LONDON: Britain approved Pfizer Inc’s COVID-19 vaccine on 2 Dec 2020, jumping ahead of the rest of the world in the race to begin the most crucial mass inoculation programme in history. Prime Minister Boris Johnson touted the green light from Britain’s medicine authority as a global win and a ray of hope for the…
USA: Moderna Inc recently said that it has applied for U.S. emergency authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine after full results from a late-stage study showed it was 94.1% effective with no serious safety concerns. A shot developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE that was 95% effective in its pivotal trial is set to be…
LONDON: Deaths from malaria due to disruptions during the coronavirus pandemic to services designed to tackle the mosquito-borne disease will far exceed those killed by Covid-19 in sub-Saharan Africa, the World Health Organisation (WHO) warned. More than 409,000 people globally – most of them babies in the poorest parts of Africa – were killed by…
A recent study has shown that aprotinin, a drug that reduces the risk of bleeding during surgery, can stop the novel coronavirus from entering host cells. The drug could serve to prevent severe cases of COVID-19, the authors say. With a number of vaccines on the way, there is now light at the end of the tunnel…
Japan: A shop in Japan has enlisted a robot to ensure customers are wearing masks, as the country prepares for a possible third wave of coronavirus infections. Robovie, developed by the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Kyoto, is able to pick out customers who aren’t wearing masks and politely ask them to cover up. It can also intervene when…
GENEVA: The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recently recorded 65 cases of the coronavirus among staff based at its headquarters, including at least one cluster of infections, an internal email obtained by this news agency shows, despite the agency’s past assertions that there has been no transmission at the Geneva site. The revelation comes amid…
LONDON: Painkiller aspirin will be evaluated as a possible treatment for COVID-19 in one of Britain’s biggest trials, which will assess whether it might reduce the risk of blood clots in people with the disease. The scientists behind the RECOVERY trial, which is looking into a range of potential treatments for COVID-19, said it would…
Munich: For a person to acquire immunity to a disease, T cells must develop into memory cells after contact with the pathogen. Until now, the number of cells that do this was believed to depend above all on the magnitude of the initial immune response. A team of researchers at the Technical University of Munich…
Denmark: Government officials recently said that a mutation in the virus could interfere with vaccine effectiveness in humans. The Danish government will slaughter millions of mink at more than 1,000 farms, citing concerns that a mutation in the novel coronavirus that has infected the mink could possibly interfere with the effectiveness of a vaccine for…
New York: Remdesivir, an antiviral drug initially developed to treat Ebola by the pharmaceutical company Gilead, has “little or no effect” on survival for people in hospital with COVID-19, a World Health Organization (WHO) trial has found. As part of its SOLIDARITY trial, WHO researchers tested the effects of four potential treatments, including antiviral drugs remdesivir and interferon-β1a, the…
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