around that time might want to run a test for coronavirus to see what it reveals so that we can learn more about this new disease.

Why does it matter?

Until now, what were thought to have been the France's first three cases of coronavirus were confirmed on 24 January. Of those, two had been to Wuhan - where the outbreak was first detected - and the third was a close family member.

Mr Hammar's positive test result suggests the virus was present in France much earlier.

The first human-to-human transmission within Europe had until now thought to have been a German man who was infected by a Chinese colleague who visited Germany between 19 and 22 January.

Rowland Kao, a professor of veterinary epidemiology and data science at the University of Edinburgh, said that if confirmed, Mr Hammar's case highlighted the speed at which an infection starting in a seemingly remote part of the world could quickly seed infections elsewhere.

"It means that the lead time we have for assessment and decision-making can be very short," Prof Kao said.

How was the new case found?

Dr Cohen told the BBC that he had the idea to look back at all patients who had been in intensive care units with suspected pneumonia between 2 December and 16 January.

He found 14 patients who had tested negative for pneumonia. He defrosted their samples and tested them for traces of Covid-19.

He said that out of the 14 samples, one tested positive for traces of Covid-19. A second test on that same sample also came back positive. He added that the patient's chest scan was also compatible with the symptoms of Covid-19.

A full report was due later this week, and would be published by the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, Dr Cohen added.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52526554
 
France's early COVID-19 case may hold clues to pandemic's start

LONDON (Reuters) - A study by French scientists which suggests a man was infected with COVID-19 as early as Dec. 27, nearly a month before France confirmed its first cases, could be important in assessing when and where the new coronavirus emerged, experts said on Tuesday.

French researchers led by Yves Cohen, head of resuscitation at the Avicenne and Jean Verdier hospitals, retested samples from 24 patients treated in December and January who had tested negative for flu before COVID-19 developed into a pandemic.

The results, published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, showed that one patient - a 42-year-old man born in Algeria, who had lived in France for many years and worked as a fishmonger - was infected with COVID-19 “one month before the first reported cases in our country”, they said.

The World Health Organization said the results were “not surprising”.

“It’s also possible there are more early cases to be found,” WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier told a U.N. briefing in Geneva. He encouraged other countries to check records for cases in late 2019, saying this would give the world a “new and clearer picture” of the outbreak.

Independent experts said the findings needed more investigation.

“It’s not impossible that it was an early introduction, but the evidence isn’t conclusive by any means,” said Jonathan Ball, a professor of molecular virology at Britain’s University of Nottingham.

Stephen Griffin, an expert at the University of Leeds’ Institute of Medical Research, said it was “a potentially important finding” and added: “We must be cautious when interpreting these findings.”

Cohen told French television on Monday it was too early to know if the patient, whose last trip to Algeria had been in August 2019, was France’s “patient zero”.

But “identifying the first infected patient is of great epidemiological interest as it changes dramatically our knowledge regarding SARS-COV-2 (the new coronavirus) and its spreading in the country,” he and his co-researchers wrote in the paper detailing their findings.

They said the absence of a link with China and the lack of recent travel “suggest that the disease was already spreading among the French population at the end of December 2019”.

France, where almost 25,000 people have died from COVID-19 since March 1, confirmed its first three cases on Jan. 24, including two patients in Paris and another in the southwestern city of Bordeaux.

Rowland Kao, a professor of veterinary epidemiology and data science at Edinburgh University, said that even if it were confirmed, the identification of a positive COVID-19 in December “is not necessarily an indication that the spread of COVID-19 from France started this early”.

“If confirmed, what this case does highlight is the speed at which an infection starting in a seemingly remote part of the world can quickly seed infections elsewhere,” he said.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...y-hold-clues-to-pandemics-start-idUSKBN22H15R
 
A genetic analysis of samples from more than 7,500 people infected with Covid-19 suggests the virus spread quickly around the world late last year and is adapting to its human hosts.

A study by scientists at University College London’s (UCL) Genetics Institute found almost 200 recurrent genetic mutations of the coronavirus - SARS-CoV-2 - which the researchers said showed how it may be evolving as it spreads in people.

Francois Balloux, a UCL professor who co-led the research, said results showed that a large proportion of the global genetic diversity of SARS-CoV-2 is found in all of the hardest-hit countries. That suggests that the virus was already being transmitted extensively around the globe from early on in the epidemic.
 
Coronavirus: Heathrow airport to begin trial of temperature screening technology

Heathrow is to try out temperature screening technology to monitor people moving through the airport for signs of coronavirus.

Other measures under review include UV sanitation to quickly cleanse the trays at security and procedures to reduce person to person contact.

The thermal screening technology is the first to be trialled and will start in the next two weeks in the immigration halls of terminal 2.

It will scan people as they move through the terminal and monitor their temperature - a fever is one of the commons symptoms of the virus.

If the trial goes well, the equipment will be rolled out to other areas such as departures and connections.

Air travel has plummeted since the pandemic began with the likes of British Airways and Virgin laying off thousands of staff.

Heathrow's boss says the airport wants to help development a new international standard to help reduce the COVID-19 risk for travellers and encourage to fly again.

John Holland-Kaye told the Commons' transport committee on Wednesday: "Aviation is the cornerstone of the UK economy, and to restart the economy the Government needs to help restart aviation.

"The UK has the world's third-largest aviation sector, offering the platform for the government to take a lead in agreeing a common international standard for aviation health with our main trading partners.

"This standard is key to minimising transmission of COVID-19 across borders, and the technology we are trialling at Heathrow could be part of the solution."

Temperature screening is already being used in some other airports - Hong Kong is even testing out cleaning robots and a full-body disinfectant booth said to sanitise passengers' bodies and clothes in 40 seconds.

It comes amid doubts about whether social distancing can work properly in crowded terminals.

Mr Holland-Kaye said earlier this week that it would mean kilometre-long queues to board each jet.

Heathrow's boss warned that major UK airports simply do not have enough space.

"Forget social distancing, it won't work in aviation or any other form of public transport, and the problem is not the plane, it is the lack of space in the airport," he wrote in the Daily Telegraph.

"Just one jumbo jet would require a queue a kilometre long."

Strategies to reduce the virus risk on planes are also being considered by some airlines, with easyJet saying it plans to keep middle seats free to create more space between passengers.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...-of-temperature-screening-technology-11983947
 
Coronavirus mutations: Scientists puzzle over impact

Researchers in the US and UK have identified hundreds of mutations to the virus which causes the disease Covid-19.

But none has yet established what this will mean for virus spread in the population and for how effective a vaccine might be.

Viruses mutate - it's what they do.

The question is: which of these mutations actually do anything to change the severity or infectiousness of the disease?

Preliminary research from the US has suggested one particular mutation - D614G - is becoming dominant and could make the disease more infectious, and perhaps more severe.

But it hasn't yet been reviewed by other scientists and formally published.

The researchers, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, have been tracking changes to the "spike" of the virus that gives it its distinctive shape, using a database called the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID).

They noted there seems to be something about this particular mutation that makes it grow more quickly - but the consequences of this are not yet clear.

The research team analysed UK data from coronavirus patients in Sheffield. Although they found people with that particular mutation of the virus seemed to have a larger amount of the virus in their samples, they didn't find clear evidence that those people became sicker or stayed in hospital for longer.

