Health & Fitness

For Catherine Noakes, a scientist who studies how pathogens move in the built environment, the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic were punctuated with a foreboding sense of frustration. That frustration was rooted in the readily accepted assumption that COVID-19 was not spreading through the air via microscopic particles called aerosols, but predominantly through larger respiratory droplets expelled among people in close proximity and falling quickly on nearby surfaces. The World Health Organization (WHO) — which sets the tone for many nations — early on denied COVID-19 was spreading through these tiny aerosols suspended in air. As evidence mounted, alongside pressure from scientists like Noakes, the agency eventually acknowledged the possibility of airborne transmission —...

There are still thousands of COVID-19 cases per day across the United States. But questions are rising about those who never caught COVID-19 — or at least those who thought they never had COVID-19. Driving the news: Dr. Zania Stamataki, a senior lecturer and researcher in viral immunology at the University of Birmingham, recently explored this topic in a piece for The Guardian. “Some people may clear the virus quickly because they have pre-existing antibodies and memory immune cells that recognize the virus,” Stamataki wrote. “There is also a possibility that different immune systems respond differently to the virus.” “It is also possible that some of us may have rare types of ACE2 that the coronavirus spike cannot stick to.” Symptoms: Dr. W...

Coronavirus Another new coronavirus variant has been identified, this one containing elements of Delta and Omicron What is Deltacron?As the portmanteau suggests, Deltacron is a Covid variant that contains elements of Delta and Omicron – in other words, it contains genes from both variants, making it what is known as a recombinant virus.“These recombinants arise when more than one variant infects and replicates in the same person, in the same cells,” says Prof Lawrence Young, a virologist at the University of Warwick. “Deltacron is a product of both the Delta and Omicron variants circulating in the same population.”This week, Gisaid, a global community of scientists that shares virus information, posted that the first solid evidence for this variant had been shared by the Pasteur Inst...

You may well have spent hours wondering what your laptop is up to as it takes its time to boot up. Scientists have asked the same question of the human brain: How exactly does it restart after being anesthetized, in a coma, or in a deep sleep?   Using a group of 30 healthy adults who were anesthetized for three hours, and a group of 30 healthy adults who weren't as a control measure, a 2021 study reveals some insights into how the brain drags itself back into consciousness. It turns out that the brain switches back on one section at a time, rather than all at once – and abstract problem-solving capabilities, as handled by the prefrontal cortex, are the functions that come back online the quickest. Other brain areas, including those managing reaction time and attention, take longer. "...

Omicron variant Children seem to be facing increasing risks as mask mandates are abandoned and vaccination rates stall Fri 11 Mar 2022 03.00 EST As many as a third of all child deaths from Covid in the US have occurred during the Omicron surge of the pandemic.Children seem to be facing increasing risks from Covid-19 even as mask mandates drop across the country, and vaccination rates among children stall out at alarmingly low rates.Florida vaccine plan for children denounced as ‘irresponsible and reckless’“We saw a massive surge of hospitalized young children during Omicron that we didn’t see in the earlier months of the pandemic,” said Jake Kane, a pediatric intensivist and associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Chicago Comer children’s hospital. Since the beginning of...

When it comes to COVID-19, what happens in the United Kingdom rarely stays in the United Kingdom — and that, in turn, rarely bodes well for the rest of the world. But the latest coronavirus news out of the U.K. might be just the opposite: a sign of hope as the United States and other countries try to put the winter’s enormous Omicron wave behind them and transition into a less disruptive and dangerous phase of the pandemic. For the first time, a person who catches COVID in England has a lower chance of dying than someone who catches the flu, according to a new analysis by the London-based Financial Times — regardless of how old the individual is. Commuters travel on a packed Transport for London Overground train service from Walthamstow, east London, to central London on March 1, durin...

The National Institutes of Health has awarded about $43 million to four academic teams developing broadly protective coronavirus vaccines. And the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a foundation that funds work on vaccines for emerging infectious diseases, has awarded up to $135.2 million to seven groups — mostly small biotech firms — developing similar shots. But despite the investment, it will likely take longer to develop pan-coronavirus vaccines than it did for the original COVID-19 shots. Get Innovation BeatBoston Globe tech reporters tell the story of the region's technology and innovation industry, highlighting key players, trends, and why they matter. Years of research on other coronaviruses enabled scientists to tailor-make those vaccines in a matter of w...

The World Health Organization announced Wednesday there’s a new hybrid COVID-19 variant that combines the delta variant and the omicron variant — but not much is known about severity or symptoms. What they found: Researchers said in a new study published on MedRxiv — ahead of peer review — that there’s a new “deltacron” variant that combines the spike protein of omicron with the “body” of the delta variant, per Reuters. What they’re saying: Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s COVID-19 technical lead, said at a press conference Wednesday “there are very low levels of detection” of the “deltacron” variant, so there shouldn’t be much concern yet, according to USA Today. William Lee, the chief science officer at Helix, told USA Today that “d...

Global health Pair join Gordon Brown and 126 others in attack on ‘self-defeating nationalism, pharmaceutical monopolies and inequality’ Thu 10 Mar 2022 19.01 EST Prince Harry and Meghan, the actor Charlize Theron and the former British prime minister Gordon Brown are among 130 signatories to a letter lambasting wealthy countries’ approach to the Covid-19 pandemic, labelling it “immoral, entirely self-defeating and also an ethical, economic and epidemiological failure”.In a strongly worded open letter published on Friday, the signatories warned “the pandemic is not over”, and said the failure to vaccinate the world was down to “self-defeating nationalism, pharmaceutical monopolies and inequality”. An estimated 20 million deaths from Covid-19 in the past two years had been “avoidable...

The mystery of how SARS-CoV-2 may cause brain fog or other neurological symptoms in some people is driving new global research. Why it matters: Roughly 79 million Americans contracted COVID-19 in the first two years of the pandemic. While most survived, many are grappling with long-term symptoms, or long COVID, that affect the brain and other body systems. "Neuro-long COVID is a very important problem in the U.S. It affects millions of people and leads to people not being able to work the way they used to, or to lose time from work," Igor Koralnik, chief of neuro-infectious diseases and global neurology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, tells Axios. There's an "urgent need" to research the disorders and develop therapies, NIH's Avindra Nath and Yale's Serena Spudich wrote in a January S...