"Новый возбудитель труднее поддается локализации в сравнении с аналогичными вирусами. Поэтому важным является создание вакцины. Однако большой вопрос состоит в том, не появится ли она слишком поздно", - пишет швейцарское издание Tages-Anzeiger. "Новым коронавирусом заражается все большее количество человек, и вопрос о возможной вакцине становится все более насущным. Вчера стало известно о случаях передачи вируса от человека к человеку за пределами Китая. Подтверждены несколько случаев в Японии, Вьетнаме и Германии", - сообщают авторы статьи Александра Бем и Анке Фоссгрин. "На настоящий момент Глобальная коалиция по созданию новых вакцин Cepi вложила в общей сложности 12,5 млн долларов в три проекта, в рамках которых исследователи готовы в ускоренном порядке разработать вакцину от
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There have been reports that the Wuhan coronavirus may be transmittable whilst asymptomatic. Professor Mark Woolhouse, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, University of Edinburgh “In my view it is premature to conclude, on the basis of the evidence currently available, that the new virus can be transmitted before symptoms appear. The anecdotal report from China that a single instance of asymptomatic transmission had occurred is based on the history of a single cluster of cases, it is open to alternative interpretations and there is no indication that the publicised information has been confirmed (as it could be for example, by analysis of the viral genome sequences from the patients involved). This is flimsy evidence on which to base such an important conclusion. If the National Health Commission of China have stronger evidence then it is important that they share it promptly. “In any case, this is a new virus and we are still learning about it, including how and when transmission can occur. Further, robust research on this point is urgently needed. That is because the question is crucially important. In the absence of any treatment or vaccine our main hope of controlling the epidemic is the rapid identification of cases and the immediate prevention of onward transmission through patient isolation and infection control. The efficacy of those interventions would be compromised if significant levels of transmission occurred before symptoms appeared and the patient reported to a health care facility.” Professor Bill Keevil, Professor of Environmental Healthcare, University of Southampton, said: “Since I cited the Lancaster University study suggesting an Ro of 3.6-3.8, there have been several other published estimates, one from China suggesting 3.8 and the MRC Unit in London’s very recent estimate of 2.6 (but uncertainty range 1.5-3.5). These are worryingly high numbers and support the rapidly increasingly numbers of infections. It is essential to maintain genome sequencing to understand how and how fast the virus is mutating and whether this points to development of more lethal forms. As I stressed, good containment and hygiene measures are essential, especially hand hygiene which is a principal transmission route – probably also for symptomless transmission. Wearing face masks may give a false sense of security if aerosol coughs contain submicron particles. Our paper on the related human coronavirus 229E showed it survived over 4 days on common materials such as plastics, ceramics, glass and stainless steel, making regular surface cleaning and hand hygiene paramount. Several authors have advocated everyone wearing gloves, as we do in microbiology labs, carefully removing them and then washing hands.” Professor David Heymann, Professor of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: “Virus transmission occurs when there is a high enough level of virus in the blood and body secretions of an infected person to another. Some infections can be passed from one human to another a few days before symptoms occur because there are high levels of virus and the virus then causes disease symptoms – this depends on how the virus is transmitted and that is not fully understood at present – it is known that this virus can pass from one to another through close physical contact, and more and more evidence suggests that it can be passed by droplets that spread face to face by a cough or sneeze directly on the face from one to another as was SARS. As this is a newly identified virus in humans more evidence is required to fully answer the question and that is why it is important for all contacts of persons who develop disease to be identified and observed for fever so that they can be tested if they develop a fever to determine if the fever is caused by the virus.” Prof Jonathan Ball, Professor of Molecular Virology, University of Nottingham, said: “Defining the scale of asymptomatic transmission remains key: if this is a rare event then its impact should be minimal in terms of the overall outbreak. But, if this transmission mode is contributing significantly then control becomes increasingly difficult. It’s looking like this coronavirus is behaving very differently to SARS and MERS, and this is a big concern. I would be surprised if WHO do not declare this as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.” Sunday 26th January Professor Sheila Bird, Honorary Professorship at Edinburgh University’s College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine and formerly Programme Leader at MRC Biostatistics Unit, Cambridge, said: “If transmission does occur pre-symptoms or is suspected to do so, at some point soon-ish it may be instructive & important for the Chinese health authorities to try to measure within-household transmission, taking account of household size and ages of members of the household. Little has been said as yet about the estimated fatality-rate for patients whose clinical course is completed (ie recovered alive, or deceased) but I’m sure that public health official know how important it is to do so – even if only for hospitalized cases in the first instance.” Professor Wendy Barclay, Department of Infectious Disease, Imperial College London, said; “Many of the respiratory viruses that spread amongst humans do transmit even in the absence of symptoms, including influenza and