'Mutations not a bad thing'
Another study from University College London (UCL) identified 198 recurring mutations to the virus.

One of its authors, Professor Francois Balloux, said: "Mutations in themselves are not a bad thing and there is nothing to suggest SARS-CoV-2 is mutating faster or slower than expected.

"So far, we cannot say whether SARS-CoV-2 is becoming more or less lethal and contagious."

A study from the University of Glasgow, which also analysed mutations, said these changes did not amount to different strains of the virus. They concluded that only one type of the virus is currently circulating.

Monitoring small changes to the structure of the virus is important in understanding the development of vaccines.

Take the 'flu virus: it mutates so fast that the vaccine has to be adjusted every year to deal with the specific strain in circulation.

Drug development
Many of the Covid-19 vaccines currently in development, target the distinctive spikes of the virus - the idea is that getting your body to recognise a unique element of the spike will help it to fight off the whole virus. But if that spike is changing, a vaccine developed this way could become less effective.

At the moment this is all theoretical. Scientists don't yet have enough information to say what changes to the virus's genome will mean.

Dr Lucy van Dorp, UCL study co-author, said being able to analyse a large number of virus genomes could be "invaluable to drug development efforts".

However, she told the BBC: "I love genomes, but there is only so much they can say."
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52557955
 
LONDON (Reuters) - A genetic analysis of samples from more than 7,500 people infected with COVID-19 suggests the new coronavirus spread quickly around the world late last year and is adapting to its human hosts, scientists said on Wednesday.

A study by scientists at University College London’s (UCL) Genetics Institute found almost 200 recurrent genetic mutations of the new coronavirus - SARS-CoV-2 - which the researchers said showed how it may be evolving as it spreads in people.

Francois Balloux, a UCL professor who co-led the research, said results showed that a large proportion of the global genetic diversity of the virus causing COVID-19 was found in all of the hardest-hit countries.

That suggests that the virus was already being transmitted extensively around the globe from early on in the epidemic.

“All viruses naturally mutate. Mutations in themselves are not a bad thing and there is nothing to suggest SARS-CoV-2 is mutating faster or slower than expected,” said Balloux. “So far, we cannot say whether SARS-CoV-2 is becoming more or less lethal and contagious.”

In a second study also published on Wednesday, scientists at Britain’s University of Glasgow who also analysed SARS-CoV-2 virus samples said their findings showed that previous work suggesting there were two different strains was inaccurate.

A preliminary study by Chinese scientists in March had suggested there may have been two strains of the new coronavirus causing infections there, with more of them more “aggressive” than the other.

But publishing their analysis in the journal Virus Evolution, the Glasgow team said only one type of the virus was circulating.

More than 3.68 million people have been reported to be infected by the novel coronavirus globally and 256,000 have died, according to a Reuters tally. Infections have been reported in more than 210 countries and territories since cases were first identified in China in December 2019.

The UCL team’s findings, published in the journal Infection, Genetics and Evolution, confirm that the virus emerged in late 2019, Balloux said, before quickly spreading across the globe.

His team screened the genomes of more than 7,500 viruses from infected patients around the world. Their results add to a growing body of evidence that SARS-CoV-2 viruses share a common ancestor from late 2019, suggesting this was when the virus jumped from a previous animal host into people.

This means it is unlikely the new virus was circulating in people for long before it was first detected, Balloux said.

A study by French scientists published earlier this week found a man there was infected with COVID-19 as early as Dec. 27, nearly a month before France confirmed its first cases.

The World Health Organization said the French case was “not surprising” and urged countries to investigate any other early suspicious cases.

Balloux said the 198 small genetic changes, or mutations, that his and other studies have identified held helpful clues for researchers seeking to develop drugs and vaccines.

“If we focus our efforts on parts of the virus that are less likely to mutate, we have a better chance of developing drugs that will be effective in the long run,” Balloux said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...iftly-around-world-in-late-2019-idUSKBN22I1E3
 
Japan approves anti-viral drug Remdesivir

Japan has authorised the use of anti-viral drug Remdesivir to treat coronavirus patients.

The government said it was also considering approving another medication Avigan this month.

Japan is the second country to approve Remdesivir for treating coronavirus patients. The medicine received authorisation in the US for emergency use last week.

A trial showed the drug, used to treat Ebola, shortened the recovery time for patients with Covid-19.
 
Modi govt request to test Ganges for virus cure declined

NEW DELHI: India’s top medical research body has turned down a proposal by the Modi government to test water from the Ganges river as a cure for coronavirus, ThePrint news portal said on Thursday.

It said the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) turned down the government’s “request” to conduct research on a theory that Gangajal, or water from Ganges river, could possibly cure Covid-19.

Speaking to ThePrint, a source in the ICMR said the agency has refused to get involved as it is focussing on the Covid-19 battle and doesn’t want to waste time on other research amid the pandemic.

The move came after the country’s apex medical research body received a “request” from the Ministry of Jal Shakti to conduct “further research” on a proposal by an NGO, Atulya Ganga, said an ICMR official, who didn’t wish to be named.

In its letter last month, Mr Atulya had cited the presence of a “ninja virus”, called bacteriophage, in Ganges water that could cure Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Bacteriophage is a special type of virus that eats harmful bacteria, the letter said.

According ThePrint, the NGO asked the government on April 3 to conduct a study on the possibility of this virus acting as a cure. It sent a copy each to the ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The ministry’s National Mission for Clean Ganga, the department administering the Modi government’s ambitious Namami Gange programme, then wrote to ICMR on April 30 requesting a clinical trial.

The ICMR then held a meeting to discuss the idea, but refused to proceed, offering only its “help” to the NGO, ThePrint said. “We had indeed received a letter from the Ministry of Jal Shakti for such research. The experts at ICMR also held a meeting on this matter. Then we asked those proposing this research that you should tell us about hospitals and doctors that are ready and willing to conduct some research on it. We will certainly help them in this regard,” said the ICMR official.

“As of now we are still treating plasma therapy as a trial for treatment for corona (Covid-19), then how can we so quickly accept a virus called bacteriophage, found in the water of Ganges, as a cure? Right now, there is no logic in the argument that the virus found in Ganga’s water can indeed fight the coronavirus disease,” added the official.

However, he added that if the ministry takes an initiative into the matter then ICMR will extend its assistance to it.

Speaking to ThePrint, Dr Rajnikant Srivastava, ICMR’s head of the Department of Research Management, Policy Planning and Communication, in Delhi and Director of Regional Medical Research Centre, Gorakhpur, said: “A presentation was made after the Jal Shakti ministry’s proposal. The matter is at a very preliminary stage. Nothing has been decided on the future course of action. We will support the Jal Shakti ministry in all the work it does on this front.”

A senior official of the Ministry of Jal Shakti, meanwhile, said there are several special properties in the river and many people were demanding research on them.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1555412/modi-govt-request-to-test-ganges-for-virus-cure-declined
 
Abdullah719 said:
Modi govt request to test Ganges for virus cure declined

NEW DELHI: India’s top medical research body has turned down a proposal by the Modi government to test water from the Ganges river as a cure for coronavirus, ThePrint news portal said on Thursday.

