Victims of Wuhan virus had amassed mucus in their lungs. TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The first autopsies of victims from the Wuhan virus (COVID-19) have demonstrated significant differences from those who died of the SARS epidemic, according to Chinese pulmonologist Zhong Nanshan (鍾南山). Zhong, a leading scientist in the fight against SARS and someone who has authored a study on the coronavirus, said on Tuesday (Feb. 18) that postmortems can play an important role in uncovering mysteries surrounding epidemics like SARS and the Wuhan virus. He pointed out that unlike those who perished due to SARS, autopsies of the first two deaths in the recent outbreak reveal that their lungs did not exhibit significant pulmonary fibrosis, or thickened and stiff lung tissue, reported Sina. Instead, their lungs were found to have severe inflammations and mucus buildup, which resulted in breathing difficulty.
IT / Stiinta
Biohacking is a global movement whose followers seek to 'upgrade' their bodies. Some implant chps to open doors and swap information to streamline life. Wealthy Russians are hoping to use the technology to extend their lifespan. Biohackers in Russia are embracing technology to help improve their life and increase their life expectancy as part of a growing movement. The trend of putting implants into the body is growing steadily around the world, and Russians are using microchips and monitoring technology to improve their life. Biohacking is a global movement whose followers seek to 'upgrade' their bodies with experimental technology and DIY health fixes that began in Silicon Valley. For some wealthy Russians the technology is being adapted to allow them to live longer. They use biohacking techniques to keep tabs on key 'biochemical markers' that speak to their biological age. They then
As concerns mount over the coronavirus that first emerged in China, public health officials there and around the globe have launched a massive response. The nature of that response has varied. In China, officials are trying to contain the virus. In countries that have seen local transmission, including Germany and Singapore, the goal has been to stamp out flare-ups. And in much of the world that hasn’t yet seen much spread of the virus yet, public health officials are readying a strategy in case they do. So who’s leading the charge? What follows is a list of some of the most important players, from a handful of the agencies involved. The list is hardly comprehensive. And selection is not meant to amplify these people’s importance over that of others. In fact, some of the most vital responders do not appear here: the countless frontline health care
WUHAN (CAIXIN GLOBAL) - The biggest study yet of the Covid-19 epidemic found that almost twice as many Chinese medical workers have been infected as officially reported by the government, though the research didn't turn up the source of the novel coronavirus. A team at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) studied 72,314 cases as of Feb 11, among which 44,672 were confirmed cases of coronavirus. The sweeping study was published on Monday (Feb 17) by the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology. The researchers found that 3,019 medical workers had been infected, among whom 1,688 patients were in severe or critical condition. As of Feb 11, the government acknowledged more than 1,700 medical workers nationwide as confirmed with the disease, almost 90 per cent of them in Hubei, according to Chinese
At least 550,000 cases. Maybe 4.4 million. Or something in between. Like weather forecasters, researchers who use mathematical equations to project how bad a disease outbreak might become are used to uncertainties and incomplete data, and Covid-19, the disease caused by the new-to-humans coronavirus that began circulating in Wuhan, China, late last year, has those everywhere you look. That can make the mathematical models of outbreaks, with their wide range of forecasts, seem like guesswork gussied up with differential equations; the eightfold difference in projected Covid-19 cases in Wuhan, calculated by a team from the U.S. and Canada, isn’t unusual for the early weeks of an outbreak of a never-before-seen illness. But infectious-disease models have been approximating reality better and better in recent years, thanks to a better understanding of everything from how germs behave to
The World Health Organization’s director-general cautioned Saturday that transmission of the new coronavirus outside of China may increase and countries should prepare for that possibility. “It’s slow now, but it may accelerate,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference in Geneva. “So while it’s still slow there is a window of opportunity that we should use to the maximum in order to have a better outcome, and further decrease the progress and stop it.” Tedros’s warning came after health authorities in Singapore announced they had diagnosed the infection in a man with no travel history to China and no known link to other cases in Singapore. Singaporean authorities suggested — but did not order — that large public events be canceled or deferred. If public events are held, temperature screening of attendees should be
At least 11 critically ill people have been treated with therapy, Chinese pharmaceutical company claims. TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Convalescent plasma collected from patients who have contracted the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) offers a beam of hope for effective treatment of those infected. In a statement released on Thursday (Feb. 13), Chinese pharmaceutical company Sino Biopharmaceutical Limited (Sino Biopharm) said the therapy has been used to treat 11 patients in critical condition — with promising effects, wrote ETToday. Three patients down with the virus at a hospital in the Jiangxia District of Wuhan were first to receive the plasma-based therapy on Feb. 8. Within 12 to 24 hours of the treatment, inflammation levels were reduced, the lymphocyte count elevated, and symptoms alleviated. More than 10 gravely ill cases are being treated the same way at the hospital, according to the