HKU’s Professor Yuen Kwok-yung says his team is working on vaccine, having isolated virus from the city’s first imported case. Scientists in mainland China and the United States are also racing to produce a vaccine for the deadly new coronavirus. Hong Kong researchers have already developed a vaccine for the deadly Wuhan coronavirus – but need time to test it, according to infectious diseases expert Professor Yuen Kwok-yung. Scientists in mainland China and the United States were also separately racing to produce a vaccine for the new coronavirus, which has killed more than 100 people and infected thousands. Yuen, chair of infectious diseases at the University of Hong Kong, revealed that his team was working on the vaccine and had isolated the previously unknown virus from the city’s first imported case. “We have already produced the vaccine, but it will take a long time to test on animals,” Yuen said,
The outbreak of a novel coronavirus in China and its spread to more than a dozen countries has presented health experts with a rapidly evolving and complex challenge. That means there are a lot of unknowns. Here are some of the outstanding questions that doctors, scientists, and health agencies are rushing to answer. (And a reminder that, already, they’ve learned quite a lot.) When are people contagious? One of the luckiest breaks the world got with the SARS outbreak of 2002-2003 was that people weren’t contagious until they developed symptoms. The same is true of MERS. As a result, it became easier for health officials to try to limit spread once they identified a new case. Public health experts watching this outbreak unfold have been hoping 2019-nCoV, which is a member of the same virus family, would follow that pattern. Now
LONDON - Scientists and public health officials are beginning to get a better understanding of the coronavirus that has spread rapidly in China and increasingly around the world. But significant gaps remain. Important findings have emerged from scrutinising early cases of the novel coronavirus from China as health officials race to slow the spread of the pneumonia-like disease, which has infected more than 2,000 people, most of them in China. The first clinical data published on the lethal Sars-like virus suggest it has a stealthy quality in its early stages that could allow it to evade detection, Bloomberg reported. Two studies published on Friday (Jan 24) in The Lancet medical journal depict "a disease with a three to six day incubation period and insidious onset" with fever, cough and muscle pain, Dr David Heymann, an
Some infectious disease experts are warning that it may no longer be feasible to contain the new coronavirus circulating in China. Failure to stop it there could see the virus spread in a sustained way around the world and even perhaps join the ranks of respiratory viruses that regularly infect people. “The more we learn about it, the greater the possibility is that transmission will not be able to be controlled with public health measures,” said Dr. Allison McGeer, a Toronto-based infectious disease specialist who contracted SARS in 2003 and who helped Saudi Arabia control several hospital-based outbreaks of MERS. If that’s the case, she said, “we’re living with a new human virus, and we’re going to find out if it will spread around the globe.” McGeer cautioned that because the true severity of the outbreak isn’t yet known, it’s impossible
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DNA sleuths read the coronavirus genome, tracing its origins and looking for dangerous mutations
As infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists race to contain the outbreak of the novel coronavirus centered on Wuhan, China, they’re getting backup that’s been possible only since the explosion in genetic technologies: a deep-dive into the DNA of the virus known as 2019-nCoV. Analyses of the viral genome are already providing clues to the origins of the outbreak and even possible ways to treat the infection, a need that is becoming more urgent by the day: Early on Saturday in China, health officials reported 15 new fatalities in a single day, bringing the death toll to 41. There are now nearly 1,100 confirmed cases there. Reading the DNA also allows researchers to monitor how 2019-nCoV is changing and provides a roadmap for developing a diagnostic test and a vaccine. “The genetics can tell us the true timing of the first cases” and whether they occurred earlier than officials realized,
China is using AbbVie Inc’s HIV drugs as an ad-hoc treatment for pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus while the global search for a cure continues. The Beijing branch of China’s National Health Commission said that a combination of lopinavir and ritonavir, sold under the brand name Kaletra by AbbVie, is part of its latest treatment plan for patients infected by the virus, which has killed at least 56 people in China and sickened more than 2,000 worldwide. The NHC said that while there is not yet any effective anti-viral drug, it recommends patients are given two lopinavir and ritonavir tablets twice a day and a dose of alpha-interpheron through nebulization twice daily. Medical journal Lancet said on Friday that a clinical trial is under way using ritonavir and lopinavir to treat cases of the new coronavirus. Meanwhile, China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention will start developing a vaccine, according to the Global