It said the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) turned down the government’s “request” to conduct research on a theory that Gangajal, or water from Ganges river, could possibly cure Covid-19.

Speaking to ThePrint, a source in the ICMR said the agency has refused to get involved as it is focussing on the Covid-19 battle and doesn’t want to waste time on other research amid the pandemic.

The move came after the country’s apex medical research body received a “request” from the Ministry of Jal Shakti to conduct “further research” on a proposal by an NGO, Atulya Ganga, said an ICMR official, who didn’t wish to be named.

In its letter last month, Mr Atulya had cited the presence of a “ninja virus”, called bacteriophage, in Ganges water that could cure Covid-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Bacteriophage is a special type of virus that eats harmful bacteria, the letter said.

According ThePrint, the NGO asked the government on April 3 to conduct a study on the possibility of this virus acting as a cure. It sent a copy each to the ministry and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The ministry’s National Mission for Clean Ganga, the department administering the Modi government’s ambitious Namami Gange programme, then wrote to ICMR on April 30 requesting a clinical trial.

The ICMR then held a meeting to discuss the idea, but refused to proceed, offering only its “help” to the NGO, ThePrint said. “We had indeed received a letter from the Ministry of Jal Shakti for such research. The experts at ICMR also held a meeting on this matter. Then we asked those proposing this research that you should tell us about hospitals and doctors that are ready and willing to conduct some research on it. We will certainly help them in this regard,” said the ICMR official.

“As of now we are still treating plasma therapy as a trial for treatment for corona (Covid-19), then how can we so quickly accept a virus called bacteriophage, found in the water of Ganges, as a cure? Right now, there is no logic in the argument that the virus found in Ganga’s water can indeed fight the coronavirus disease,” added the official.

However, he added that if the ministry takes an initiative into the matter then ICMR will extend its assistance to it.

Speaking to ThePrint, Dr Rajnikant Srivastava, ICMR’s head of the Department of Research Management, Policy Planning and Communication, in Delhi and Director of Regional Medical Research Centre, Gorakhpur, said: “A presentation was made after the Jal Shakti ministry’s proposal. The matter is at a very preliminary stage. Nothing has been decided on the future course of action. We will support the Jal Shakti ministry in all the work it does on this front.”

A senior official of the Ministry of Jal Shakti, meanwhile, said there are several special properties in the river and many people were demanding research on them.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1555412/modi-govt-request-to-test-ganges-for-virus-cure-declined
Click to expand...

Dawn and its lies.

A NGO asked for the research. As per norms,water resources ministry forwarded it to ICMR.
 
US child's death may be linked to Covid-19

A boy in New York state has become possibly the first US child to die from an illness that researchers say may be related to Covid-19.

The illness has been compared to toxic shock syndrome and Kawasaki syndrome. Both diseases are rare but can cause fatal fevers.

On Friday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo told reporters that the five-year old's death was being investigated by the department of health.

“This is every parent’s nightmare, right? That your child may actually be affected by this virus. But it’s something that we have to consider seriously now,” Cuomo said, adding that 73 children had been infected in the state.

“While rare, we’re seeing some cases where children affected with the Covid virus can become ill with symptoms similar to the Kawasaki disease or the toxic shock-like syndrome.”
 
Karachi woman with Covid-19 gives birth, baby tests negative

In the second case of its kind in Karachi, a woman who was diagnosed with Covid-19 last week gave birth to a healthy baby boy on Saturday, and the baby has initially tested negative for the virus, officials said.

The 35-year-old mother was registered with the hospital at Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) Ojha campus. She was tested for the virus after she started showing symptoms last week.

After her test returned positive, special arrangements were made for the baby's delivery, according to a DUHS spokesperson.

The baby was born on Saturday through a scheduled caesarian section and weighed 3.1 kilogrammes at birth. The patient's previous two children were also born via C-section, according to the DUHS.

The mother and the baby were both doing well, the hospital administration said, adding that the newborn was immediately shifted to the children's unit of the hospital and his samples were taken to ascertain whether he was infected with the novel coronavirus.

In the evening, "the newborn's initial coronavirus test came back negative," Prof Saeed Khan said, adding that blood samples of the baby had also been taken to test for Covid-19 anti-bodies.

Further diagnostic tests of the baby are being carried out, Khan told Dawn.

The woman's husband and other family members have not been infected with the virus.

In late April, another woman who had recently tested positive for the coronavirus had given birth at the Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital in Karachi. The hospital management had at the time said both the newborn and the mother were in stable condition, according to a news report by The Express Tribune.

In February, Chinese doctors had said pregnant women infected with the new coronavirus may be able to pass it to their unborn children.

Doctors at the Wuhan Children Hospital said the transmission was possible after an infected coronavirus patient gave birth to a baby on February 2. The newborn was given a test 30 hours later and confirmed to have the virus, doctors said at the time.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1555799/karachi-woman-with-covid-19-gives-birth-baby-tests-negative
 
Men have high levels of enzyme key to COVID-19 infection: study

Men’s blood has higher levels than women’s of a key enzyme used by the new coronavirus to infect cells, the results of a big European study showed - a finding which may help explain why men are more vulnerable to infection with COVID-19.

Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) is found in the heart, kidneys and other organs. In COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, it is thought to play a role in how the infection progresses into the lungs.

The study, published in the European Heart Journal, also found that widely-prescribed drugs called ACE inhibitors or angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) did not lead to higher ACE2 concentrations and should therefore not increase the COVID-19 risk for people taking them.
 
The idea that the novel coronavirus originated in a laboratory continues to be pushed by some politicians, despite a lack of any scientific evidence.

A senior member of India’s government, the transport minister Nitin Gadkari, said in TV interview that “this is not a natural virus, it is an artificial virus… this is a virus from a laboratory.”

His remarks follow recent suggestions by the US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo that the virus came from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan - an accusation that state media in China has strongly rejected.

Scientific analysis indicates the virus came from animals, and was not man-made.

The BBC's science editor, Paul Rincon, reports that there's currently no evidence that any research institute in Wuhan was the source of Sars-CoV-2 (which causes Covid-19)

A US study of the coronavirus genome published in March found no signs it had been engineered.
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Graphic on how a type of antibody produced by llamas could be useful in the fight against SARS-CoV-2<a href="https://twitter.com/AFPgraphics?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AFPgraphics</a> <a href="https://t.co/4581IoNriZ">pic.twitter.com/4581IoNriZ</a></p>— AFP news agency (@AFP) <a href="https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1260738661408104448?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 14, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
A test to find out whether people have been infected with coronavirus in the past has been approved by health officials in England.

Public Health England said the antibody test, developed by Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche, was a "very positive development".

The blood test looks for antibodies to see if a person has already had the virus and might now have some immunity.

Until now, officials have said such tests are not reliable enough.

The government previously spent a reported £16m buying antibody tests which later proved to be ineffective.

Sources told the BBC the Roche test was the first one to offer serious potential.

Antibodies are made by our immune system as it learns to fight an infection.

Finding antibodies that attack the coronavirus show that person has been infected in the past, but they do not prove they are protected against it in the future.

Experts at the government's Porton Down facility evaluated the Roche test last week, Public Health England said, and found it to be "highly specific".

