Pandemic News and Research

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A pandemic is a global disease outbreak. During a pandemic, transmission can be anticipated in the workplace, not only from patient to workers in health care settings, but also among co-workers in general work settings. A pandemic would cause high levels of illness, death, social disruption, and economic loss. Everyday life would be disrupted because so many people in so many places become seriously ill at the same time. Impacts could range from school and business closings to the interruption of basic services such as public transportation and food delivery.

Colorado bill aims to give farmworkers easier access to medical care

A woman with pregnancy complications needed permission from her boss to visit a doctor. Community health volunteers were turned away from delivering food and covid information to worker housing. A farmworker had a serious allergic reaction but was afraid to seek treatment.

11 Jun 2021

Scientists detect delayed and reduced antibody responses after BioNTech/Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination in older adults

Researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) detected delayed and reduced antibody and T cell responses after immunization with BNT162b2 or the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in older adults compared with healthcare workers in Germany.

11 Jun 2021

SARS-CoV-2 infection detected in a poodle living with a COVID-19 positive family

Researchers in Italy identified a case of reverse zoonosis wherein animals contract the virus from humans. The team detected SARS-CoV-2 in a healthy poodle living with four family members who had COVID-19.

11 Jun 2021

Rapid Point-of-Care Testing Using Screen-Printed Electrodes from Metrohm DropSens

Point-of-care (POC) testing with screen-printed electrodes allows rapid testing of populations for viral outbreaks – at affordable costs, without the need for trained specialists and/or complicated equipment.

From Metrohm Middle East FZC 11 Jun 2021

Children with child protection concerns are more likely to die before they their 16th birthday

Children with documented child protection concerns are four times as likely to die before they reach their 16th birthday, according to confronting new research from the University of South Australia.

11 Jun 2021

Leaders call for renewed global solidarity to eradicate polio

Today, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) will launch the Polio Eradication Strategy 2022-2026: Delivering on a Promise at a virtual event, to overcome the remaining challenges to ending polio, including setbacks caused by COVID-19.

11 Jun 2021

Largest U.S. study shares first results on effects of COVID-19 on cancer patients

In the largest study of its kind to date, researchers analyzing national data from more than 63,000 patients with cancer and a positive COVID-19 diagnosis report an increased risk of death among those who were older, male, had a higher number of comorbidities, and had hematologic cancers and recent chemotherapy treatments.

11 Jun 2021

Shark vNAR antibodies inhibit SARS-CoV-2 variants in vitro

Researchers in the UK and Austria have identified a novel class of antibodies that is highly effective at neutralizing the original strain of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-2) and maintaining blocking activity against certain viral variants that have emerged.

10 Jun 2021

Changes in community networks impact the ensuing spread of disease

The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear the importance of understanding precisely how diseases spread throughout networks of transportation. However, rigorously determining the connection between disease risk and changing networks--which either humans or the environment may alter--is challenging due to the complexity of these systems.

10 Jun 2021

New cloud technologies expand brain sciences

People often think about human behavior in terms of what is happening in the present--reading a newspaper, driving a car, or catching a football. But other dimensions of behavior extend over weeks, months, and years.

10 Jun 2021

Facemasks impair children's ability to read people's emotions

The U-Vip (Unit for Visually Impaired People) research team led by Monica Gori at the IIT- Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia has recently published a study which shows for the first time how children aged from 3 to 5 years old have problems in recognizing the emotions of people wearing surgical masks.

10 Jun 2021

Innovative protocol that processes saliva samples before testing may improve COVID-19 detection

The collection of nasopharyngeal swab (NPS) samples for COVID-19 diagnostic testing poses challenges including exposure risk to healthcare workers and supply chain constraints. Saliva samples are easier to collect but can be mixed with mucus or blood, and some studies have found they produce less accurate results.

10 Jun 2021

DFG funds 51 new projects to carry out research into epidemics and pandemics

The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft is funding more than 50 new interdisciplinary projects to carry out research into epidemics and pandemics.