По последним данным, коронавирус 2019-nCoV в Китае уже убил 26 человеческих жизней, в то время как официальное количество погибших от вспышки заболевания составляет 18 человек. Коронавирус нового, неизвестного науке вида, появился в 11-миллионном городе Ухань в конце прошлого года. Число доказанных случаев заболевания в Китае 23 января выросло до 876, сообщили в пятницу китайские власти. Десять городов — в общей сложности 60 миллионов человек изолированы. К блокаде закрытых на карантин городов подключены военные. Железнодорожный вокзал Ухань закрыт с четверга. Вход уже охраняют военные с автоматами в костюмах химзащиты. Из-за эпидемии Китай расширил действия карантина. По данным сайта, который в реальном времени отслеживает количество заболевших и отмечает данные на
Virology institute there has China's only secure lab for studying deadly viruse. The deadly animal virus epidemic spreading globally may have originated in a Wuhan laboratory linked to China’s covert biological weapons program, according to an Israeli biological warfare expert. Radio Free Asia this week rebroadcast a local Wuhan television report from 2015 showing China’s most advanced virus research laboratory known the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Radio Free Asia reported. The laboratory is the only declared site in China capable of working with deadly viruses. Dany Shoham, a former Israeli military intelligence officer who has studied Chinese bio warfare, said the institute is linked to Beijing’s covert biological weapons program. “Certain laboratories in the institute have probably been engaged, in terms of research and development, in Chinese [biological weapons], at least collaterally, yet not as a
Лаборатория высшего уровня биологической угрозы, на территории Уханьского института вирусологии, которая изучает «самые опасные патогены в мире», базируется в городе, который стал эпицентром вспышки коронавируса 2019-nCoV в Китае. Опасения по поводу деятельности лаборатории высказывало авторитетное американское издание Nature еще в 2017 году. В социальных сетях уже появились предположения, авторы которых утверждают, что вирус, жертвами которого, по состоянию на вечер 23 января уже стали, как минимум, 18 человек, а количество инфицированных приближается к 700, мог родиться в лаборатории. Впрочем, надо отметить, что скорее всего, — эти гипотезы ложные. Еще в 2017 году журнал Nature сообщил о Медицинском научно-исследовательском институте при Университете города Ухань, где находится лаборатория уровня
The vast majority of people who suffer severe complications from influenza are elderly or have compromised immune systems. In fact, almost 90% of people who die as a result of a flu infection in the United States are over 65, an age when the immune system’s ability to fight infection begins to wane. But with the fiercest flu season in almost a decade occurring in 2018, news stories about otherwise healthy adults succumbing to the influenza virus were alarmingly common. Why? Ironically, in most cases, it is the strength of their immune response that can put a healthy person at risk for complications associated with the flu. While most of the time a strong immune system is key to keeping an infection in check, sometimes the body’s reaction to being infected with the flu presents the greatest danger to an otherwise healthy person. “A cytokine storm is generally what leads to otherwise healthy young
Геофизик Александр Городницкий — о том, что на самом деле стоит за истерикой по поводу глобального потепления. В истории человечества можно выделить три категории мифов. Первая — это древние мифы, которые появились на ранней стадии человеческой истории и были со временем опровергнуты наукой. Такие, например, как плоская Земля, стоящая на трех китах, или миф, что на Канарских островах живут люди с пёсьими головами. Вторая — те древние мифы, которые сегодня могут получить в наши дни реальное подтверждение с позиций современной науки. И наконец, третья категория — это мифы, возникшие уже в наше время и благодаря умелой пропаганде в средствах массовой информации запугавшие миллионы людей, но серьезного научного подтверждения не имеющие. Наиболее наглядный пример последнего — миф о
Two papers published Friday in the journal the Lancet offer some of the first rigorous analyses of patients who contracted a novel coronavirus that has broken out in China and spread to other countries. Among their discoveries: The virus does not only affect people with other, underlying health conditions, and people who are not showing symptoms can still be carrying the virus. In one study, researchers analyzed data from the first 41 patients who were admitted to hospitals with confirmed cases of the infection in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, where the outbreak is believed to have originated last month. Two-thirds had been to a large seafood market that also sold wild animals for meat and is thought to be where the virus jumped from an animal source to people. The median age of the patients was 49. The patients displayed a wide range of symptoms, many of which were similar to those
Mysterious swarms of giant drones have dotted the Colorado and Nebraska night sky since last week, The Denver Post first reported. The drones appear and disappear at roughly the same time each night in swarms of at least 17 and up to 30. The drones appear to measure about 6 feet across. Local and federal government authorities say they have no idea where the drones are coming from. They do not appear to be malicious, however, and a drone expert says they appear to be searching or mapping out the area. Something strange has been happening in Eastern Colorado at night. Since the week of Christmas, giant drones measuring up to 6 feet across have been spotted in the sky at night, sometimes in swarms as large as 30. The Denver Post first reported these mysterious drone sightings in northeastern Colorado on December 23. Since then, sightings