Health minister Edward Argar said the tests would mainly be used on those in the NHS and social care settings to begin with.

He could not give an exact date for when the testing could start.

Prof John Newton, national coordinator of the UK coronavirus testing programme, said: "This is a very positive development because such a highly specific antibody test is a very reliable marker of past infection.

"This in turn may indicate some immunity to future infection, although the extent to which the presence of antibodies indicates immunity remains unclear."

Roche is understood to be in talks with the Department of Health and Social Care about possible use by the NHS in England, though other testing products are also being assessed.

Health officials in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland make their own decisions, but are likely to follow suit if England does adopt it.

The test already has approval from medical regulators in the EU and the United States.
 
UK discusses Covid-19 'health certificate'

This could be one topic asked about in the government briefing that's about to begin.

An antibody test, which is expected to be rolled out across the UK, could lead to "some kind of health certificate", UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson's official spokesperson said earlier today.

The test, which can determine whether people have been infected and now might now have some immunity, has been approved in the EU and US - and now by health officials in England.

The spokesperson said: "We have talked about, in the future, the potential for some kind of health certificate related to whether or not you have antibodies."

But they stressed more information was needed on immunity and coronavirus "to better understand the potential of the test".

The World Health Organization has warned governments not to issue so-called "immunity passports" or "risk-free certificates" as a way of easing lockdowns.
 
A UK trial to see whether specialist medical sniffer dogs can detect coronavirus in humans is set to begin.

The dogs are already trained to detect odours of certain cancers, malaria and Parkinson's disease by the charity Medical Detection Dogs.

The first phase of the trial will be led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, along with the charity and Durham University.

It has been backed with £500,000 of government funding.

Innovation minister Lord Bethell said he hoped the dogs could provide "speedy results" as part of the government's wider testing strategy.

The trial will explore whether the "Covid dogs" - made up of Labradors and cocker spaniels - can spot the virus in humans from odour samples before symptoms appear.

It will establish whether so-called bio-detection dogs, which could each screen up to 250 people per hour, could be used as a new early warning measure to detect Covid-19 in the future.

The first phase will involve NHS staff in London hospitals collecting odour samples from those infected with coronavirus and those who are uninfected.

Six dogs will then go through training to identify the virus from the samples.

More than 10 years of research gathered by Medical Detection Dogs has shown the dogs can be trained to sniff out the odour of disease at the equivalent dilution of one teaspoon of sugar in two Olympic-sized swimming pools of water.

Dr Claire Guest, the charity's co-founder and chief executive, said she was "sure our dogs will be able to find the odour of Covid-19".

If that proves to be the case, the dogs will then move into a "second phase to test them in live situations, following which we hope to work with other agencies to train more dogs for deployment", she said.

Prof James Logan, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said: "Our previous work has shown that malaria has a distinctive odour, and with medical detection dogs, we successfully trained dogs to accurately detect malaria.

"This, combined with the knowledge that respiratory disease can change body odour, makes us hopeful that the dogs can also detect Covid-19."

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52686660?ocid=wsnews.chat-apps.in-app-msg.whatsapp.trial.link1_.auin
 
The World Health Organization has said it is studying a possible link between coronavirus and a rare inflammatory illness that has sickened and killed children in Europe and the United States.

In recent weeks, several countries have reported cases of children affected by an inflammatory disease with symptoms similar to those of a rare condition, called Kawasaki's disease.

"Initial reports hypothesise that this syndrome may be related to COVID-19," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing on Friday.

"It is critical to urgently and carefully characterise this clinical syndrome, to understand causality and to describe treatment interventions."

Tedros said the WHO had developed a preliminary case definition for the disease, which it has dubbed "Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children". The organisation was calling on clinicians worldwide to "be on the alert and better understand this syndrome".

Tedros's comments came after a doctor in France on Friday said a nine-year-old boy there who had tested positive for COVID-19 had died from the syndrome, marking the first such death in the country.

Similar child fatalities are being investigated in New York and London.

A London children's hospital on Wednesday said a 14-year-old boy with no underlying health conditions had died from the disease and had tested positive for the new coronavirus.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday said three children in the state had died and more than 100 cases were being investigated.

There have been 125 reported cases in France between March 1 and May 12, according to the country's public health agency. The patients' ages ranged from one to 14.

'Very rare'
WHO expert Maria Van Kerkhove told Friday's briefing the link to COVID-19 had yet to be clearly established, since some of the children with the syndrome had not tested positive for the virus.

"We need to understand if this syndrome is related to COVID-19 or not," she said. "We need all countries to be on alert for this."

WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan meanwhile said that even if the syndrome is related to COVID-19, it may not be caused by the novel coronavirus itself.

"What we don't know yet is whether those rare things that happen are associated directly to the virus ... or are we seeing also the result of the immune response to the virus," he said.

He also stressed that the syndrome impacting children appeared to be "very rare", and had only become apparent because of the swelling number of COVID-19 cases.

"It doesn't mean that the disease is changing in kids," he said.

"What it means is that when you get a very large number of children with the disease, you will see a very rare occurrence happen."

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020...nk-rare-disease-children-200515171138716.html
 
A third of coronavirus hospital patients develop dangerous blood clots

Up to 30% of patients who are seriously ill with coronavirus are developing dangerous blood clots, according to medical experts.

They say the clots, also known as thrombosis, could be contributing to the number of people dying.

Severe inflammation in the lungs - a natural response of the body to the virus - is behind their formation.

Patients worldwide are being affected by many medical complications of the virus, some of which can be fatal.

Back in March, as coronavirus was spreading across the globe, doctors started seeing far higher rates of clots in patients admitted to hospital than they would normally expect.

And there have been other surprises, including the discovery of hundreds of micro-clots in the lungs of some patients.

The virus has also increased cases of deep vein thrombosis - blood clots usually found in the leg - which can be life-threatening when fragments break off and move up the body into the lungs, blocking blood vessels.

Read more:

'Serious trouble'
Artist Brian McClure was rushed to hospital last month suffering from the pneumonia brought on by coronavirus. But soon after he arrived, he had a scan showing he was in a bigger fight for his life.

"I went for a lung screening and that showed blood clots in the lungs. I was told that was very dangerous," he said.

"That was when I really started to get worried. I got the picture that if I didn't improve then I would be in serious trouble."

He is now continuing his recovery at home.

"With a huge outpouring of data over the past few weeks I think it has become apparent that thrombosis is a major problem," says Roopen Arya, professor of thrombosis and haemostasis at King's College Hospital, London.

"Particularly in severely affected Covid patients in critical care, where some of the more recent studies show that nearly half the patients have pulmonary embolism or blood clot on the lungs."

He believes the number of critically ill coronavirus patients developing blood clots could be significantly higher than the published data in Europe of up to 30%.

The professor's blood sciences team in the hospital has been analysing samples from patients showing how coronavirus is changing their blood making it much more sticky. And sticky blood can lead to blood clots.

This change in the blood is the result of severe inflammation in the lungs, a natural response of the body to the virus.

"In severely affected patients we are seeing an outpouring of chemicals in the blood and this has a knock-on effect of activating the blood clotting," says Prof Arya.