10 Jun 2021

Labor department issues emergency rules to protect health care workers from Covid

Labor Department officials on Thursday announced a temporary emergency standard to protect health care workers, saying they face "grave danger" in the workplace from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

10 Jun 2021

Elimination of HIV transmission by 2030 might be within reach among MSM in England

The annual number of new HIV infections among men who have sex with men (MSM) in England is likely to have fallen dramatically, from 2,770 in 2013 to 854 in 2018, showing elimination of HIV transmission by 2030 to be within reach - suggests work by researchers from the MRC Biostatistics Unit at the University of Cambridge and Public Health England (PHE), published in The Lancet HIV.

10 Jun 2021

The longevity of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and their cross-neutralization against variants of concern

In a new study by researchers in the UK, the activity of neutralizing antibodies collected from the sera of individuals that contracted COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic is tested against variants of concern the B.1.1.7 (or UK) variant and the B.1.351 (or South African) variant, demonstrating somewhat reduced potency of neutralization towards these strains.

10 Jun 2021

Is B.1.617.2 more transmissible than earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants?

A new study, released as a preprint on the medRxiv* server, reports that the B.1.617.2 variant is possibly more transmissible than earlier variants, based on the discovery that the serial intervals were not prolonged with this strain.

10 Jun 2021

Are pre-existing Vitamin D deficiencies linked to COVID-19 severity and mortality?

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread and new variants of SARS-CoV-2 emerge, much remains to be known about why severity varies so unpredictably between individuals. A new study, released as a preprint on the medRxiv* server, elucidates the relationship between Vitamin D and COVID-19 severity.

10 Jun 2021

Could the COVID-19 vaccination rollout protect against future coronavirus outbreaks?

A new study suggests that the rollout of vaccines against the COVID-19 pandemic may be significant not only in preventing infections by SARS-CoV-2 but other endemic and pandemic-potential coronaviruses (CoVs) as well.

10 Jun 2021

Bedfont Scientific Ltd. teams up with GI Cognition to launch Hydrogen and Methane Breath Testing ‘Home Kits’ to help improve Gastric Health remotely

Bedfont presents its new Hydrogen and Methane Breath Testing Home Kits in association with GI Cognition.

From Bedfont® Scientific Ltd 10 Jun 2021

Pandemic News and Research

Further Reading

Colorado bill aims to give farmworkers easier access to medical care

Scientists detect delayed and reduced antibody responses after BioNTech/Pfizer COVID-19 vaccination in older adults

SARS-CoV-2 infection detected in a poodle living with a COVID-19 positive family

Rapid Point-of-Care Testing Using Screen-Printed Electrodes from Metrohm DropSens

Children with child protection concerns are more likely to die before they their 16th birthday

Leaders call for renewed global solidarity to eradicate polio

Largest U.S. study shares first results on effects of COVID-19 on cancer patients

Shark vNAR antibodies inhibit SARS-CoV-2 variants in vitro

Changes in community networks impact the ensuing spread of disease

New cloud technologies expand brain sciences

Facemasks impair children's ability to read people's emotions

Innovative protocol that processes saliva samples before testing may improve COVID-19 detection

DFG funds 51 new projects to carry out research into epidemics and pandemics

Labor department issues emergency rules to protect health care workers from Covid

Elimination of HIV transmission by 2030 might be within reach among MSM in England

The longevity of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and their cross-neutralization against variants of concern

Is B.1.617.2 more transmissible than earlier SARS-CoV-2 variants?

Are pre-existing Vitamin D deficiencies linked to COVID-19 severity and mortality?

Could the COVID-19 vaccination rollout protect against future coronavirus outbreaks?

Bedfont Scientific Ltd. teams up with GI Cognition to launch Hydrogen and Methane Breath Testing ‘Home Kits’ to help improve Gastric Health remotely

Best practices - optimize qPCR processes for pathogen detection eBook

Bringing real-time analytics to downstream bioprocess monitoring

Designing fluidic architecture for scalable diagnostic platforms

Evaluating new approaches for rare disease genomics

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