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Study explores the implications of online social endorsement for encouraging Covid-19 vaccination

A third of the UK adult population intend to use social media and personal messaging to encourage people to get vaccinated against COVID-19, a new, large scale, multi-university study involving Loughborough researchers has found.

5 Apr 2021

Chemical inhibitor can reduce SARS-CoV-2's ability to infect host cell lines

James McKerrow, MD, PhD, dean of the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of California San Diego, has long studied neglected tropical diseases -- chronic and disabling parasitic infections that primarily affect poor and underserved communities in developing nations.

3 Apr 2021

Massive X-ray screening identifies several candidates for drugs against novel coronavirus

A team of researchers has identified several candidates for drugs against the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 at DESY´s high-brilliance X-ray lightsource PETRA III.

3 Apr 2021

Scientists identify nine potential new COVID-19 treatments

A team led by scientists in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has identified nine potential new COVID-19 treatments, including three that are already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treating other diseases.

2 Apr 2021

Higher B.1.1.7 transmission in households than other SARS-CoV-2 variants

Contact tracing data from a new preprint study on the medRxiv* preprint server provides further evidence that the B.1.1.7 variant — first reported in the United Kingdom — has a high transmission rate. The research, led by Birgitte Freiseleben de Blasio from the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the University of Oslo in Norway, estimates B.1.1.7 has a 60% greater transmission within households than other severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) variants of concern.

2 Apr 2021

Study finds CD8+ T cell responses detect all major SARS-CoV-2 variants

There have been concerns that several SARS-CoV-2 variants have mutations that allow them to evade the immune system. A new study published in the Open Forum Infectious Diseases suggests otherwise. Led by Aaron AR Tobian of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, results showed that except for one from the B.1.351 variant, CD8+ T cells showed a broad response to all SARS-CoV-2 variants.

2 Apr 2021

Muscle strength and mass may predict hospital stay duration in COVID-19 patients

Researchers found that COVID-19 patients with good muscle strength and higher muscle mass had a shorter stay in the hospital.

2 Apr 2021

Long-COVID-19 is a significant risk in recovered patients post-hospitalization

A new study, which appeared in the British Medical Journal, reports on a retrospective study to examine the incidence and risk factors for ‘long COVID-19’, the term used to describe the long-term effects of COVID-19 on affected individuals.

2 Apr 2021

Proper choice of control group nullifies most observed genetic markers for severe COVID-19, study suggests

A new study deals with the genetic contribution to severe disease following infection with this virus, showing that the association of severity with specific human genes described in an earlier study is not obvious.

2 Apr 2021

Researchers offer large-scale screening of potential broad-spectrum SARS-CoV-2 antivirals

A new study describes the identification of new compounds from a library, with inhibitory activity against several coronaviruses. This study shows the utility of this method, besides identifying compounds that not only inhibit viral shedding in SARS-CoV-2 cultures, but have an immunomodulatory effect that may be useful in mitigating the damaging cytokine storm typical of severe or critical COVID-19.

2 Apr 2021

Beating the pavement to vaccinate the underrepresented — and protect everyone

Leonor Garcia held her clipboard close to her chest and rapped on the car window with her knuckles. The driver was in one of dozens of cars lined up on a quiet stretch of road in Adelanto, California, a small city near the southwestern edge of the Mojave Desert.

2 Apr 2021

Battle brews over neutral zone where border-crossing parties rendezvous, risking detection and infection

In the shadows of Covid travel restrictions, a 42-acre park on the far western edge of the U.S.-Canadian dividing line has become a popular opening in an otherwise closed border, a place where Americans and Canadians can gather without needing permission to go through an official border crossing.

2 Apr 2021

Comparative study of SARS, MERS, BAT‐SARS, and SARS-CoV-2

Even though a comparative study on the genomic sequences of SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2 is available, there is a gap in the research in regards to the comparison between four types of coronaviruses, namely, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, BAT-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2. A new study, which deals with the genomic comparison between the sequence of the above-stated four types of coronaviruses, has been published in the Journal of Medical Virology.

2 Apr 2021