And all this ultimately causes a patient's condition to deteriorate.

According to thrombosis expert Prof Beverley Hunt, sticky blood is having wider repercussions than just blood clots - it's also leading to higher rates of strokes and heart attacks.

"And yes sticky blood is contributing to high mortality rates," she says.

Blood thinners trial
To add to all these medical challenges, there are studies showing that the blood thinners currently being used to treat the blood clots are not always working. And ramping up doses to much higher levels risks patients suffering major bleeding which can be fatal.

The balance between treating the thrombosis and causing bleeds is "a precarious one", according to Prof Arya.

But there is now a big push to get medical teams from around the world to co-operate in finding the safest and most effective way of tackling the blood clot problem thrown up by the virus.

Trials are under way to find a standard dosage of blood thinners to be used in all countries.

However, some experts believe there could be another solution: finding a way to reduce the acute inflammation in the lungs which leads to the creation of sticky blood, the source of the problem.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52662065
 
Large antibody study planned across US

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is planning a nationwide study to track how coronavirus is spreading across the US.

The study using blood samples from up to 325,000 people will test for antibodies which show that people have previously contracted coronavirus.

Researchers will take samples over the course of 18 months. The study should help researchers understand where outbreaks have spread in the US and if the immune system response changes over time.

There have been more than 90,000 coronavirus-related deaths in the US and more than 1.5 million cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
 
NE China COVID-19 cases have longer incubation and show different symptoms to Wuhan cases: expert

An expert from the National Health Commission (NHC) said that the confirmed COVID-19 cases in Northeast China's Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces have different characteristics from those in Hubei Province.

Qiu Haibo, an expert from the medical treatment group under the NHC, said on Tuesday on a TV program on China Central Television that based on the gene sequencing, most of the cases in Jilin and Heilongjiang were completely consistent with the imported cases, but not quite the same as those found in Hubei.

According to Qiu, the cases in Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces have a long incubation period, and their clinical symptoms are not typical. In many cases, the patients do not have fever, but do suffer from fatigue or sore throat. Some patients have no symptoms, resulting in family clusters.

Qiu noted that Wuhan's patients suffered not only lung damage, but also myocardial, renal and intestinal damage. However, the cases in Northeast China which are related to imported cases mainly showed lung damage, with very slight damage to the heart, kidney or intestines.

He also noted that the cases in Northeast China have a longer period for carrying the coronavirus. Nucleic acid tests on Wuhan patients usually came back negative within a week or at most two weeks after the patient showing symptoms. However, this time period was longer for patients in Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces.

However, the curative effect is better in Northeast China provinces, said Qiu, and the proportion of severe cases in Heilongjiang and Jilin is lower than that in Wuhan.

The local government in Northeast China's Shulan, which comes under the administration of Jilin city in Jilin Province, announced on Tuesday that all local residents who have returned from Russia this year must register their personal information with residential communities and undergo free nucleic acid testing.

Jilin city, currently the center of a new outbreak, reported four domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases on Tuesday, bringing the total number of domestic cases in Jilin Province to 133, with 25 cases remaining under treatment in Jilin city.

https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1188898.shtml
 
It is not a bird, a plane or Superman: the aircraft humming in the skies above Colombia's capital Bogota are instead police drones that are meant to detect people with high temperatures or those violating the country's coronavirus quarantine.
 
A 10-minute home saliva test for coronavirus is under development in a deal struck between the billionaire co-founder of online fashion brand BooHoo and a Cambridge-based firm.

The antigen test, which would be available to buy, will look similar to a pregnancy test but will use a saliva sample rather than urine, and is designed to give a result within 10 minutes:
 
Children 'half as likely to catch coronavirus'

Children and adolescents are half as likely to catch the coronavirus, the largest review of the evidence shows.

The findings, by UCL and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, will feed into the debate about how schools are reopened.

Children also appear less likely to spread the virus, but the team said there was still uncertainty on this.

The UK government is expected to publish its scientific advice on schools later.

It is already clear that children are at far less risk of becoming severely ill or dying from coronavirus.

49421f30-a469-4394-9ef4-312d26bc0657.png
 
Donated plasma benefits COVID-19 patients in small US study

Plasma from people who had recovered from COVID-19 showed improved survival rates and were less dependent on oxygen support than other similar hospital patients, according to results of a small US study.

The study, published on Friday, detailed the preliminary outcomes of 39 patients hospitalised at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York.

Nearly 70 percent of the 39 patients were on high-flow oxygen and 10 percent were on mechanical ventilation. After two weeks, the disease worsened in 18 percent of the plasma patients and 24 percent of the control patients.

As of May 1, nearly 13 percent of plasma recipients had died, compared with more than 24 percent of the control patients.

"We are encouraged that our initial assessment offers evidence in support of convalescent plasma as an effective intervention, while remaining mindful that additional studies are needed to confirm these findings and draw more definitive conclusions in different populations," said Dr Nicole Bouvier, an infectious disease specialist at Mt Sinai and the study's lead author.
 
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Pakistan Meteorological Department (PMD) today told the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) that its study had found a decline in COVID-19 transmission rate related to rise in temperature and humidity.<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NCOC?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NCOC</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Covid_19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Covid_19</a> <a href="https://t.co/nf3WcOcXkG">pic.twitter.com/nf3WcOcXkG</a></p>— Govt of Pakistan (@pid_gov) <a href="https://twitter.com/pid_gov/status/1264189962263695361?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 23, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
 
The virology lab in Wuhan, the city at the heart of the outbreak, was working on three live strains of bat coronavirus, but none of them match the one that has caused the Covid-19 pandemic, its director has said.

Wang Yanyi told Chinese state broadcaster CGTN that the closest genetic match to the virus spreading around the world was only 79.8%, adding that claims made by US president Donald Trump and others that the virus could have leaked from the facility were “pure fabrication”.

She said: “Our institute first received the clinical sample of the unknown pneumonia on December 30 last year … We didn’t have any knowledge before that, nor had we ever encountered, researched or kept the virus. In fact, like everyone else, we didn’t even know the virus existed. How could it have leaked from our lab when we never had it?”

The attempt by the laboratory to refute the claims is nevertheless likely to add more fuel to the conspiracy rumours.

The interview came amid fears the US will suffer a second wave of coronavirus infections as it opens up for summer, just days away from the grim milestone of 100,000 Covid-19 deaths.

The New York Times marked the looming threshold with a front page listing nearly 1,000 Covid-19 death notices, gleaned from hundreds of US papers. The headline spoke of an “incalculable loss”.
 
Fujifilm COVID-19 drug research spills over into June

Research into Fujifilm's Avigen drug as a potential treatment for COVID-19 will continue into June.

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe had said he hoped the drug would be approved in May if its efficacy and safety could be confirmed.

"The company will continue research into next month or so, and if an application for approval is received from the company, it will be promptly reviewed," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a regular briefing when asked about Avigan.

Suga said trials of a coronavirus vaccine could begin as early as July, raising expectations about a candidate developed by Osaka University and biopharmaceutical firm AnGes Inc .

Avigan is the subject of at least 16 trials worldwide, though there is concern the drug has been shown to cause birth defects in animal studies.
 
