Hopes rise on coronavirus drug remdesivir

www.nature.com /articles/d41586-020-01295-8
Heidi Ledford
7-8 minutes
A patient at the intensive care unit receives treatment from two hospital workers in Hefei, China

Coronavirus causes severe respiratory illness in some people.Credit: Zhang Yazi/China News Service via Getty

An experimental drug — and one of the world’s best hopes against COVID-19 — could shorten the time to recovery from coronavirus infection, according to the largest and most rigorous clinical trial of the compound.

The experimental drug, called remdesivir, interferes with replication of some viruses, including the SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for the current pandemic. On 29 April, Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIAID), announced that a clinical trial of more than a thousand people showed that people taking remdesivir recovered in 11 days on average, compared to 15 days for those on a placebo.

The Science behind How Coronavirus Tests Work

Jeffery DelViscio
8-10 minutes
From Scientific American
So you think you may have COVID-19, and you want to get tested.

Your first problem might be finding a test, depending on where you live and how sick you currently are.

A recent survey conducted with administrators from 323 hospitals across the United States found...

Quote: “Hospitals reported that severe shortages of testing supplies and extended waits for test results limited hospitals’ ability to monitor the health of patients and staff....”

Adding: “... they were unable to keep up with testing demands because they lacked complete kits and/or the individual components ... used to detect the virus.”

But let’s say that you can actually get a test for COVID-19.

Will antibody tests for the coronavirus really change everything?

Smriti Mallapaty
10-13 minutes
COVID-19 coronavirus antibody test kits.
More at  www.nature.com /articles/d41586-020-01115-z
Antibody tests might be used to help stem the COVID-19 pandemic — but first must overcome several hurdles.Credit: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called them a ‘game changer’. Antibody tests have captured the world’s attention for their potential to help life return to normal by revealing who has been exposed, and might now be immune, to the new coronavirus.

Dozens of biotech companies and research laboratories have rushed to produce the blood tests. And governments around the world have bought millions of kits, in the hope that they could guide decisions on when to relax social-distancing measures and get people back to work. Some have even suggested that the tests could be used as an ‘immunity passport’, giving the owner clearance to interact with others again.

COVID-19: What we must do to prevent a global depression

Klaus Schwab Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum
12-15 minutes

No diagrams & photos, original in the link.
Without a vaccine or effective COVID-19 treatment, we could face continued infections and death until at least the end of 2020.
To prevent further spread of coronavirus, we must monitor what fraction of the population has been in contact with the virus and is potentially immune.
To prevent an economic collapse, governments will need to take on large and unprecedented roles in securing business continuity and jobs.
A few months in, it is still hard to grasp the scale and scope of COVID-19’s global impact. A third of the world population is under some sort of “lockdown.” Over 200 countries are affected, and the number of new cases and deaths in many places are still growing exponentially. All the while, a second crisis, in the form of an economic recession, is underway.

The COVID-19 vaccine development landscape

Stephen Mayhew
10-13 minutes
 (Figures and Tables ommited, for full article go here)
The genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, was published on 11 January 2020, triggering intense global R&D activity to develop a vaccine against the disease. The scale of the humanitarian and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic is driving evaluation of next-generation vaccine technology platforms through novel paradigms to accelerate development, and the first COVID-19 vaccine candidate entered human clinical testing with unprecedented rapidity on 16 March 2020.

Powerful antibiotics discovered using AI

Jo Marchant
5-6 minutes
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00018-3
Coloured scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of Escherichia coli bacteria (green) taken from the small intestine of a child.

Escherichia coli bacteria, coloured green, in a scanning electron micrograph.Credit: Stephanie Schuller/SPL

A pioneering machine-learning approach has identified powerful new types of antibiotic from a pool of more than 100 million molecules — including one that works against a wide range of bacteria, including tuberculosis and strains considered untreatable.

Amid China’s Bad Air, a Reminder That Smoking Still Kills

December 17, 2013, 2:18 am 6 Comments

The New York Times
By AUSTIN RAMZY

As the recognition of the danger of outdoor air pollution in China grows, health authorities are trying to use that knowledge to raise awareness of an even deadlier health threat: smoking. China has about 350 million smokers, and despite efforts to reduce consumption, tobacco is still widely consumed, and about half of adult males are regular smokers, according to surveys.