Ученые из Грейфсвальда и Бохума опубликовали раньше, чем планировалось, свои исследования о новом коронавирусе из Китая. Они предполагают, что вирус 2019-nCoV может жить на разных поверхностях при комнатной температуре до 9 дней. В среднем же он выживает 4-5 дней. Об этом пишет Der Tagesspiegel. Повышенная влажность и холод могут увеличить срок жизни вируса, отмечают ученые. Как пояснил Гюнтер Кампф из института Грейфсвальд, «вирус может распространяться через соприкосновение с поверхностями: в больнице это могут быть, например, дверные ручки, звонки, тумбочки, прикроватные столики и другие предметы, которыми пользуются пациенты». «Чтобы сделать такое заключение [о том, что вирус живет до 9 дней], надо было иметь выделенный вирус (как минимум 9 дней назад), подержать его на поверхности, а потом проверить,
GENEVA (BLOOMBERG) - As the number of coronavirus cases jumps dramatically in China, a top infectious-disease scientist warns that things could get far worse: Two-thirds of the world's population could catch it. So says Professor Ira Longini, an adviser to the World Health Organisation who tracked studies of the virus' transmissibility in China. His estimate implies that there could eventually be billions more infections than the current official tally of about 60,000. If the virus spreads to anywhere near that extent, it will show the limitations of China's strict containment measures, including quarantining areas inhabited by tens of millions of people. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has credited those steps with giving the rest of China and the world a "window" in which to prepare. Quarantines may slow the spread, but the virus had
LONDON/BEIJING (Reuters) - Independent scientists questioned research on Friday that suggested that the outbreak of coronavirus disease spreading from China might have passed from bats to humans through the illegal traffic of pangolins. South China Agricultural University, which said it had led the research, said on its website that the “discovery will be of great significance for the prevention and control of the origin (of the new virus)”. China’s official Xinhua news agency reported that the genome sequence of the novel coronavirus strain separated from pangolins in the study was 99% identical to that from infected people. It said the research had found pangolins - the world’s only scaly mammals - to be “the most likely intermediate host.” But James Wood, head of the veterinary medicine department at Britain’s University of Cambridge, said the research was far from robust. “The evidence for the potential
GUANGZHOU, China (Reuters) - The coronavirus outbreak is hitting a peak in China this month and may be over by April, the government’s senior medical adviser said on Tuesday, in the latest assessment of an epidemic that has rattled the world. In an interview with Reuters, Zhong Nanshan, an 83-year-old epidemiologist who won fame for combating the SARS epidemic in 2003, shed tears about the doctor Li Wenliang who died last week after being reprimanded for raising the alarm. But Zhong was optimistic the new outbreak would soon slow, with the number of new cases already declining in some places. The peak should come in middle or late February, followed by a plateau and decrease, Zhong said, basing the forecast on mathematical modelling, recent events and government action. “I hope this outbreak or this event may be over
Xiaoqiang Chai, Longfei Hu, Yan Zhang, Weiyu Han, Zhou Lu, Aiwu Ke, Jian Zhou, Guoming Shi, Nan Fang, Jia Fan, Jiabin Cai, Jue Fan, Fei Lan
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.02.03.931766
Abstract A newly identified coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, has been posing significant threats to public health since December 2019. ACE2, the host cell receptor for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS), has recently been demonstrated in mediating 2019-nCoV infection. Interestingly, besides the respiratory system, substantial proportion of SARS and 2019-nCoV patients showed signs of various degrees of liver damage, the mechanism and implication of which have not yet been determined.
The incubation period for the deadly coronavirus could be as long as 24 days, according to a study led by Zhong Nanshan, an expert on respiratory infections and the head of the health commission team investigating the outbreak. The incubation period is the time it takes between being exposed to a virus and symptoms appearing. Previously, medical experts said that coronavirus, also known as corona, had an incubation period of between two and 14 days. But the study, published on Sunday, revealed that the incubation period is between three and 24 days, meaning that more people may have coronavirus without visible symptoms than previously thought. The lethal virus has killed more than 900 people and infected more than 40,600 people globally. The death toll for the coronavirus has surpassed the 774 fatalities from the outbreak of severe acute
With the new coronavirus spreading from person to person (possibly including from people without symptoms), reaching four continents, and traveling faster than SARS, driving it out of existence is looking increasingly unlikely. It’s still possible that quarantines and travel bans will first halt the outbreak and then eradicate the microbe, and the world will never see 2019-nCoV again, as epidemiologist Dr. Mike Ryan, head of health emergencies at the World Health Organization, told STAT on Saturday. That’s what happened with SARS in 2003. Many experts, however, view that happy outcome as increasingly unlikely. “Independent self-sustaining outbreaks [of 2019-nCoV] in major cities globally could become inevitable because of substantial exportation of pre-symptomatic cases,” scientists at the University of Hong Kong concluded in a paper published in The Lancet last week. Researchers
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- Single-cell RNA expression profiling of ACE2, the putative receptor of Wuhan 2019-nCov
- Epidemiological and clinical characteristics of 99 cases of 2019 novel coronavirus pneumonia in Wuhan, China: a descriptive study