Punjab okays drug to treat Covid-19 patients

LAHORE: The Punjab government has approved the use of Actemra, a life-saving drug, for treating critically ill Covid-19 patients in the wake of a sudden rise in the death rate reported by state-run hospitals across the province.

The 400mg injectable drug — an interleukin-6 inhibitor which goes by the generic name of tocilizumab — will be prescribed to patients who develop lung complications and an abnormal level of IL-6 in the blood. The IL-6 is an endogenous chemical which causes inflammation.

“The price of each dose of the drug (injection) is Rs60,000 and it will be given twice to patients under treatment at an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in a life-threatening condition,” a senior official told Dawn.

He said the decision was taken at a meeting called by Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid on Wednesday.

The health department has allowed all teaching hospitals in Lahore to purchase 20 doses of the medicine.

Vice chancellors of medical universities, principals of medical colleges, members of the government’s Corona Expert Advisory Group (CEAG), leading pulmonologists and professors of medicine attended the meeting.

Dr Asad Aslam Khan, the chief executive of Lahore’s Mayo Hospital, presented a study regarding the use of the drug on critical patients in ICUs.

He told the meeting that his hospital had reported an 80-90 per cent recovery rate after doctors prescribed this drug to critical patients of Covid-19 brought there with damaged lungs and severe pneumonia.

He said one of the patients was an associate professor of medicine at the Government Shahdara Teaching Hospital, Lahore, and another was personal staff officer to the vice chancellor of King Edward Medical University.

Both were under treatment at the Mayo Hospital and the drug’s performance was promising to the extent that they had not only recovered but also left the ICU.

Endorsement

The heads of other medical institutions endorsed the use of Actemra, saying their hospitals had used it to treat coronavirus patients.

The meeting of health professionals was informed that the number of Covid-19 patients suffering from pneumonia was going up by the day, leading to a rise in the death rate in Punjab.

Another important decision taken at the meeting pertained to expansion of ICU facilities across the province.

The heads of teaching institutions were asked to expand the bed capacity in high dependency units and ICUs to cope with an expected rise in the number of coronavirus patients in Punjab.

The heads were also advised to raise the number of ventilators to 200 by May 31 and to 400 by the end of next month.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1559833/punjab-okays-drug-to-treat-covid-19-patients
 
GSK says science does not link pandemic H1N1 flu vaccine to sleep disorder

British drugmaker GSK has said that its previous flu pandemic vaccine, which used some of the same ingredients as COVID-19 vaccines currently under development, was not linked to a rise in cases of the sleep disorder narcolepsy.
A spokesman for GSK said the "science has moved on" since concerns were first raised about links between narcolepsy and its H1N1 vaccine, called Pandemrix.

Previous studies in several countries, including the UK, Finland, Sweden and Ireland, where GSK's Pandemrix vaccine was used in the 2009/2010 flu pandemic, had suggested its use was linked to a significant rise in cases of narcolepsy in children.
 
A troop of monkeys in India attacked a medical official and snatched away blood samples of patients who had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, authorities said on Friday.

The attack occurred this week when a laboratory technician was walking in the campus of a state-run medical college in Meerut, 460 km north of Lucknow, capital of Uttar Pradesh state.

“Monkeys grabbed and fled with the blood samples of four Covid-19 patients who are undergoing treatment [...] we had to take their blood samples again,” said Dr S. K. Garg, a top official at the college.

Authorities said they were not clear if the monkeys had spilled the blood samples, but people living near the leafy campus feared further spread of the virus if the monkeys carried the samples into residential areas.

Garg said it was not clear if the monkeys could contract the coronavirus if they came into contact with infected blood.

“No evidence has been found that monkeys can contract the infection,” Garg told Reuters.

The virus is believed to have jumped from animals into people in a wildlife market in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year.

India has had 165,799 cases of the coronavirus and 4,706 deaths.

Monkeys have been increasingly straying into human settlements in India and causing disturbances, even attacking people.

Environmentalists say the destruction of natural habitat is the main reason the animals move into urban areas in search of food.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1560184/m...ovid-19-patients-from-lab-technician-in-india
 
Abdullah719 said:
Punjab okays drug to treat Covid-19 patients

LAHORE: The Punjab government has approved the use of Actemra, a life-saving drug, for treating critically ill Covid-19 patients in the wake of a sudden rise in the death rate reported by state-run hospitals across the province.

The 400mg injectable drug — an interleukin-6 inhibitor which goes by the generic name of tocilizumab — will be prescribed to patients who develop lung complications and an abnormal level of IL-6 in the blood. The IL-6 is an endogenous chemical which causes inflammation.

“The price of each dose of the drug (injection) is Rs60,000 and it will be given twice to patients under treatment at an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in a life-threatening condition,” a senior official told Dawn.

He said the decision was taken at a meeting called by Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid on Wednesday.

The health department has allowed all teaching hospitals in Lahore to purchase 20 doses of the medicine.

Vice chancellors of medical universities, principals of medical colleges, members of the government’s Corona Expert Advisory Group (CEAG), leading pulmonologists and professors of medicine attended the meeting.

Dr Asad Aslam Khan, the chief executive of Lahore’s Mayo Hospital, presented a study regarding the use of the drug on critical patients in ICUs.

He told the meeting that his hospital had reported an 80-90 per cent recovery rate after doctors prescribed this drug to critical patients of Covid-19 brought there with damaged lungs and severe pneumonia.

He said one of the patients was an associate professor of medicine at the Government Shahdara Teaching Hospital, Lahore, and another was personal staff officer to the vice chancellor of King Edward Medical University.

Both were under treatment at the Mayo Hospital and the drug’s performance was promising to the extent that they had not only recovered but also left the ICU.

Endorsement

The heads of other medical institutions endorsed the use of Actemra, saying their hospitals had used it to treat coronavirus patients.

The meeting of health professionals was informed that the number of Covid-19 patients suffering from pneumonia was going up by the day, leading to a rise in the death rate in Punjab.

Another important decision taken at the meeting pertained to expansion of ICU facilities across the province.

The heads of teaching institutions were asked to expand the bed capacity in high dependency units and ICUs to cope with an expected rise in the number of coronavirus patients in Punjab.

The heads were also advised to raise the number of ventilators to 200 by May 31 and to 400 by the end of next month.
https://www.dawn.com/news/1559833/punjab-okays-drug-to-treat-covid-19-patients
Click to expand...


is that drug any good - tocilizumab
 
heres two videos i can find on youtube:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LOmYuALbSXc" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
2nd one:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LLOIhaVblKU" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 
Coronavirus: This is not the last pandemic

We have created "a perfect storm" for diseases from wildlife to spill over into humans and spread quickly around the world, scientists warn.

Human encroachment on the natural world speeds up that process.

This outlook comes from global health experts who study how and where new diseases emerge.

As part of that effort, they have now developed a pattern-recognition system to predict which wildlife diseases pose most risk to humans.

This approach is led by scientists at the University of Liverpool, UK, but it is part of a global effort to develop ways to prepare better for future outbreaks.

'We dodged five bullets'

"In the last 20 years, we've had six significant threats - SARS, MERS, Ebola, avian influenza and swine flu," Prof Matthew Baylis from the University of Liverpool told BBC News. "We dodged five bullets but the sixth got us.

