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Many countries have scaled back their coronavirus restrictions, but Iceland is going further with a plan to let infections spread Health 11 March 2022 By Clare Wilson A person cycles in Reykjavik, Iceland, on 3 September 2020 REUTERS / Alamy Like some other countries, Iceland has scrapped its remaining covid-19 restrictions. Unlike other nations, however, … Read more
Covid-19 cases are soaring in Hong Kong, and the government’s focus on testing instead of vaccinating older populations may be the reason deaths are spiking and hospitals are overwhelmed Health | Analysis 8 March 2022 By Michael Le Page Health workers at a mobile testing lab in Hong Kong Kin Cheung/AP/Shutterstock Covid-19 cases in Hong … Read more
One of the largest COVID-19 brain imaging studies to date has shed some unsettling light on the disease’s impact on our brains. Even in those with a mild or moderate case, a SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with “significant” neurological changes and loss of gray matter. The study looked at the brain scans of 785 … Read more
Three recent studies give a detailed picture of how the coronavirus pandemic began and strengthen the case that the virus came from animals at the Huanan seafood market Health | Analysis 28 February 2022 By Michael Le Page Members of the Wuhan Hygiene Emergency Response Team leave the closed Huanan seafood market in January 2020 … Read more
Medicines for long covid will probably be with us within a year, as the mechanisms behind the disease are finally starting to be understood Health 23 February 2022 By Michael Marshall Pete Reynolds LAUREN NICHOLS first fell ill on 10 March 2020. Her symptoms started with crushing fatigue, swiftly followed by headaches, brain fog … Read more
By Adam Vaughan A covid-19 vaccination site in London ANDY RAIN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock England is to end all of its remaining legal coronavirus rules – including the requirement for people with covid-19 to self-isolate – under a ‘living with covid’ plan announced today in parliament by UK prime minister Boris Johnson. The significant shift means the country … Read more
Between November 2020 and February 2021, Facebook introduced policies to cut down on misinformation related to covid-19 vaccines, but they only worked for about six months Technology 15 February 2022 By Chris Stokel-Walker As part of its policy on covid-19 misinformation, Facebook removed posts with false claims about vaccines Sipa US/Alamy Policies put in place … Read more
Israeli scientists said they found “striking” differences in the chances of getting seriously ill from COVID-19 when they compared patients who had sufficient vitamin D levels prior to contracting the disease, with those who didn’t. A study published Thursday in research journal PLOS One found that about half of people who were vitamin D deficient before getting COVID-19 … Read more
Scientists deliberately infected young, healthy volunteers with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 – and now, they’ve shared their first results from that experiment. The new study, published Tuesday (Feb. 1) in Springer Nature’s preprint database, In Review, has not yet been peer-reviewed, but it could provide insight into how mild COVID-19 unfolds, from the moment … Read more
New research gives a stark warning to richer nations that have been hoarding their supplies of COVID-19 vaccines: Doing so only has a short-term local benefit, and in the longer term leaves everyone more vulnerable to infection. Across a five-year model, scientists found that when rich countries gave away 46 percent of their COVID-19 … Read more