Biden takes charge of a divided America Conducting his campaign largely virtually from the confines of his Delaware basement, Joe Biden promised voters a return to the staid ‘normality’ that characterized Washington, DC in the pre-Trump era. While Biden’s message won out, his inauguration in January did little to heal …
Read More »Antibody neutralizing all Covid variants found, Chinese scientists claim
In a study published on Tuesday, Chinese scientists from a variety of institutions, including Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, suggested that they may have the panacea to the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors claim that monoclonal antibody 35B5 has been shown in both in vitro (laboratory …
Read More »Keep borders open despite Covid variants, WHO pleads
Avoiding shutting down borders, the WHO said, will prevent a “heavy burden on lives and livelihoods.” If restrictions are put in place, the organization warned, they should not be “unnecessarily invasive or intrusive.” “Covid-19 constantly exploits our divisions. We will only get the better of the virus if we work …
Read More »As Covid-19 variants seem to get the upper hand in the race against vaccines, 2 top scientists explain where the world went wrong
It’s been well over a year since the global fight against the coronavirus started, but matters of concern are still mounting. The growing number of infections has led to new lockdowns and mass testing, while plans to make vaccination compulsory have been causing tensions and protests. Is the fight against …
Read More »Analysts downgrade 2021 forecast for oil to $70 per barrel, predicting that coronavirus variants may cool demand recovery
According to the monthly Reuters poll, $70 per barrel looks to be a more realistic projection for Brent Crude prices for the rest of 2021, rather than the previously predicted $80 per barrel. The survey of 38 analysts suggests Brent might hover at around $68.76 per barrel – up slightly …
Read More »90-year-old Belgian woman dies after contracting two coronavirus variants at same time, researchers say
The case was reported by Belgian scientists at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, which was held online this year. A 90-year-old woman was admitted to a hospital in Aalst, Belgium in early March following several falls. She tested positive for Covid-19 the same day. She lived …
Read More »Hybrid of UK and Indian coronavirus variants found in Vietnam – health minister
“After running gene sequencing on newly detected patients, we have discovered a new variant that is a mix of India and UK ones,” Vietnam’s Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said at a government meeting on Saturday, online newspaper VnExpress reported. “More specifically, it is an Indian variant with mutations that …
Read More »Regular ‘booster’ shots will become commonplace as new variants emerge, says UK’s Covid-19 genomics chief
“We have to appreciate that we were always going to have to have booster doses; immunity to coronavirus doesn’t last forever,” Sharon Peacock, UK Covid-19 Genomics (COG-UK) chief, told Reuters at the Wellcome Sanger Institute’s Cambridge campus on Monday. Peacock, whose COG-UK programme has sequenced half of the world’s mapped …
Read More »New study finds coronavirus variants will likely evolve, escape current generation of vaccines
The study, published in Nature on March 8, warns that the current generation of vaccines and monoclonal antibody treatments may lose the arms race against the coronavirus, raising the daunting, open-ended possibility of reinfection unless vaccine rollout is greatly expedited worldwide to prevent further mutations. The study’s findings are currently …
Read More »Vaccine rollout will trigger new Covid variants, Oxford scientist warns, adding ‘new layer of complexity’ to pandemic fight
Speaking to the UK Commons Science and Technology Committee on Wednesday, Professor Sir John Bell, Oxford’s regius professor of medicine, said that the Covid-19 mutations observed so far are a result of the virus adapting to be more effective in its new hosts, humans. “Most of the variants we have …
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