"And this is not the last pandemic we are going to face, so we need to be looking more closely at wildlife disease."

As part of this close examination, he and his colleagues have designed a predictive pattern-recognition system that can probe a vast database of every known wildlife disease.

Across the thousands of bacteria, parasites and viruses known to science, this system identifies clues buried in the number and type of species they infect. It uses those clues to highlight which ones pose most of a threat to humans.

If a pathogen is flagged as a priority, scientists say they could direct research efforts into finding preventions or treatments before any outbreak happens.

"It will be another step altogether to find out which diseases could cause a pandemic, but we're making progress with this first step," Prof Baylis said.

Read more: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52775386
 
Common heartburn pill may have helped Covid-19 patients recover in US

Over-the-counter heartburn medicine Pepcid may have helped Covid-19 patients in hospitals recover in the United States, a CNN report said, citing a paper published on Friday.

The report stated that it was however unclear whether the patients fared better because of the pill or if it was just a coincidence.

“Based on what we’ve learned in this study, it’s encouraging,” said Dr Joseph Conigliaro, a co-author of the paper and a physician at Northwell Health. “This association is actually really compelling.”

Famotidine — branded as Pepcid AC — is an over-the-counter drug taken by millions of people to relieve heartburn and acid reflux. The drug has been on the market for nearly 40 years.

Researchers in the US looked at ten people who started taking the medication each day while they had the coronavirus.

Among the 1,536 patients in the study who were not taking famotidine, 332, or 22%, either died or were intubated and put on a ventilator. Among the 84 patients who were taking famotidine, 8, or 10%, died or were put on a ventilator, according to the report.

“Compared to the rest of the patients, those who received famotidine had a greater than 2-fold decreased risk of either dying or being intubated,” according to a statement by authors of the study at Columbia University Irving Medical Centre.

It’s currently not clear how famotidine might work – experts say it may directly stop the virus functioning or boost the immune system.

All of the patients had mild symptoms, suggesting it could benefit thousands who escape a severe bout of Covid-19 and stop them from ending up in hospital.

The researchers have now called for further trials into the indigestion drug, as the race for a cure to halt the pandemic continues.

The report stated that the patients who were taking famotidine started the drug within 24 hours of being admitted to the hospital. Some took it orally and some intravenously, at varying dosages. About 15% of them were already taking it at home.

The study doesn’t prove the drug caused the lower death rate — it’s possible that it’s just a coincidence.

“It is not clear why those patients who received famotidine had improved outcomes,” the authors wrote in their statement. “This is merely an association, and these findings should not be interpreted to mean that famotidine improves outcomes in patients hospitalised with Covid-19.”

Pepcid AC is the brand name for famotidine, a generic drug which can relieve the symptoms of indigestion.

The medicine belongs to a class of drugs known as histamine-2 receptor antagonists which help get rid of stomach acid.

Famotidine can be taken in doses of 20-160mg, up to four times every day, to treat acid reflux and heartburn.
https://tribune.com.pk/story/223758...pill-may-helped-covid-19-patients-recover-us/
 
U.S. Navy test shows 60 percent of carrier crew have coronavirus antibodies

A U.S. Navy investigation into the spread of the coronavirus aboard the Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier has found that about 60 percent of sailors tested had antibodies for the virus, two U.S. officials told Reuters on Monday, suggesting a far higher infection rate than previously known.

In April, the Navy and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) started conducting serology tests to look for the presence of specific antibodies that are created by the immune system’s attack response to the presence of the virus and remain in the blood for a period of time.

More than 1,100 aboard tested positive for the virus as of April, less than 25 percent of the crew.

The spread of the virus on the ship put into motion a series of events that led to the captain of the ship being relieved of his command after the leak of a letter he wrote calling on the Navy for stronger measures to protect the crew.

One sailor from the ship died from the coronavirus and several others were hospitalized. But broadly, sailors, who are generally healthier and younger, faired better than the general population and most showed no symptoms whatsoever.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that about 400 volunteers participated in the serology tests, lower than the 1,000 volunteers that were sought, but enough to provide statistically relevant data about how the virus spread aboard one of world’s largest warships.

The Roosevelt has about 4,800 personnel on the ship.

The officials said a formal announcement was expected as early as Tuesday.

The Navy declined to comment.

The serology test results appear to track closely with data from the Roosevelt in early April, which showed that 60 percent of the sailors who were testing positive for the virus itself - not antibodies - were in fact symptom-free.

Medical groups, such as the American Medical Association, have warned that serology tests can lead to false positives.

The CDC has said that definitive data is lacking on whether individuals with antibodies are protected against reinfection from the coronavirus.

In addition to the serology tests, volunteers were also swabbed again for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, as well as asked to answer a short survey.

Captain Brett Crozier was fired by the Navy’s top civilian, then-acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, against the recommendations of uniformed leaders.

Modly resigned after a series of events, including his going aboard the carrier and questioning Crozier’s character in a speech to the Roosevelt’s crew, which was leaked to the media.

The Navy has completed a broader review into the events leading to Crozier’s firing and is expected to release the results of that investigation in the coming weeks.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-h...rew-have-coronavirus-antibodies-idUKKBN23F29Z
 
Last edited:
Over half of people tested in Italy's Bergamo have COVID-19 antibodies

More than half the residents tested in Italy’s northern province of Bergamo have COVID-19 antibodies, health authorities said on Monday, citing a sample survey.

Of 9,965 residents who had blood tests between April 23 and June 3, 57% had antibodies indicating they had come into contact with the coronavirus, the survey showed.

Health authorities in Bergamo said the results were based on a “random” sample which was “sufficiently broad” to be a reliable indicator of how many people had been infected in the province, which became the epicentre of Italy’s outbreak.

In a separate statement issued later, the Bergamo health agency said that most of those in the sample were residents of the worst-hit areas. Many had already been put under quarantine, the statement added.

Antibodies were found in just over 30% of the 10,404 health operators tested although they are generally considered more at risk than other people.

In a report released in early May, national statistics institute ISTAT said the number of deaths in Bergamo was up 568% in March compared with the 2015-2019 average, making it Italy’s worst-hit city in terms of deaths.

Its hospitals were overwhelmed by infected people and, with morgues unable to keep up, convoys of army trucks carrying away the dead became a chilling symbol of the global pandemic.

Bergamo province has reported 13,609 coronavirus cases, official data showed on Monday.

ISTAT and the health ministry have launched a nationwide blood testing campaign, aiming to test a representative sample of some 150,000 people to understand the extent of Italy’s COVID-19 epidemic.

Italy has reported almost 34,000 coronavirus deaths, with some 235,000 confirmed cases. The Lombardy region, which includes Bergamo, has registered over 16,000 deaths.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-h...o-have-covid-19-antibodies-idUKKBN23F2K1?il=0
 
People with type O blood may be at a lower risk of catching coronavirus and being admitted to hospital by the disease, according to a study from 23andMe, the genetics testing company.

Preliminary data from a study of more than 750,000 participants showed that people with type O blood were 9-18 per cent less likely to have tested positive for Covid-19.

Individuals who had been exposed to the virus — including healthcare and frontline workers — were 13-26 per cent less likely to test positive, according to the data, which has not yet been peer reviewed or published in a medical journal.

