This week’s testimony by former CDC director Dr Robert Redfield to US Congress has reignited widespread speculation in the United States that the SARS-CoV-2 virus first emerged in a Wuhan research laboratory rather than in animals. The scientific debate about the origins of the virus took off this week just before the three-year anniversary of […] Continue reading ->
Fifty influential scientists have developed a coronavirus vaccines research and development (R&D) roadmap aimed at developing broadly protective vaccines to combat fast-evolving coronaviruses threatening humans. “The COVID-19 pandemic marks the third time in just 20 years that a coronavirus has emerged to cause a public health crisis,” said Professor Michael Osterholm, director of the University […] Continue reading ->
New research published in The Lancet suggests that individuals who have previously been infected with COVID-19 have an 88% lower risk of hospitalization or death than those who have not. The study is the most comprehensive review of data on natural immunity to date, covering data from 65 studies across 19 countries published since January […] Continue reading ->
Just 66 days after the SARS-CoV2 genetic sequence was shared by a Chinese scientist online, the first COVID-19 vaccines went into production – in record time for R&D that yielded the first approved vaccines less than a year later. But there are looming concerns that the relatively open models of data and pathogen sharing that […] Continue reading ->
A senior World Health Organization (WHO) official has emphatically denied that abandoned its investigation of the origins of the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic. The comment by Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 technical lead, was in response to a report published on Tuesday by Nature which stated that the agency has “quietly shelved” its […] Continue reading ->
The new Brazilian government under President Lula da Silva intends to propose that the World Health Organization (WHO) addresses the health of indigenous people systematically, including by training indigenous health workers. Santiago Alcazar, the former head of WHO in Brazil, told a discussion convened by the Geneva Global Health Hub (G2H2) on Monday that Brazil […] Continue reading ->
In the wake of the COVID pandemic, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Israel’s largest medical center, Sheba Medical Center, are launching a scientific collaboration aimed at identifying emerging disease threats in the region. One of the first projects planned will be a study examining the impacts on antibody defenses amongst travelers from […] Continue reading ->
Along with a pledge to conserve 30% of the world’s biodiversity, the sweeping new deal reached in Montreal on Monday also etches a way forward to create an open-access platform for sharing gene sequences (digital sequence information) as part of new benefit-sharing arrangements. But some observers worry these policy advances still aren’t keeping up with […] Continue reading ->
Schools in Shanghai closed on Monday, as did the US Embassy in Beijing while the streets of major Chinese cities are reportedly deserted as residents retreated from a wave of COVID-19 cases. In the past week, the country has officially reported over 148,000 new cases – but this is likely to be much higher as […] Continue reading ->
This month, world leaders gathered in Montreal for a major UN conference on biodiversity, aiming to reach an agreement on how to stop species loss. The Fifteenth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) – COP15 for short– has drawn tens of thousands of people. Delayed several times, it is the first […] Continue reading ->