SARS CoV 2 News and Research

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FDA authorizes first two COVID-19 serology tests

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the first two COVID-19 serology tests that display an estimated quantity of antibodies present in the individual's blood.

1 Aug 2020

Children carry 100 times more SARS-CoV-2 virus as adults, study says

As the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues to wreak havoc across the globe, it has been thought that children mostly seemed to be spared by severe illness. In the majority of cases, children infected with the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) only develop a mild illness, with some tagged as asymptomatic.

31 Jul 2020

Research suggests New York City may have reached coronavirus herd immunity threshold

A new study by researchers at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Brookhaven National Laboratory and published on the preprint server medRxiv in July 2020 discusses the effect of a factor called persistent contact heterogeneity on the final epidemic size of COVID-19.

31 Jul 2020

Air travel helped spread novel coronavirus in Brazil

Domestic and international air travel helped spread the novel coronavirus in Brazil, a study has found, as tourism bodies push for global travel to resume amid infection resurgences in some countries.

31 Jul 2020

NIH invests $248.7 million in new COVID-19 testing technologies to meet U.S. demand

The National Institutes of Health is investing $248.7 million in new technologies to address challenges associated with COVID-19 testing (which detects SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus).

31 Jul 2020

Mandatory BCG vaccination correlates with flattening of the curve in COVID-19 spread

Scientists have found that countries with mandatory Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccination until at least the year 2000 tended to exhibit slower infection and death rates during the first 30 days of the outbreak of COVID-19 in their country.

31 Jul 2020

COVID-19 rapid antibody test receives CE mark and mass production begins

The COVID-19 rapid antibody test, developed by Abingdon Health, the medical device manufacturer leading the UK-Rapid Test Consortium, has received its CE mark. This means it is approved for professional use in the UK and EU.

31 Jul 2020

Managing cancer patients during COVID-19 pandemic

An ESMO interdisciplinary expert consensus paper on how to manage cancer patients during the COVID-19 pandemic has been published today in Annals of Oncology.

31 Jul 2020

Social distancing is a useful tool in preventing further spread of COVID-19

According to researchers from The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, the implementation of social distancing policies corresponded with significant reductions in transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and reduced community mobility, both in the U.S. and globally, providing evidence that social distancing is a useful tool in preventing further spread of COVID-19.

31 Jul 2020

A cheaper and rapid pooling strategy for RT-PCR-based detection of SARS-CoV-2

In a report in the Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, published by Elsevier, researchers at Augusta University and PerkinElmer Genomics describe a cheaper, rapid, and accurate pooling strategy for the RT-PCR-based detection of SARS-CoV-2 in clinical samples.

31 Jul 2020

War of sugars - estrogen provides protection in COVID-19

Now a new study published on the preprint server bioRxiv in July 2020 reports that sex hormones could affect the function of the fusion protein that is dependent upon the human ACE2 receptor, thus preventing the entry of the virus into the host cell.

31 Jul 2020

Researchers report a liquid biopsy for COVID-19

A new study published on the preprint server medRxiv in July 2020 reports the potential of cell-free DNA as a marker of the severity of disease in COVID-19. This could help triage patients as well as provide a prognostic marker.

30 Jul 2020

Lab profiles differentiate MIS-C from severe COVID-19 in children

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 virus seemed only rarely to have serious complications in children.

30 Jul 2020

Researcher uses in silico analysis of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein to fast-track passive immunity

With millions of COVID-19 cases reported across the globe, people are turning to antibody tests to find out whether they have been exposed to the coronavirus that causes the disease. But what are antibodies? Why are they important? If we have them, are we immune to COVID-19? And if not, why not?

30 Jul 2020

CZI, CZ Biohub, and The State Of California join forces to track COVID-19 transmission

Today, the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, in partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, announced that it will provide free whole genome sequencing and analysis of the SARS-CoV-2 virus to all California Departments of Public Health and California local health jurisdictions through a newly-launched effort called the California COVID Tracker.

30 Jul 2020

From swab to sequencing - scalable method for identifying SARS-CoV-2

A research group headed by Stanford University scientists has developed a scalable, high throughput method to generate high fidelity whole genome and HLA sequencing, viral genomes, and representation of human transcriptome from single nasopharyngeal swabs of coronavirus disease (COVID19) patients. Their results are published on the medRxiv preprint server.

30 Jul 2020

Novel vaccine candidate robustly protects non-human primates against SARS-CoV-2

The development of a safe and effective vaccine will likely be required to end the COVID-19 pandemic. A group of scientists, led by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center immunologist Dan H. Barouch, MD, PhD, now report that a leading candidate COVID-19 vaccine developed at BIDMC in collaboration with Johnson & Johnson raised neutralizing antibodies and robustly protected non-human primates against SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

30 Jul 2020

Smoking worsens COVID-19 severity, warn researchers

A study conducted by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, suggests that smoking increases the risk of more severe lung disease in cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection.

30 Jul 2020

New test rapidly determines neutralizing antibodies against Sars-Cov-2

To determine immunity to Sars-Cov-2 and the effectiveness of potential vaccines, the amount of neutralizing antibodies in the blood of recovered or vaccinated individuals must be determined.

30 Jul 2020

Scientists develop human lung organoids to study SARS-CoV-2 infection

Now, a new study published on the preprint server bioRxiv in July 2020 reports the development of a human distal lung culture system that can be functionally tested. This will help not only to understand how this infection produces disease but also to test the proliferative capacity of the stem cells in this part of the body.

30 Jul 2020