The 23andMe researchers identified a variant in the ABO gene, which encodes for different blood groups, that may have been responsible for the people who tested negative being at lower risk. They said the findings were also notable because Covid-19 has been associated with blood clotting and cardiovascular disease.

“The study and recruitment are ongoing, with the hope that we can use our research platform to better understand differences in how people respond to the virus,” 23andMe said. “Ultimately, we hope to publish our research findings in order to provide more insight into Covid-19 for the scientific community.”

Researchers around the world are investigating whether genetics can provide answers to outstanding questions about Covid-19, including why some people suffer much more seriously from it than others.

23andMe is combining the database it has collected from selling direct-to-consumer genetic tests with surveys from customers. This includes information on whether they had been tested for or hospitalised by the virus and the nature of their symptoms.

The data follow two other studies, yet to be peer-reviewed, that have linked the development of the disease to the ABO gene. One in China found that the O blood group was associated with a lower risk of acquiring Covid-19.

Another, from scientists at Columbia University in New York found it was only people with the O-positive blood type that were less likely to have a confirmed case of Covid-19. The 23andMe study found no difference between the O-positive and O-negative blood types.

Before Covid-19, scientists had detected a link between blood groups and susceptibility to infection, for example, in malaria. Blood groups can be receptors for viruses, toxins or parasites — or serve as ‘false receptors’, preventing them from binding to tissue.

The effects of having type O blood were still seen when adjusted for age, gender, ethnicity, body mass index and underlying conditions. There was little variation between other blood types.

https://www.ft.com/content/587de199-add0-41d9-992e-8f329f8db047
 
Last edited:
Coronavirus: Asymptomatic transmission 'very rare'

People with coronavirus but no symptoms infecting others is "very rare", a World Health Organization scientist has said.

Although a proportion of people test positive with no symptoms, it is believed these infections are mostly not passed on.

But people can pass on the disease just before symptoms develop.

The evidence comes from countries that carry out "detailed contact tracing", Dr Maria Van Kerkhove said.

Dr Van Kerkhove, the WHO's head of emerging diseases, made the distinction between three categories:

People who never develop symptoms (asymptomatic)

People who test positive when they don't yet have symptoms - but go on to develop them (pre-symptomatic)

People with very mild or atypical symptoms who do not realise they have coronavirus

Some reports distinguish between these categories while others do not and she said this, along with the relatively small groups of people studied, make it difficult to draw firm conclusions.

But Dr Van Kerkhove said the weight of evidence suggested people who never develop symptoms do not play a significant role in passing on the virus, the WHO said.

And WHO guidance on wearing masks published at the weekend, says. "The available evidence from contact tracing reported by member states suggests that asymptomatically-infected individuals are much less likely to transmit the virus than those who develop symptoms,"

In England, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has been regularly testing a sample of the population.

It has found that, of those who have so far tested positive for Covid-19, only 29% reported "any evidence of symptoms" at the time they were tested, or at the previous or following visits.

People with symptoms 'highest risk'

A key question has been whether asymptomatic people pass on their infections on to others.

Contact-tracing studies from a number of countries suggest that while "true" asymptomatic cases "rarely transmit", infection transmission can occur before or on the day symptoms first appear when they may be very mild, according to Prof Babak Javid, an infectious diseases consultant at the University of Cambridge.

People can have detectable amounts of the virus in their system roughly three days before developing symptoms and appear to be capable to passing it on during this period, especially the day before or on the day symptoms begin.

And since people who haven't yet developed symptoms are unlikely to know that they are contagious, pre-symptomatic transmission has "important implications" for track, trace and isolation measures, Prof Javid said.

This emphasises the importance of lockdown measures in "massively reduc[ing] the numbers of people infected," said Prof Liam Smeeth, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

While people without symptoms do seem to be capable of infecting others, current evidence still suggests people with symptoms are the highest risk.

A positive result alone doesn't tell you how much of the virus someone has in their system.

And this - what is known as the viral load - along with whether an infected person is sneezing and coughing and what kind of contact they are having with other people, influences how likely they are to pass the illness on.

Dr Van Kerkhove pointed out since coronavirus "passes through infectious droplets", it is when people are coughing or sneezing that they are most able to transmit the disease.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52977940
 
A new study has linked blood group to susceptibility to coronavirus.

The data, regarded as preliminary, suggests that individuals with blood type O, the most common in the UK, are less likely to test positive for Covid-19.

The research,carried out by genetic-testing company 23andMe, echoes other studies on the blood groups of coronavirus patients.

Many teams have been investigating how genetic factors could explain why some people who contract the virus have relatively few symptoms, while others become severely ill.

Last week, a study from Italy and Spain found patients with type A blood were more likely to need oxygen or go on a ventilator. An earlier Chinese study produced similar results.

But scientists say it’s not clear whether it is blood group that influences risk, or some other genetic factor.

There are four main blood groups – A, B, AB and O - and they're determined by the genes inherited from your parents.
 
finalfantasy7 said:
2nd one:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LLOIhaVblKU" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Click to expand...

We have used this medication extensively over last 10 weeks and still using it. It works but here are we things were learnt from our experience here in USA.

1- Give this medication early in hospitalized patients if inflammatory marker and clinical course suggesting early signs of cytokine storm.
2- Do not give while patients are on steroids also.
3- Do not give a 2nd dose, even though many protocols suggesting that and many people in Pakistan also getting 2nd dose . We experienced lots of serious and fatal superadded infections with 2nd dose.

What really works in hospitalized patients with covid PNA. 4 things listed below

1-Remdesivir, where available
2-Tocilizumab
3-Antigoaglants
4-Convalescent plasma.
 
Covid-19 mutation increases chance of infection - study

A specific mutation in the new coronavirus, Covid-19, can significantly increase its ability to infect cells, according to a study by US researchers.

The research may explain why early outbreaks in some parts of the world did not end up overwhelming health systems as much as other outbreaks in New York and Italy, according to experts at Scripps Research.

The mutation, named D614G, increased the number of ‘spikes’ on the coronavirus - which give it its distinctive shape. Those spikes are what allow the virus to bind to and infect cells.

“The number - or density - of functional spikes on the virus is 4 or 5 times greater due to this mutation,” said Hyeryun Choe, one of the senior authors of the study.

The researchers say that it is still unknown whether this small mutation affects the severity of symptoms of infected people, or increases mortality.

The researchers conducting lab experiments say that more research, including controlled studies - widely considered a gold standard for clinical trials - need to be done to confirm their findings from test tube experiments.

Older research has showed that the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is mutating and evolving as it adapts to its human hosts.

The D614G mutation in particular has been flagged as an urgent concern because it appeared to be emerging as a dominant mutation.

The Scripps Research study is currently undergoing peer review.
 
Under 20s almost half as susceptible to COVID-19: Study

People under 20 are almost half as susceptible to COVID-19 as people aged 20 or above, according to new research, and clinical symptoms of the pandemic disease appear in only about a fifth of infections in children and teens.

The modelling study - published in the journal Nature Medicine - using data from 32 locations China, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Canada and South Korea, found that by contrast, COVID-19 symptoms appear in 69 percent of infections in people aged 70 or older.
 
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